How to Talk to Your Baby About Miscarriages
Despite how common miscarriage is, those who experience it often find it a painfully isolated experience. This often happens before the mom-to-be or couple has told friends, family, or even other children about it.
“What a combination of grief and anguish the silence and the ghostly nature of it,” says Julius Bueno, a therapist in London and mother, whose new book, The Brink of Genesis: Speaking of Miscarriage , is due out on July 2nd.
This “silent and ghostly nature” can make it difficult for parents who have a miscarriage to talk about it with their children, who may not even have known they were pregnant. And since every miscarriage is unique to every person, there is no right formula for how to talk to your children about it.
Overall, however, Bueno encourages open, constant and age-appropriate dialogue between parents and their children.
Finding matching words
How you tell your children about miscarriages will depend on both their age and emotional maturity. For young children, you probably want to limit yourself to physical details and medical terminology and keep your explanations simple. You can use an analogy, for example, when you plant a seed, it doesn’t always turn into a complete plant.
“Maybe you shouldn’t sit down with a two-year-old and go into details,” says Bueno. “But even when children do not have a language, they can understand and grasp something.”
For older children, you can give a more detailed explanation and be ready to answer any of their questions. Make sure they understand that they don’t need to worry about your health, that things like this just happen sometimes, and no one really knows why. If you are a religious family, this can affect the way you talk to your children about miscarriages.
Since kids have a way of blaming themselves when they’re not sure who is to blame, make sure they understand that it didn’t happen because of what they did. Explain what may seem sad to you – because it is – but that is only because you miss your child.
If they didn’t know about pregnancy
Couples often keep pregnancy news to themselves or to a small circle of close family and friends during the first weeks of pregnancy. They may not want to share this with many people, including their children, until it becomes safer later in pregnancy.
But even if you did not tell your children about pregnancy to miscarriage, chances are good that they caught the fact that something is happening. Whether you decide to tell them now or not is a personal decision; but in any case, you must admit your sadness in some way.
“Don’t underestimate our child’s ability to figure out that something is wrong, even if we think it’s not,” says Bueno. “When we are small creatures, we kind of catch the atmosphere of what happens to mom and dad.”
Bueno says he considers miscarriages to be part of family history and that parents should not be afraid to speak openly with their children about what happened, even after the fact. “For me, I absolutely could not hide it, because this is such a part of my story and what makes me ‘myself,’” she says.
They can grieve too
Your child may want to comfort you and may also mourn the loss of a potential sibling. Remember to check your child periodically to see how he is feeling and if he needs to talk about it.
Bueno’s eldest son was almost 7 years old before her second son was born; Meanwhile, she had three miscarriages that he knew about.
“We couldn’t fix it,” she says. “But we gave him the opportunity to show it, and I will contact him … and I will conduct these conversations with him.”
Babies born after miscarriage can also have mixed feelings about how they were born, which is important to acknowledge. Both Bueno’s sons were conceived after miscarriages, and she says: “This is a paradox, because both of them seemed to be thinking out loud:“ Would we be here if they lived? “This is a mystery to which there is no answer.”
Consider a family ritual
Grief is an ongoing individual process that can never end with a real “closure.” But participating in a family event as a way to say goodbye can be beneficial for both parents and children. You could plant a tree together or a memorial garden for example.
“For many grieving couples, creating a ritual or, if there is a body to be buried, putting on gravestones ends the relationship you had with your unborn,” says Bueno. “This is a symbolic gesture, a transition between what was and what is now.”
Have a conversation
Bueno says it shouldn’t be a one-off conversation, but rather an element of family history that remains an open topic that can be discussed from time to time, as needed, or as it arises.
“You know your child better than anyone else,” says Bueno. “It’s about setting up and giving them the opportunity to speak, checking with them how they are feeling, taking their cues and keeping the conversation open.”
As a result, we will be able to raise a generation that is more open and compassionate about the topic of pregnancy loss as they enter adulthood.