After the Miscarriage: Other People's Babies

When my sister announced her pregnancy shortly after I announced mine, we were both tickled that our babies would be born so close together. For a few weeks we had fun comparing notes on our babies (this would be my fourth, her third). She was glad to take my recommendation on midwives and found them greatly to her liking.

Then came the day when the Doppler didn't pick up my baby's heartbeat. In the whirlwind of tests and emotional trauma that followed, my sister's pregnancy was completely off my radar. But after a D&C to treat a molar pregnancy, I came home shaken and anemic and empty, and there she was still glowingly pregnant. It was painful, but I decided to be stoic. I was even able to attend her birth and spend many hours with her supporting and encouraging and giving motherly advice as she recovered from an emergency c-section and struggled to get breastfeeding established. The greatest difficulty I found was living in the same house with her and her new baby and hearing him cry. Every single time the baby cried, I felt an intense urge to run to him, pick him up, and nurse him. My breasts grew heavy with milk that wasn't there. I had to keep reminding myself again and again that the cries were coming from someone else's baby, not my own. My own baby died months ago, in a womb that had betrayed me yet again.

Although my reaction was somewhat delayed in comparison to other women who have lost babies, it does seem to fall within the spectrum of what's normal. So many of us who have lost babies struggle with feelings, sometimes difficult to sort through, when confronted with friends or relatives who are having babies while we are grieving ours. Often it is the cause of severe pain to get a birth announcement, or to see pregnant women walking around, or to be invited to a baby shower. Because of our grief-heightened sensitivity, it may seem that there's a newly pregnant woman or a just-born baby lurking around every corner, ready to leap out and remind us of our own devastating loss.

The grieving process takes time. Some of us may go through all the stages of grief, others may not.¹ But most of us will feel a "twinge" even years later, and it may take us by surprise. These feelings are normal. However, they may make us prone to avoiding the world, avoiding those things which remind us of our loss. That tendancy is normal too, but it is one we need to actively resist, because we need the support of others in order to heal and move forward in our life. We need to learn how to focus our anger and grief in the right direction, rather than turning it on those whose fertility journey seems to be easier than ours. Although it may seem so at the time, people who get pregnant and have babies while we are struggling are not doing so to hurt us or to spite us. It is life. Life continues all around us, even when all we can see is death.

Although my newborn nephew shattered my stoicism and brought to the forefront difficult feelings, he has also been the greatest instrument in my healing. Had I backed away in hurt and jealousy, no matter how emotionally normal that might have been, I would never have known how tremendously beautiful it is to hold him and look into his eyes, and find my gaze trustingly returned. He is not my baby. He cannot ever replace my baby and I wouldn't want to try to make him do so. But he gave me the gift of his first smiles, and rested sweetly in my arms, and has warmed and soothed my aching heart just a little every day since he came home.

¹Coping With Pregnancy Loss, staff writers, mayoclinic.com