Why expressing your emotions is important for grieving your baby.

Written by Dr Stephanie Borg Bartolo, Counselling Psychologist and Intervention Lead.

The 9th of October marks the start of the baby loss awareness week. Last year I wrote a piece on breaking the silence in regard to miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death. I was happy to see some of the taboo start to shift. I was also surprised how therapeutic it was for me personally to ‘break my own silence’ through writing.

This year I chose to focus on a different aspect of baby loss. I came across an article somewhere that said many parents do not feel they have ‘permission’ to feel sad or angry after a while. This tends to occur with grief in general and not only baby loss. Some people feel as though there is a deadline by which they should start to feel better or move on so to speak. Recent grief theories explain that this is not the case.

People do not necessarily experience grief in stages.

According to Worden’s theory of grief (2009), experiencing and acknowledging the pain and loss is an important part of moving forward. After that comes adjusting to the world without the baby, returning to a world that did not stop, while yours did even if just for a while. This can be a difficult task to navigate through.

It is also during this period that parents may feel pressured to go back to normal, to hide their feelings, or to try and move forward quickly. Unfortunately, the culture we live in still does not leave enough space for people to grieve properly. For example in 2021 New Zealand became one of the first countries in the world to offer paid leave for miscarriage. What does this say about the importance we give to perinatal mental health and grief in general?

Strobe & Shute (1999) describe another model of grief in which they describe how the bereaved parent moves between focusing on their grief and feeling like themselves again. There may be days in which they don't focus on the loss at all, and that is ok. This does not mean that the grief may not return on another day.

Grief is no longer thought of as happening in linear stages. This is why some people may say “ I was ok then it feels like I went back five steps”.

A myriad of emotions following loss is common, shock, numbness, anger, and sadness being the most common. Trying to ‘cushion’ the blow by saying things that start with “at least” is not helpful and may unknowingly create a culture of silence and not wanting to burden others with their grief. This becomes an isolating experience. Here I want to take a moment to acknowledge the partners who often also suffer in silence. Many feel as though they need to be strong for the other partner, or may feel as though they ought not to feel that bad because they were not the ones carrying the pregnancy. However, everybody grieves (in different ways) and they need support as well.

Suppressing painful emotions may seem like an effective coping mechanism in the short term, however one runs the risk of becoming ‘stuck’ or ‘lost’ in grief with unprocessed emotions. If the grief remains unresolved it can lead to other psychological problems down the line. Many parents describe miscarriage and child loss as one of the most isolating experiences one can experience. This is why it is paramount that as parents we reach out even if we worry we are being “ a bother”, I promise you that someone does want to hear your story. If you know someone who went through loss, just be with them emotionally or physically as best you can, there is no need to silver line things, loss cannot be silver lined. Check in from time to time and just listen.

If you or someone you know is grieving or would like some support, do reach out. As Brene Brown says, rarely can saying something make things better, what makes things better is connection.

This post is dedicated to all people who have experienced perinatal and neonatal loss and to all those babies who never made it home.