It can be hard to find the words

People often don’t know how to talk about miscarriage at this stage, and it may feel like you don’t have the right words to describe how you’re feeling. Some people call it a loss. Some say their baby died. Some use clinical terms like miscarriage. Some choose to name their baby, and others don’t. The people around you may also be unsure of what to say, which can increase feelings of loneliness and isolation in your grief.

What your body went through

A loss at this stage often involves a physical experience that earlier miscarriage does not, and may also include medical interventions. You may or may not have laboured, delivered and held your baby afterwards. Physical recovery is real, and it takes time. Your body went through something significant. The timeline of physical healing has nothing to do with when your grief should ease, or whether what you went through "counts" as a major loss. Grief is not linear — your body has gone through something significant, and the world goes on, but a piece of you feels left behind.

If you're the non-birthing parent: This is a shared grief, and while you may not be dealing with all of the same things as the birthing parent, you have also suffered a loss and deserve to be supported and cared for. You may wish to talk with the non-birthing parent about your grief, reach out to a trusted person, or seek out counselling or peer support services. Our Service Finder can help connect you with support.

The grief — and what can make it harder

Grief after a loss at this stage can look like almost anything: shock, numbness, deep sadness, anger at the situation, at the healthcare system, at yourself, relief and then guilt about feeling relief, longing, moments of forgetting followed by remembering again. Relief is especially expected when the pregnancy was taxing, and/or when there were medical complications. That doesn’t mean that you didn’t want this baby, or that you “deserve” this loss.

There’s no timeline for this. Grief doesn't move in a straight line, and it can return sharply around due dates, anniversaries or when someone else announces a pregnancy. That's not a setback, it’s how this kind of loss tends to move.

Guilt is a common feeling for people who’ve experienced loss at this stage. Some may feel like they caused the loss or that they could have done something differently. But grief and guilt can reshape our accounts of what happened, in ways that are not always accurate.

Your grief may also be bigger than the people around you seem to expect. This doesn’t mean that you’re grieving “too much,” it just reflects the lack of understanding others have about it and the fact that they don’t know how to react to it.

The people around you

Some people in your life will have known about the pregnancy, while others didn’t. Both situations can be difficult to navigate.

People who knew about the pregnancy may not know what to say, say the wrong thing or say nothing at all. Some may disappear from your life altogether, for reasons known to only themselves. People who didn't know may need to be told at a moment when you have very little to give. You get to decide what to tell people, and when, and how much. You don't owe anyone an explanation that you aren’t ready to give.

When and how to reach out for support

Grief after pregnancy loss deserves real support. Research shows that experiencing a loss like this increases the risk of depression and anxiety in the months that follow, and that support during this time can make a real difference.

Once they feel ready, one thing that many people find helpful is reaching out to someone who has been through a similar loss. A peer who has been where you are can offer something others maybe can’t: the specific recognition that what happened to you was real and can carry with it a particularly heavy grief.

Late-term loss can feel like a kind of grief no one else recognizes. Use our Service Finder to find peer support groups or other help available near you.

This article was developed using sourced educational content from Canadian Perinatal Mental Health Trainings CPMHT, and informed by the collective knowledge and expertise of CPMHT professionals and Karen Clarke, BA, MSW, RSW, Doula Open Book Doula, Counselling and Consulting Services, as well as the following cited research and clinical practice guidelines: