Empty Belly, Empty Arms, Shattered Dreams

A desired pregnancy is the concrete proof of the love and commitment shared between two people. The opportunity of having a child has the capacity to change someone in many ways. In some ways, these changes are undeniable, such as the biological change that occurs to a woman’s body when she embarks on her journey of motherhood. There are also the more silent changes. Emotional changes that keep you up at night wondering if you are truly ready to take on this life changing experience. Hopes and dreams fill your head of the never ending potential your child will have and the places and things they will do with such.

In a healthy pregnancy, a couple has at least 37 long weeks to prepare their “nest” to welcome their very own bundle of joy. While it is a harsh reality, the sad truth is that many of these pregnancies end with loss. Whether it be through a miscarriage, stillbirth, death of the newborn due to complications during childbirth, or sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) of a seemingly healthy baby less than a year old, the loss of what could have been all feels unbearable. In order to honor the pain of parents, families, and friends that have lived through these uncanny times, October 15th has been designated as the World’s Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.

Although the death of a baby, either in utero or after birth, tremendously affects both the couple and close loved ones, research shows that mothers tend to carry this pain with much more burden than any other involved party. This emotional consequence is most likely due to her natural role of life carrier and primary caregiver of the newborn. If by misfortune things go wrong and her body involuntarily expels the baby as in the case of an abortion; or the baby unexpectadly dies during pregnancy; or even suffers severe injuries during childbirth; unfortunatelty mothers tends to assigned themselves full responsibility of the loss. They believe they have failed by not being able to protect their babies, awaking feelings of inadequacy, shame, guilt, anger, sadness, and disappointment.

Many women express that it is a very difficult grief to navigate, especially because they feel lonely and misunderstood by their own support system. If the pregnancy is interrupted during the first weeks, people tend to minimize their pain as if the size of the baby would determine the amount of emotional pain allowed. But what about all those dreams that arose with the good news of a wanted pregnancy? Or the negative feelings related to her inadequacy to be a good mom, or to bring to life the concrete proof of her love for her spouse?

In the same way, when the baby is lost at advanced stages of pregnancy, delivery, or after birth, the same painful grief has the aggravating factor of evident physical changes that even a complete stranger could interpret as “There is a baby on its way”. The deformed image of a mom’s body only makes sense if they were rewarded with the tenderness of their baby. The labor pain can only be compensated by the cry and feel of their child’s lively warm body. Her flowing breast milk only serves its purpose when there is a baby to help grow stronger everyday. Even when no baby arrives, she still needs to face this raw reality.

Even after the pain of physical loss diminishes, the thought of returning to a home that once contained a nursery built on dreams now quickly takes on the form of a nightmare. Furthermore, she will then also need to get acclimated to her new reality; one that will be filled with questions of what had happened; forcing her to explain that there is no baby, even when signs of her body show others what once could have been. On many occasions women are forced to listen to well intended comments such as “God knows what he is doing”; “you both are still young”; “everything happens for a reason “, that only work to increase one’s suffering by reaffirming their inability to connect with their loss.

In summary, the loss of a baby is a social phenomenon that couples live with in great pain and loneliness. By attending to the real emotional needs of the couple, especially the mother’s, we could help them make peace with their loss. At the end it seems realistic to agree that no one ever overcomes the death of a loved one, but one can definitely learn how to live with it. I encourage our community to try our best to provide effective emotional support to all those parents, family members, and close friends that have encountered this hardship in their lives, and accompany them in honoring the loving memory of a dream that did not come true.