The unimaginable has happened to you! As you are preparing for the most important roles in your lives, becoming parents, the unimaginable happens. Your dreams are shattered, and your lives are forever changed. You have lost your child. You have lost hope for a better future. You have lost your legacy. Many of you are facing a very different future. One that you may never want to face because of the intensity of the suffering. You may be struggling to understand how you move forward after this.
The frustration and disappointment may be devastating. The time, the planning, the money spent, the savings that are all used up, and the endless doctors’ appointments, schedules, injections, and medications for in vitro pregnancy are endless. It is easy to fall into hopelessness. The pain that you face each time you take a step forward through the suffering for a small possibility that somehow, we will get a miracle, and have a child of our own. You may be struggling with thoughts of, “What is wrong with me?”
There are so many scenarios, too numerous to mention, but the one thing that each heartbreaking story has in common is the pain and suffering of loss. It unites us all with the goal of surviving what we are going through. It is unfathomable! It is horrendous! Yet each person who comes to my office who has experienced loss also carries with them the love and hope of the life that they are carrying forward through the pain. These continuing bonds are what I see as “hope lines” to our suffering. The child might be gone but the spirit of the child, the love we shared continues through our stories.
This is a precious gift that we have all been given. It is the cost of loving someone, even the possibility of someone, so much that we risk the pain and suffering of grief to have them in our lives even for those precious few weeks, months, or years. The pain is so great but so is the love that you had to share. That love has changed you. That love has created something deep within you. There is a purpose that can come out of the suffering if you allow yourself to hope just a little bit and let that love have an expression again.
Pregnancy and infant loss is difficult for so many reasons. You may feel guilty or ashamed about losing your baby or confused about being a parent without a child. If you are feeling isolated or that people just do not understand how you are feeling because of your loss, there are resources that can help you feel heard and understood in your grief journey.
