Grief is Grief
Have you ever stopped to consider how much pregnancy, labor and delivery, and the postpartum course can be a grief process? I am going to assume you have not as all of these things are portrayed to be some of the most joyous, momentous times of your life. But I would venture to guess that is not true for all of you or at least not true in every instance. But I would also venture to guess that is a very hard thing to admit to others, let alone yourself. Let me tell you where I am coming from…
Grief is defined as “deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone’s death.” Or another definition is “a natural response to loss.” This explains itself of course for someone that suffers a miscarriage, has an intrauterine fetal demise or a neonatal loss. But how does this fit in other situations? Anyone that has worked with me knows that I feel the world paints a very unrealistic view of pregnancy and postpartum. I can’t say this universally as there are some who love both of those phases. But the world does like to portray the newborn phase as a glamorous time where everything is “unicorns and rainbows.”
We tend to hold many expectations for what we think life is going to look like when we bring our sweet newborn baby home. And then we have a baby that cries a lot, no matter what we do. We can not get our baby to latch and there is constant screaming. We have fed, changed, burped, rocked our baby and still the screaming! We feel like we have failed,we feel like we were not cut out to be a mom, we feel like this is nothing like we expected. Dare I say, we even hate this phase? And that is ok if the answer is yes. We may feel in complete denial about what is happening,we likely will be angry, we will try and bargain, feel some depressed moods and eventually come to acceptance. Those are the five stages of grief. You see we are grieving the loss of what we had expected, what we had built up in our minds. These stages are not linear. You can go in any order and go back to a stage you thought you had finished with.
This same thing can be said for pregnancy and those expectations we hold for that “glowing time.” And also for Labor and Delivery when we have the most thought out birthing experience and it does not meet our expectations. We go through a period of grief when they don’t match up. All of this to say please remember to give yourself grace when you are feeling all these emotions. When someone loses a loved one, we give them time to grieve. The same should happen in this situation. Be patient and be kind to yourself.
