Pregnancy and Infant Loss
Nobody knows what to say to you.
Family who loves you says the wrong thing. Friends go quiet, or worse, try to fix what can’t be fixed.
People change the subject, or they don't bring it up at all, or they look at you with big, concerned eyes and ask how you’re doing but then aren’t prepared for your response.
Maybe even your current therapist doesn’t know what to do or how to hold the gravity of your experience.
There’s a hole in your heart and everyone around you is tiptoeing, afraid of your pain.
We understand.
What so many of our clients who have experienced pregnancy or infant loss need is someone sturdy. They don't need a fix. This can't be solved. They need someone who can be a steady presence, who isn't scared off by how big and how sad this is.
We don't panic. We won't rush you toward what's comfortable for everyone else. We won't say the things people keep saying to you that make you want to scream: that everything happens for a reason, that you can try again, that at least it happened early. Slowly, we'll help you figure out how life goes on from here.
Loss during pregnancy and after birth isn't one experience.
Maybe it happened early, in those first weeks or months, before most people even knew you were pregnant. There's pressure to dust yourself off and keep moving, like your grief isn't fully real. It's lonely and heartbreaking, mourning someone almost nobody else knew existed.
Maybe you got horrible news at a scan months into your pregnancy. You may have had to make an impossible decision in a matter of days, one that deserved more time and consideration, but you didn’t have a choice. You may still grapple with a decision you know deep down was the only one you could make. You mourn your baby and what might have been, and you carry a decision that will always be part of the story, even though you had no good options.
Maybe your baby was born and didn't survive. You birthed your child and then had to say goodbye instead of starting a life together. Maybe your baby was born and lived for hours, or days, or longer, long enough that you knew each other. You have memories of them now and a grief that people can’t relate to. You’ve lived a parent’s greatest nightmare and people don’t know how to be with you now.
However your loss happened, it doesn't need to look like anyone else's to be real, and you don't have to explain or justify it to be taken seriously here.
You might recognize some of this:
● Dreading the question "how many kids do you have?" and never knowing how to answer it
● Feeling resentment toward pregnant friends or new parents, and then feeling terrible about that
● Anger at your body, your doctor, the situation, or all three
● Wondering if you did something to cause this (you know you didn’t but the thought won’t go away)
● Feeling alone with it even next to your partner, like you're each grieving in a different language
We go at your pace. Not the pace everyone around you seems to expect, the one where you're supposed to be "doing better" by now. Your pace may be slower than anyone else in your life finds comfortable, including you.
Some sessions, we'll sit with how hard this is, directly, without softening it. Other times, we'll talk about something completely unrelated, because somehow life keeps going and some days work or friends or partnership need attention. Grief requires breaks, too.
We won't move you toward the next thing before you're ready. We'll never suggest that you start trying again. If and when that's something you want to think about, we'll go there together if you bring it up. We never hurry grief.
This isn't about "moving on." We won't promise that this will stop hurting. What tends to happen, with time and the right support, is that people find a way to carry this and still have a life. They build room again for other things: connection, small moments of ease, joy, without any of it meaning you've forgotten or moved past what you lost. The loss doesn't get smaller. Life grows back around it.
You can trust us to take excellent care of you during the hardest experience you’ll ever have.