Pregnancy loss was one of the hardest experiences I’ve been through. I’m sad to say I walked through two losses before having our rainbow boy, and I was not nearly prepared for the onslaught of crazy feelings and emotions I experienced in my post-loss pregnancies. On the bright-side, I gained some tools that helped me along the way. Hopefully, these tools will also help you navigate pregnancy after loss.
Here’s what you’ll find in this article:
7 Tools To Help Navigate Pregnancy After Loss
I’m sure there are many ways you could successfully navigate pregnancy after loss, but the following 7 tools are what helped me the most.
If you have worked out ways that helped you in your own journey, please share them in the comments after the article so you can help other women, too. We can’t walk this hard journey alone, and we can learn so much from each other. All experiences and thoughts are welcome here!
Now let’s get to it.
1. Make Room For Your Feelings
Making room for your feelings might just be the most important tool to help you navigate pregnancy after loss.
After having the first miscarriage, my entire thought process surrounding pregnancy changed.
First off, positive pregnancy tests didn’t result in feelings of joy and excitement. Instead, I felt dread and fear, kind of like I was just waiting for the pregnancy to end, and I needed to prepare my heart for the inevitable. It was grim, I know, but it was also real and very normal to have those kinds of thoughts.
At the same time, I also had days where I felt hope and excitement. Each day was unpredictable, and I had to just ride the wave of wild emotions.
On your own journey, it’s so important to allow yourself to feel all the feels and not shame yourself for feeling the negative emotions. You don’t have to hold onto those emotions indefinitely, but you do need to make room for them, acknowledge their existence, and ride it out. Those intense emotions and thoughts are there for extremely valid reasons, and shoving them to the side isn’t healthy or helpful.
Here’s a practice that helped me process intense emotions after seeing a post-loss, positive pregnancy test:
- Acknowledge the feeling
- Validate the feeling
- Let that particular feeling or emotion know that you are safe right now. While you acknowledge and validate the feeling, you are, in fact, safe in this moment, and it’s ok, at least for today, to release the fear, anxiety, etc.
- Imagine the feeling being washed away by a wave in the ocean
- Decide what emotion you want to replace the negative emotion with and continue to think about the positive emotion throughout the day
To take things a step further, after you have chosen the positive emotion you want to feel that day, write it on a post-it and put it somewhere you will see it often. It might sound crazy, but this practice genuinely helped me.
2. Accept Your Story
Accepting your story is a powerful tool to help you navigate pregnancy after loss.
I went through a long process of acceptance after my losses. In fact, I’m still working on acceptance of my story today.
What do I mean by “accept your story”?
Well, when I first got pregnant, I imagined a specific outcome: a healthy, cuddly, living baby. But that didn’t happened. So I went through a journey of grieving through what I expected versus what really happened, and I also went through a process of accepting the story of my baby’s short life.
Ultimately, I had no control over my pregnancy. Now, that’s not to say I could do whatever I wanted and nothing would negatively impact my baby. Of course not. But even in doing “all the right things”, I had little to no control over the outcome of my pregnancy.
After my first loss, I changed my mentality from having a specific outcome of my pregnancies to embracing whatever the pregnancy might bring. That was not an easy thing to do, and I absolutely wasn’t perfect at it. It also doesn’t mean that having the second loss didn’t impact me in a very negative way. I was heartbroken with both the first and second losses.
However, I was able to get myself to a point where I could more readily accept the story and experience of my pregnancies, no matter the final outcome.
Following are a couple of practices that helped me embrace my pregnancies and stay a bit more present in the experience as opposed to only having my eyes on the final goal of having a healthy baby.
Create A Journal For Each Pregnancy
I believe life begins at conception. Therefore, the story of my babies began the moment they were conceived. Just because two of them didn’t experience life outside the womb doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. Those two babies were and are so real to me.
To honor your pregnancy and celebrate the life that is already inside of your belly, create a journal at the beginning of each pregnancy. Document all of the hard parts, special parts, weird parts along the way. No matter the ending result of your pregnancy, you will have your baby’s life documented on paper.
The ultimate hope is that you’ll have a beautiful journal to give your baby when they are older.
Although we don’t ever want to expect loss, the reality is it might happen. If you do experience loss, you will have an account of your baby’s life while they were in your tummy.
Either way, I promise that you’ll be so grateful for creating the journal for yourself and for your baby.
Create A Memory Box For Each Pregnancy
When I first got pregnant, I immediately began buying cute clothes and little knick knacks for my coming baby. When we lost him, I held onto those items.
Thankfully, I was able to use them for our rainbow boy. Those items always remind me of our first angel baby, and I’m actually so happy for that.
My rainbow boy has now grown out of those little clothes, but I’ve kept them and created a memory box in honor of my first loss.
My second pregnancy was a really hard time for me, and I didn’t buy anything specifically for that baby. To be honest, I wish I had bought something for them, even if it was just one thing. I just wasn’t in the right head space to be excited about that pregnancy, and it ended pretty early, so I didn’t really have time to dream about a future with that little one.
If I could turn back time, I’d buy just one cute onesie for them. I wish I had something specific to remember them by, but, at that time, I hadn’t yet created the idea of making a memory box or journal to honor the very real life that was inside my tummy. If I do happen to get pregnant again in the future, I’ll definitely do those things for that baby.
3. Set Realistic Expectations
My 3rd and 4th tools that help you navigate pregnancy after loss might seem to contradict each other, but bare with me.
The 3rd tool is to set realistic expectations. While I never want to expect a loss, my story has confirmed that loss is, in fact, possible.
While I don’t want it to happen, it is an option, and to help me process any outcome, I found it was important for me to imagine all outcomes of my pregnancy.
There were a myriad of things that could have happened in my 3rd pregnancy:
- 1. I have a healthy baby
- 2. I lose the baby
- 3. Baby is born with medical issues
- 4. Baby is born early
And on and on and on. You get the point.
There are about a million different outcomes that could occur from pregnancy. While I didn’t know what would happen, I knew I didn’t want any surprises. Even though I couldn’t imagine every outcome, I felt a little safer when I mentally walked through some of the possible outcomes and imagined how I would handle it. I guess it just made me feel more prepared for the possibility of hard outcomes.
4. Expect The Best
On the other hand, my 4th tool is the opposite of my previous point of setting realistic expectations.
Expect the best.
Expect that your baby will be healthy and make it full term.
It’s just no fun to always be thinking about the possible doom and gloom that might come, and realistically, you have a really high chance of actually having a healthy baby. Or at least that’s what the statistics seem to reveal.
I imagine you’ll do a really good job of imagining the negative outcomes, so I want you to be sure to make lots and lots of room for positive thinking and actually expect to have a healthy baby.
5. Trust Your Heart
Your heart is so wise. Your heart is also able to heal. I’ve been through really, really hard stuff in my life, and I am shocked at just how adaptable and heal-able my heart is.
Trust that your heart will be ok, no matter the outcome of your pregnancy. You can choose to embrace the pregnancy, embrace excitement, and dream of your future with your baby. Even if that doesn’t happen, your heart will heal.
You are allowed to create whatever mental space you want during your pregnancy. You are powerful, and your emotions and feelings don’t own you. While I can’t promise you won’t feel a lot of hard emotions on the journey, I can promise you that it won’t always feel that way, and tomorrow will likely be different from today.
Trust that you will be ok no matter what. Give yourself permission to pursue the dream that’s in your heart even though it comes with some risk.
6. Confide In Your Partner Or A Friend
Having a partner or a friend to confide in was way up there on my list of tools to help navigate pregnancy after loss.
Sometimes, all I needed was someone that had a listening ear and could really empathize with my wild emotions.
Often, my husband filled that role, but there were times he didn’t have the emotional capacity to be there for me, and I had to turn to a friend. It didn’t really matter who it was. I just needed someone who could listen and offer support without judgement or making me feel crazy.
Find someone you trust and can support you in your pregnancy after loss. You will need a safe place to vent. I guarantee it. Don’t go at this journey alone because some days, it’s just too much to navigate alone. Let your partner or friend know what you need: a listening ear without feedback, a listening ear with comforting feedback, hugs, silence, whatever it may be.
7. Find A Source Of Hope Outside Of Yourself
While this might be a stretch for some, I highly recommend finding a source of hope to help you on your journey of pregnancy after loss.
I’m a strong believer in God and Jesus. The hope I found in them was the only thing that got me through the hard days. I don’t have any recommendations of other paths to go down in terms of faith because I’m pretty solid in where I find hope.
All I know for sure is that having a source of hope outside of myself was a non-negotiable for me as I walked through post-loss pregnancies. I really don’t know how I would have gotten through the pregnancies any other way while still holding onto some semblance of joy and expectancy of good things to come.
When To Get More Help
While having these 7 tools to help you navigate pregnancy after loss can be super helpful, sometimes it’s still not enough.
You may need help beyond what I’m able to offer from my own experience. In that case, it’s really important to reach out to more professional means of support when you’re really struggling.
If you’re feeling extreme anxiety, sadness, negative thoughts, etc. for an extended period of time, reach out to your doctor. You may need some help getting your hormones evened out or you might need the help of a therapist.
There is no shame in needing more help.
Most importantly, extend grace to yourself on this journey. It is so, so hard to navigate pregnancy after loss.
If you have your own tools that have helped you along the way, I’d love to hear about them in the comments. Or if you’re struggling in your journey and need someone to confirm that you’re not going crazy, send me a message at happymama@mamavillageofone.com. I’ll always get to you as soon as I can.
Sending you the biggest hugs, mama.
Check out these other articles:
4 Painful Realities Of Fertility And Pregnancy Loss
5 Very Normal Feelings To Have After A Miscarriage
20 Unique Ways To Honor And Remember A Baby You’ve Lost
