Grieving for the Pregnancy or the Baby That Never Was: Unsung Lullabies Chapter 8

This chapter starts off Part III of the book which is entitled, "Grieving and Coping." As such, this starts the beginning of the process of how to actually transform infertility from crisis management to coping.

The authors start out this chapter with the concept of "little deaths"- i.e., that every month brings its own grief at the loss of another chance to conceive. This has been the most difficult aspect of infertility for me. When someone dies, there is a point of reference for the grieving process to begin. Although loss is heart wrenching and the pain never goes away entirely, the day-to-day coping gets a little easier. The tightness of pain's vice grip does slowly loosen with time. But with infertility, the grieving process is renewed every cycle and there is no endpoint from which to move away from the pain.

The authors recommend release of emotions as a way to cope with the perpetual repeat of hurt. "Acknowledging the multiple losses from month to month will not eliminate your pain, but releasing the pent-up feelings of anger, frustration, and sadness will provide some relief." I guess, my question to this proposed answer is release to whom? Absent therapy, who is the appropriate person to receive the release of the pent-up emotion? I don't think that any friends or family, and certainly not spouses, are the appropriate recipient of such release.

The authors next tackle the typical stages of grief- and make the very important point that when dealing with infertility, the stages are not a linear progression and one can easily fall from the acceptance stage back to denial or anger in just a single encounter with something like a friend's oops pregnancy. The authors suggest creating a mourning ritual that would address the little deaths since it goes unrecognized by society at large. This idea of providing a self-validation for the grief that has no societally-approved forms of expression is a great one, im my opinion.

The final section of this chapter addresses "getting stuck." When one gets stuck and overwhelmed by the feelings associated with infertility, the authors point to therapy and support groups as an outlet. Ultimately, I liked the following suggestions provided by the authors:

Be true to yourself. Don't try to feel a certain way because someone else thinks you should.

Even if you get frustrated at times, be patient with yourself. . . . The tenderness you would expect to have for your much-wanted child needs to be transferred to your partner-and to yourself as well.

Above all, remember there is no right or wrong way to feel, no right or wrong way to manage all you have been through and continue to experience. It takes time to grieve. . . . You can't erase what you have been through but you can and will get through this, and this chapter of your reproductive story, albeit rewritten, will come to a close.

To continue reading about this chapter, go to Fertility Challenged in Florida.