The month of October is dedicated to honoring women and families who have suffered a loss during pregnancy or infancy. The goal of pregnancy and infant loss awareness month is to raise awareness and provide support for grieving families. In this blog post, Dr. Rayna Markin, Licensed Psychologist and Founder of The Therapy Center for Pregnancy Loss LLC,  discusses why it is so important to have a dedicated and annual or regular period of time to honor the experiences of women and families who are grieving the loss of a pregnancy or baby and how families can use this time to honor their losses and experiences in a way that helps them mourn and move-forward with a greater sense of meaning and purpose.

What is Pregnancy Loss?

Pregnancy loss encompasses a wide range of experiences including miscarriage, recurrent pregnancy loss, stillbirth, and neonatal death. It also can refer to terminations of wanted pregnancies for medical reasons, ectopic pregnancies, missed miscarriages, as well as to a failed transfer during Invitro Fertilization (IVF). When actively trying to conceive, women develop hopes and dreams and fantasies of being a mother to a specific baby, and within this context of hoping and dreaming, even a period can feel like a loss or miscarriage.

What are Common Emotional Reactions to Pregnancy Loss?

Though there are many different kinds of pregnancy loss and each kind is unique, and each woman's experience is unique, these losses share in common that they are often followed by severe and long-lasting feelings of grief and loss. On top of this, pregnancy loss is often experienced as a traumatic event that can lead to post-traumatic like symptoms, including guilt, shame, anxiety, and intrusive images or thoughts. Many grieving parents struggle to process the shock or horror around the loss event, which often includes invasive and painful medical procedures. 

Despite all this, women and families often feel alone in their grief and distress. Many women feel devastated and like they are falling apart on the inside but feel pressure to act like nothing has changed on the outside. Women and families often struggle with how to move-on and put the pieces of their life back together when an essential piece is missing. Pregnancy loss is the only loss for which there are no culturally sanctioned mourning rituals and traditions, and family, friends, and even medical providers often rationalize or minimize pregnancy loss grief, saying that “time heals all wounds,” or assuring the couple that they will have another baby, as if one pregnancy or baby can replace another. In our society, individuals are often simply uncomfortable talking about the death of a baby and anything that has to do with a woman's body. But as a result, many women and families feel alone, like their loss has been invalidated, and like they are the only ones who will hold the memory of their dead baby. They do not know how to mourn or with whom to mourn and feel as if their pain is both silent and invisible. They feel alone in their grief and may even wonder if there is something wrong with them for grieving in the first place.

Why is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month important?

For all these reasons, pregnancy and infant loss awareness month is so important. We need to create dedicated spaces for women and families to have a place or a space for all the overwhelming feelings that they hold inside, a place to share, a place to acknowledge, normalize, and validate the grief and the trauma that is often associated with these experiences. Essentially, this month provides a structured forum in which to explicitly or implicitly state, your loss is real and your grief is legitimate and you are not alone. This month can also help to educate support persons on how to support women and couples or families going through a loss.

What to do during pregnancy and infant loss awareness month?

Women and couples or families grieving the loss of a pregnancy or baby should do whatever feels right to them during this time, whatever helps them to express their emotions and feel validated, understood, and supported. Some women want to use this time to feel a sense of connection with the baby that they have lost and some want to process their own physical and emotional experience of the loss and surrounding events. There is no right way to observe or honor this month. Some ideas include writing a letter to the baby that died and reading it out loud to a partner or to a trusted other, holding a memorial service, planting a tree, creating or commissioning artwork, joining a support group where people can share in similar experiences, helping a friend who may be going through something similar, creating a memory book, or  creating some sort of tomb stone (even if there is no physical body) that can be visited each year during pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. Families can participate in the international wave of light by lighting a candle at 7:00 PM on October 15th. Some raise awareness by wearing pink and blue which are the colors of the awareness ribbon, and still other ways to observe the month include sharing stories of loss, attending local memorial events, or supporting organizations that help families affected by loss, or even donating to research to prevent future losses. The important thing is to find what feels right to you.