by dave shafer/via flickr
October 15 is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, a day of remembrance for those who have suffered a miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss. Ronald Reagan proclaimed October a month for recognizing this kind of loss in 1998, and a resolution to declare October 15 a day of remembrance was passed by the United States House of Representatives on September 28, 2006, following an initiative by three mothers who had suffered losses.
The day serves to promote greater awareness, remembrance, and support of the estimated one in four individuals and families whose lives are altered by the death of their children during pregnancy, at birth, and in infancy.
‘A lonely grief.’
In a way, I wish I didn’t know this. I myself suffered an unexpected, second-trimester loss two years ago. The grief, excruciating in the days and months that followed, has subsided, but never fully disappears. It is a “lonely” grief. I found that miscarriage and infant loss is a topic a lot of people tend to shy away from—they don’t always know what to say or sometimes say something unintentionally hurtful (it was God’s will, you can go on to have more children).
This can be very isolating. Only through talking about it, with close friends and family, a grief counselor, and the surprising number of women in my life who admitted to having suffered a similar fate, did I eventually begin to heal.
Stories that stay with you.
At AJN, we’ve published many articles about perinatal loss. We also receive many narrative writing pieces on this topic for our Reflections column and our blog, and poems for our Art of Nursing column, perhaps because such stories stay with the authors, many of whom are nurses. They aren’t easy or light reads—many describe painful, traumatic losses. But as a writer myself, I know that the sad stories need to be told.
And as readers, not only do these stories stand out to us as a unique effort to make sense of the pain of loss, for both nurses and patients, but it helps us be more empathetic when we can put ourselves in the shoes of someone who has suffered or grieved. They also reflect enormous strength and resilience.
Nurses were there.
At the heart of many of these stories are nurses. Sometimes they are told from the perspective of the patient whose nurse made all the difference during the difficult loss. At other times it’s from the perspective of nurses, who write about their own emotions in treating patients who are in such a vulnerable, difficult place, or who have suffered a loss themselves. Often there to provide care during these most difficult of times, nurses can be an unbelievable source of comfort, care, and support.
Below is a selection of such pieces, from the journal and this blog, in honor of the mothers who’ve lost a pregnancy or baby, and of the nurses who cared for them.
Rising Hope: Helping Parents with Life After Loss
Fetal Demise: Caring for the Patients
Patient Decisions: When Your Just Not Up to Making the Call
In my first nurse’s aide job I got floated to OB and found that one of my patients was a girl I’d gone to high school with. I said, “It’s so good to see you! Did you have a girl or a boy?” Then I noticed how very sad her eyes were. This was her second baby, she said, the first having died of a very rare genetic problem. They had told her and her husband this was a one in a bazillion occurrence, so they conceived again… and this baby, too, was being studied but would be dead soon. She was not only grieving both of her little girls, but also all the future babies she would never have. I never saw her again. It’s been almost 50 years and this still makes me want to cry.