Written by Dr. Colleen Reichmann, clinical director of Wildflower Therapy, and loss mom
Oh- It’s you, October. Sigh. Hello again.
If you’re reading this, you are probably already aware of what that sigh is about. October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. And it has come to be a complicated month for just about everyone who is part of the infertility or pregnancy loss community. It’s a month that we do need (at least from a public awareness and discussion standpoint)…but we can also come to dread it at the same time.
On one hand, you want people to be able to talk about pregnancy loss. You want the babies who are missing from our lives to be remembered. You want the loneliness of miscarriage and infertility to feel a little less lonely, even if only for a moment. But then you open Instagram and see another share, another “in October, we are sending love to…” post. Another reminder of the hole you have spent so much time trying to claw your way out of. Suddenly, your desire for acknowledgement and awareness shift to a wish to just get a break from thinking about any of it.
Let me just pause to say as a psychologist, and someone who went through recurrent miscarriages, there is ABSOLUTELY something meaningful about seeing these experiences acknowledged. I will often find myself with tears in my eyes, reading the brave posts from people who have been carrying their grief, largely alone, for months or years. There can be this very real sense of relief in realizing that other people know this kind of pain, too. You did not walk this path alone, and you are not walking it alone. You are part of a silent sorority (albeit one that no one ever wants to join.) But when you spend so much of your time trying to figure out how to keep living after unimaginable pain, it can feel comforting to at least know that others are trying to figure this out right along side of you. You are trekking side by side, whispering, “just keep swimming” together.
And still.. even with this camaraderie- I deeply know that Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month can be really, really hard.
Maybe you find yourself reading a friend’s story of loss and you’re hit with a wave of grief you thought you had gotten better at managing. Or you find yourself reading every story voraciously, before it dawns on your that you definitely need to close your phone, because your chest is tight. You simply cannot take in one more.
You might feel grateful that people are finally talking about pregnancy and infant loss, while also wishing you could get through the day without being reminded of yours. All of these feelings can exist together. And if October feels especially heavy this year, please hear me when I say that this makes total sense. It’s often just a nuanced, conflicted, validating and painful month if you’ve gone through loss.
When Being Reminded of Your Loss Hurts
After a miscarriage, an infertility diagnosis, or a stillbirth, reminders can find you in places you never expected. Sometimes they are obvious. A friend announces a pregnancy, or you scroll on social media and are hit with a Tuesday morning birth announcement from the person you went to high school with. You hear someone talk about their due date, or watch a friend’s baby hit a milestone that yours would have been hitting now too, had the story turned out differently.
Other times, the reminders are very, very quiet. The temperature shifts, and it’s now the season your baby was supposed to arrive. The smell of a medical office, or a doctors’ demeonor brings back memories of being in the ultrasound room, and hearing the most heartbreaking news of your life. The realization during the walk into daycare drop-off with your toddler looks so different from the walk you thought you’d be doing at this time- the one with one hand threaded through your toddlers, the other patting a baby in a carrier.
In October, these reminders can feel sort of relentless in nature. Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month brings more conversations, more personal stories, more memorials, more discussion about small triggers, and just generally more public acknowledgment of experiences that often go unspoken the rest of the year.
There is a particular exhaustion that can come from trying to navigate a world that suddenly talks constantly and at length about a trauma that you otherwise shoulder in silence on your own. So if you find yourself feeling more emotional, irritable, distracted, or withdrawn this month, it may help to give yourself permission to 1) take breaks from the conversation (and especially from social media), and 2) to just simply have a harder time. (You do NOT have to turn every difficult feeling into a lesson about resilience. Sometimes a reminder just hurts, and sometimes it still hurts in a way that takes your breath away, years and decades later.)
When Other People's Stories Feel Both Comforting and SO Unbearable
One of the hardest things about pregnancy and infant loss awareness in my opinion is figuring out how much you want to hear. There can be enormous comfort in reading someone else's story and recognizing your own feelings in it. Maybe someone describes the strange loneliness of an early miscarriage. Or the experience of infertility- the limbo of constant waiting and blood draws. Or someone talks about how it felt to have a low HCG number, and what it felt like to be in HCG hell, waiting for the rise and going back to appointments every two days. It can feel really nice to read about these types of niche painful experiences and feel less alone. Someone else gets it. Someone else knows.
That kind of recognition can be deeply meaningful, especially when the people around you have struggled to understand or acknowledge why you are still hurting.
Abut sometimes- and this can be hard to acknowledge for many, I know- sometimes another person's story is simply too much to bear in that moment.
It might be because it causes you to compare timelines, outcomes, or experiences. The gut punch of reading on to find that their story ended with finding a pathway through infertility, and to their baby, while you are still in the misery, still waiting. Or, alternatively, it is not uncommon to read about losses that occurred for people who are later term in their pregnancies, and to then start to wonder if your experience “counts” or not.
I know. These feelings can be really difficult to say out loud. It’s easier to say “happy for them, sad for me,” or “all loss is valid,” without delving into the more complex, winding, complex emotions and thoughts underneath.
But please hear me when I say that grief always, always includes complicated feelings. It’s one of the most complex emotions that we experience as humans. Someone else's pain can matter to you-AND their story is just too damn hard to keep reading. You can desperately want people to speak openly about loss and then randomly find yourself hyperventilating when they do, and needing to step away. You can feel connected to a community and need some distance from it, too.
You are allowed to decide what you have the capacity to take in. This month might mean that you’ll need to lovingly mute certain accounts, skip posts, put your phone away, or choose not to participate in awareness events this year. It’s all allowed. You do not owe anyone a public expression of your grief to prove that your baby mattered or that your experience was real.
The Grief Doesn't End When October Does
There is also something especially painful about a month dedicated to pregnancy and infant loss ending, because the grief around this kind of trauma can feel devastatingly, hauntingly unending. So when November arrives, the silence can feel extra lonely after all of the hoopla. The world returns to its usual conversations. People move on (to the holidays, dammit. Of course all of the feelings of this month have to be stirred up right before launching into that time of year)
Meanwhile, you are still carrying the loss. (For some reason I always hear Taylor Swift’s lyric “Help, I’m still at the restaurant” when I think about this.)
You’re left with all of the emotions, and the continual march of reminders and triggers. The due dates, the random awful memories, the thoughts about which milestones would be happening now-they all persist.
And if you are experiencing infertility, the grief may be tied to something that is still unfolding. Another unsuccessful cycle, another negative pregnancy test, another month of waiting. Another emptying of an account to pay for a cycle that ended with tears on the bathroom floor. There may be no clear ending to the uncertainty-and so often, no obvious point at which the people around you recognize that you are still at the restaurant, still struggling.
Sometimes the hardest part is how ordinary the grief can become. It settles into the background of your life, lurking around the corners, showing up in small moments that other people might never notice. You can have a genuinely good day and still feel the absence of the person you hoped would be there. You can laugh with your friends, enjoy your work, and heave with sobs when you go home to the empty room that you had dreamed would be the nursery.
There is no deadline for this kind of grief. You do not have to be in the same place you were six months ago, and you do not have to be farther along than you are. Healing can be undulating and inconsistent, especially when your loss is connected to hopes, milestones, and a future you had already begun imagining. And just because other people seem like they moved on faster after their losses, in no way means that you have to or should.
If October brings your grief closer to the surface, I see you. And if, come November, you feel incredibly lonely after a month of relentless public acknowledgment, I see you too. You deserve support in the months when everyone is talking about pregnancy and infant loss, and in the months when almost nobody is.
When Your Grief Feels Invisible to the People Around You
Something that I think needs far more acknowledgement? Pregnancy loss and infertility can be isolating in ways that are hard to explain to someone who has not experienced them.
The feeling of deeply loving a baby you never got to bring home can be something that is very difficult to grasp for those who haven’t experienced this type of loss. And sometimes, it can be further complicated because maybe you hadn’t even gotten the chance to tell your loved ones that you were pregnant. They find out that you were pregnant and then you miscarried all in the same day, and don’t always seem to know how to show up.
They may try to reassure you that everything happens for a reason, remind you that you can try again, or encourage you to focus on what you do have. The hard part is that they may love you deeply, and due to that, they struggle to sit with the reality that there is no easy fix for what you are going through.
I think that this can often result in people simply not sharing-keeping feelings to themselves because they dont want to make anyone uncomfortable. It becomes all to easy to say that you are doing okay, because explaining the truth feels like too much work. Or it feels altogether too vulnerable, because people don’t respond with enough empathy or love, and so your share feels like it got you no where. All of this just compounds the loneliness.
Finding Support for Miscarriage, Infertility, and Pregnancy Loss
Please know that if Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month is bringing up more than you expected, you do not have to navigate it alone. Therapy can offer space to work through the grief, anxiety, anger, guilt, and uncertainty that can accompany miscarriage, infertility, and pregnancy or infant loss. It can also be a place to explore the ways these experiences affect your relationships, your sense of self, your body, and your ability to imagine the future.
To the person who wants to talk about your loss without worrying that you are making someone else uncomfortable- to the one who is struggling with pregnancy announcements or baby showers and feel ashamed of how hard they have become- or who is trying to conceive again and feel caught between wanting to protect yourself and wanting to believe that things could work out- please know that all of this- all of you- is welcome in my office (and with any therapist who has a perinatal focus.)
After having been through infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss, and shouldering it mostly alone, I now look back and wish I had sought out very specialized therapy. I look back on how hauntingly lonely and sad I felt in those years, and wish I had found that person who could sit with me in the shadows, and in every dark, shameful thought.
I now believe very deeply that finding someone who is educated in this upside-down world of infertility and loss, and who is comfortable talking about reproductive grief can make a world of difference for those walking through it. You deserve support that recognizes the emotional weight of these experiences, including the parts that are difficult to put into words.
If October Is Hard for You This Year
So if you are finding Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month brutal this year, I hope you can offer yourself some gentleness.
You can read the stories that help you feel less alone and step away from the ones that hurt too much. You can honor your baby privately. You can talk about your experience, or not. You can feel grateful for the awareness in one moment, and so unbelievable angry that you have a reason to need it in the next.
And you can be grateful for so much about the life you have and grieve the life you imagined.
Please know that when October is over, you are still allowed to need support. Your grief does not have to be visible to other people to be real, and your loss does not have to be recent to matter. So if you are looking for support with miscarriage, infertility, or pregnancy and infant loss, remember that therapy can be a place to bring your entire human-ness, including the feelings that seem to contradict one another and the grief that is still persistent after people have stopped checking in.
Your loss matters. You grief matters. Your pain is real, and you are allowed to feel all of it.
If you are looking for pregnancy loss or infertility therapy on the Main Line or in the Philadelphia area, please do not hesitate to reach out to Wildflower Therapy (in Philadelphia and Devon on the Main Line) to learn more about working with one of our perinatal mental health specialists.
Reach out here to schedule a free consultation call today.