Pregnancy After Losing a Child

I don’t know that there’s a perfect word to sum up how it feels to go through a pregnancy after losing a child. I don’t think there is one perfect word, because in my experience there are many words to describe this journey. After losing our second child at three months old I know that drastically different emotions can coexist.

When our son was diagnosed with HLHS I knew we were in for the fight of our lives, I just didn’t realize how short that fight would be. Deciding we were ready to get pregnant again was one of the easiest yet most difficult decisions to make.

The cruel thing about losing a child is that time does not stand still. Life still goes on – and you have to decide if it will go on with or without you. For us, we chose to keep moving forward for us and for our daughter. Knowing when you will be ready to get pregnant again after losing a child is a very personal decision with a lot of different factors to consider.

The hardest emotion that I wrestled with was guilt. Even though I knew we weren’t moving on (we always say we are moving forward or simply living), I couldn’t help but feel like I was. The road to getting pregnant again was emotionally rough. There were more tears than I expected. I wanted just to yell out that I was sorry to our son. I felt like I was betraying him. Would he be disappointed? Would he think we are forgetting about him? Would he be upset seeing us happy?

For someone who has never lost a child, I know how silly those questions can sound. I know all the answers to those questions are, “Absolutely not”, but as a mom, it is a hard emotion for me to let go. At the time that I’m writing this post, I am three short weeks away from having our rainbow baby and I still have moments of guilt.

Related Posts

Pregnancy with a CHD Diagnosis

That guilt can snowball into even more guilt. Feeling guilty that you are thinking so much about the child you lost that it can seem like you’re not excited about this pregnancy. I now realize though that that is what pregnancy is like after losing a child. A constant state of longing for the child you lost and being excited that you can pour all that love into this new little life.

Excitement might not be instantaneous though. Our excitement was delayed because of fear.

The first hurdle was miscarrying. I took countless tests that time around because I just knew I was pregnant. The positive lines became darker for a few days, then began to fade. I knew after going to the bathroom and seeing blood what was happening, and the multiple blood tests confirmed it. We were extremely fortunate to get pregnant again the very next month.

Even the next round of definite positive pregnancy tests wasn’t exciting. I couldn’t go to the bathroom for a few months without being afraid of seeing blood, but my biggest fear was another blindside. After the shock of our son’s CHD diagnosis during my second pregnancy, that was all we could think of with this pregnancy. 

It was extremely difficult for me to think of the future with this pregnancy before that 20-week anatomy scan. I wouldn’t even allow myself to think beyond that point, because I was afraid to get my hopes up. We knew HLHS was not hereditary, but all I could think was if it happened once it could happen again. We had bad luck that time, what’s stopping us from having bad luck this time? 

Luckily, we did get the all-clear. For any parents who have lost their child to some medical diagnosis, a clean bill of health for their next baby is the biggest blessing and an even bigger sense of relief. I finally felt like I could breathe. I could finally think beyond just the anatomy scan. I wasn’t afraid to envision what our life would look like once this little one arrived.

That didn’t mean that the second half of pregnancy was easy. Again, I’m three short weeks away from having our next child while writing this post and the tears still fall often. The guilt comes when I pray that this baby has a few features that resemble their big brother. Fear still lingers in the back of our minds that there could still be something that wasn’t caught.

The closer we get though, the more excited I feel myself getting at the thought of holding a little newborn on my chest. I had a lifetime of love to give to our son, and now I get to give all of that and then some to this baby – which is exactly what our son would want me to do. To love this baby like we loved him.

So is there one word to sum up the experience of pregnancy after losing a child? No, because pain and joy are not mutually exclusive when you have lost a child. Your situation is not black and white. Instead, you now live in a world with a lot of gray.