Pregnancy After Loss

By: Amy Lied

Pregnancy after loss is the second hardest thing I have ever experienced in my life, second only to losing my son, Asher.

Once you have lost a child, and you enter the loss community, the Pandora’s Box of various ways that a child can die in utero becomes open to you.  You are aware of not only losing a child the way you already lost one, but also the various ways that your bereaved friends have lost their children, stillbirth, incompetent cervix, placental abruption, CHDs, gene mutations, hypoxic injuries, etc. 

It’s really hard to put all that information aside and tell yourself it won’t happen to you, when it has already happened to you. 

You’ve already been that minority before. 

There is no longer any comfort in statistics.

You’ve lost that naivety.  You know that it can happen.

On the flip side, you KNOW that it can happen …

You force yourself to take the photos because you know that could be all you have.

You cherish every second that you are pregnant, that your child is alive because you know how precious it really is.

My motto throughout my journey of Pregnancy After Loss was simply “one day at a time”. 

It is hard not to spiral with the myriad of ways that you can lose your baby running through your mind on repeat.  As a way to ground myself in the present I repeated the mantra “Today I am pregnant.  Today I can feel my baby.  Today is a good day.”  I would sit and focus on their movements (I had twins in my PAL), reassuring me that in that moment they were alive. 

It is an emotional roller coaster, to say the least.

It is okay to be terrified, I was.

It is okay to be excited, I was.

It is okay to be guarded, I was.

It is okay to be hopeful, I was.

It is okay to feel guilty, I did.

It is okay to feel all the feelings. 

If life after loss has taught us anything, it’s that it is possible to feel two conflicting emotions at the same time. 

Pregnancy After loss only solidifies that fact.  

It is something to be cherished, but also something to just get through. 

However, you get through it is up to you but remember, you are never alone in it.

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About Amy Lied
Amy Lied is a wife and a mother. Her son, Asher, was inexplicably born still on February 19th, 2017. Before losing Asher, she suffered a miscarriage and struggled with unexplained infertility. After losing Asher and struggling to conceive again, she went back to treatment where she became pregnant with her twin daughters; Harper and Scarlett. She has documented her journey from the beginning of her infertility struggles on her blog, Doggie Bags Not Diaper Bags. She is also a co-founder of The Lucky Anchor Project, an online resource for loss families that houses an Etsy store whose profits are donated to loss family non-profit organizations. Sharing her journey has helped her cope and she hopes it also helps others who are walking on this road of life after loss.