Healing Together: Helping Couples Cope with Miscarriage, Stillbirth or Early Infant Loss

  

For many couples, a miscarriage, stillbirth or early infant loss is the greatest loss they have ever experienced together. Yet, husbands and wives often feel alone in their grief. Certainly there are marriages that have been strengthened by a shared loss, but more common is the marriage that suffers under the weight and stress of mourning.

The Meaning of the Loss                     

A major task for the pregnant woman is to accept the fetus as part of herself. The well—being of her baby becomes intertwined with her own feeling of self-worth. If her baby dies (even very early in her pregnancy), her self-imagine and sense of competency may be shattered.

Since a father does not experience any physical changes during pregnancy, the early months of his wife’s pregnancy may not feel very real to him. As the pregnancy progresses, the reality of the baby becomes clearer to the father. Men tend not to experience an early miscarriage as an acutely personal loss, but they usually find a second trimester loss or stillbirth more painful because they have seen and felt physical evidence of their child.

Healing Together: Helping Couples Cope with Miscarriage, Stillbirth or Early Infant Loss was co-authored by Marcie K. Lister, ACSW and Sandra M. Lovell, RN, ACSW for the October 1990 issues of Bereavement              Magazine.

This article is several pages long and will not fit in this column, therefore, we broke the article into several pieces. In our next issue of New Horizons, we will share their next two headings: Grieving the Loss and Guilt.