Dealing with the death of a baby

After waiting nine months for your child to be born, it is heartbreaking to leave the hospital without your baby. Losing a baby seems to leave a hole in your heart. As the parent, you lose a piece of yourself when you lose a baby. Nothing that anyone says or does can help you to accept what has happened and move on.

The days and months that follow the death of baby will be hard. You might not want to see anyone or do anything. This is normal. You might just feel like crying all of the time. This is normal also. It is all right for you to cry. Crying is the most important part of grieving because it allows you to fully grieve without holding any feelings inside to get bottled up. By bottling up your feelings, you and your partner will not be able to grieve together and could possible drift apart. It is not unheard of that parents who have lost a child together eventually separate because they cannot reconnect with each other.

Although most parents are very angry after they lose a baby, it is often very helpful and comforting to seek support from your church or synagogue. Religion can give great comfort to those who are open to it. But usually parents are too angry to go this route.

Another place of comfort is in the memories that you have of the lost baby. You can remember hearing your baby’s heartbeat and feel your baby kicking. You also might have already decorated the baby’s nursery. It is important to try and have as many memories from the hospital as well. You should ask to see your baby and have a photo taken for you to remember what your baby looks like. This way you will not always wonder what color your baby’s hair was or how he or she looked. This may sound horrible right now, but in the future you will probably wonder about these things.

It is also important that both the parents take care of putting away anything that was for the baby at home. Often, other people do the task of cleaning up the baby’s room and home so that when the parents come home, they will not have to deal with the sorrow. But this is an important step in dealing with the loss of your baby. You can’t pretend that it never happened.

After time, the feelings of loss will lessen but they will probably never go too far away. Different things may remind you of your loss. But if you can remember and then go on with your life, you will heal a lot quicker. Just do not expect your pain to magically disappear overnight or after a week. It will take much longer then that. It might even take a year or two. The one mistake that a lot of parents make is to get pregnant right away again in hopes that the new baby will replace the one that they lost. This is not a good idea. One baby will not replace the other. You will still feel the loss.

Just take one day at a time until the days get easier. Both parents need to seek solace in each other until they are ready to enjoy life once again.