Feelings and emotions

During your journey you may be feeling a range of emotions – this is a totally normal part of the healing process. Some of the emotions which you and your loved ones may encounter are:

Shock – an utter disbelief that your baby is gone. Your whole world has been turned upside done in a single sentence/ single moment. Words may not register as you hope and pray that you have incorrectly heard the doctor/midwives.

Emptiness – You are likely to feel an unbelievable aching to hold your little one. The early days and weeks can feel like a complete daze, for some getting out of bed in a morning is a real struggle. Time, as they say, is, believe it or not a great healer and although the emptiness, the pain, never goes away completely, the dark days do gradually become lighter.

Loneliness – You may feel that nobody understands how you are feeling, especially in the months and years to come. Sometimes it might feel like everyone else has moved on and they expect you to too. However, you may find that a lot of the time friends and family may try to be being strong for you. This is especially often the case with male members of the family who feel they need to suppress their feelings in order to support the mother.

Jealousy/Envy– Sometimes is can feel like everyone around you is either pregnant or just had a baby. Life can unfortunately seem extremely unfair. It takes all of your strength to get out of the house and then you see an expectant lady or mother with a newborn baby and you endure a pain like nothing else. Inside you are screaming why is my child not here? Why has this happened to me?

Longing – You may feel a deep desire to hold your baby or return to the days prior to your loss. A longing to experience all of the hopes and dreams, all of the memories which you had envisaged making. Further along you may long to be pregnant again, to experience all of the dreams which you had expected to experience with your little one.

Regret – Dealing with such a traumatic loss can leave everybody in a daze, it is tricky to comprehend, to make sense of things let alone make important decisions. You may look back on some of your decisions and regret certain aspects such as not dressing your baby or spending longer with them. This is normal, everybody has regrets, you can’t possibly prepare yourself for such a life changing event.  Please don’t beat yourself up, but know that you did what was right at that moment in time.