The Importance of Grieving After Miscarriage, Failed IVF Cycles and Other Infertility Losses

Feel your feelings in their entirety rather than avoiding them or pushing them away.  During this time you need to cry and rage if you feel like it.  You need to listen to sad songs and bawl your eyes out if that feels right.  You need to do whatever it takes to move through your pain instead of trying to skirt around it.  You have to let the ugly feelings wash over you like waves – and, like the tide, they may come in and out for a while.  Will it suck?  Yes.  Will it hurt?  Like holy hell.  Will you survive?   Absolutely.  But I promise you that feeling your feelings all the way through is by far the fastest way to the other side,…and the other side is much more fun.

Take excellent care of yourself during the mourning period.  You need lots of self care during the grieving process.  Curl up on the couch with a great sappy movie, get a massage or a pedicure, nap for two hours, read a fun book, eat an entire pan of brownies…do whatever you can to be really, really good to yourself.  It’s up to you to take care of you.

Avoid difficult baby situations until you feel stronger.  When you’ve suffered a recent loss, the last thing you should do is attend a baby shower or go to dinner with a friend who just announced her third natural pregnancy.  It’s okay to put your emotional needs first and simply say no to these kinds of invitations until you’re wounds have healed a bit.  Your friends will understand and your mind will thank you for it by healing even faster.

So, how do you know when you’re done grieving?  Well, there is no mathematical formula for how long you need to mourn a loss.  Grief is an extremely personal thing.  Some women might move through the grief of a failed IVF attempt in a few hours while a miscarriage may take them a few weeks.  Some women might rage over a failed IUI for a day or so and grieve for two weeks when a third IVF attempt comes up negative.

Although there is no formula for figuring out how long you need to grieve, there are some signs that indicate you’re coming out of it.  When you find yourself daring to dream about a baby again.  When you begin to feel hopeful and excited about trying to conceive.  When the smiles and laughs come more easily and more frequently.  All of these are signs that you’re moving out of the darkness of Square One and getting ready to take another step in your journey towards parenthood.

Tagged as: Dealing with Pregnancy Loss, failed IVF, grief and infertility, In Vitro Fertilization / IVF, Infertility, infertility loss, Miscarriage