I’m very sorry for your loss. I know it’s hard, but sometimes things happen for a reason. As I told my son, our second baby knew that it wasn’t the right time. If your boyfriend wasn’t able to stand with you after losing a baby, he wouldn’t have been there for you to raise a baby, either. When things are difficult, that’s when you find who your true friends and loved ones are. The ones who stay with you and help you through the hard times are the ones worth keeping. The ones who leave at the first sign of trouble were never worth being around to begin with. Losing a baby just months ago you are still in an emotional whirlwind, dealing with sadness, grief, fear, loneliness, plus a lot of hormones. This is absolutely normal! There are two things that will make this harder for you:

1. When a woman has a baby, she goes through a lot of hormonal changes, including what’s sometimes called the “Baby Blues”. It’s common for a new mother to feel sadness, anger, and other emotions, often crying for no reason. Typically this gets better with time, and it is also helped by the good emotional and hormonal benefits of having an actual baby to hold and love. When you have a miscarriage or abortion or lose a baby shortly after birth, the hormones are the same. Your body can’t tell the difference. However, they are compounded, because you are grieving the loss, the death of someone you had grown to love, to think about as a real person with a future, even though you never met them.

2. You don’t have a good support group. I was lucky to have a great husband who showed so much love when we lost our child. He was a great friend and husband. Your boyfriend is not being a good friend and you feel lost in the world. You are having relationship trouble, a major stressor on its own, and all these factors combined, along with fear of separation and life on your own is multiplying everything.

I think you need to get away from this unhealthy relationship. Love yourself enough to leave him, and find a place for yourself in the world. You are special for who you are and you don’t need a man or anyone else to define you. It will not be easy, but you must do this, and be strong, to be able to move on with your life.

I’ve dealt with depression and sad times in my life a lot, and I’ve found that when a sad person helps other people, it takes away from the sadness and lets you focus on other things. Get involved in volunteering for something you care about… I wouldn’t suggest anything with children or babies until you’ve had some time to heal emotionally from your loss, but there are lots of opportunities with the elderly, animals, the environment, anything you can think of.

Another thing that helps is to do physically or mentally demanding work, like starting a garden, or like my grandmother, a quilt. These are long-term projects that take a long time, and they will give you something else to think about, and at the same time can stand as a memorial for your baby.

Whatever you decide to do, find someone reliable to depend on and talk to. Not this boyfriend, maybe a family member or a good friend. If you don’t have friends, find a support group. There are many women just like us who have lost babies. This is a connecting point and she will understand more than anyone else ever can. Start online if you have to.

My best wishes to you in finding the new life for yourself. The possibilities are endless. look at this as your chance to make a wonderful life.

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Always so sad to read the comments on this post, all the stories of loss. Sorry I have taken so long to respond. Gosh, pregnancy and losing a baby are so hard to deal with on their own. I was so lucky to have my wonderful husband for emotional and physical support. He was so strong for me and I love him much more for that. Having to deal with it alone would be so much harder.

I still think about the baby that could have been, how our lives would have been different. My son, an only child for now, brings it up often. He’s not overly sad about it, just says, ah, mom, if I’d had my brother or sister we would do this together, now. I still hope to give him that experience someday, but as he gets older (he’s 10 now) it seems like they would be too far apart in age to be close to each other. And yes, it does scare me still to think about getting pregnant and what if…

You mentioned having trouble being around your friends and babies and that’s totally normal. Anger, sadness, guilt, fear, it’s all to be expected. And 8 or 9 months after losing a baby, of course you will be feeling all these things intensely. That’s a significant anniversary, because your child would have been born about that time.

“So-called” pregnancy? No, what an insensitive man. I’m glad you decided not to speak to him again. An ectopic pregnancy and loss/miscarriage is just as much a valid pregnancy as any other. Your baby and all the emotions surrounding him or her were and are completely real. It is normal and in fact very healthy to mourn this baby.

I hope that time is helping you heal and that you are able to find a loving relationship that may or may not include children. I’ve been through counseling lately for an unrelated issue and i can tell you that it really is helpful. Sometimes you just need to talk to another human being who cares and will just say “it’s ok to be you.”

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Thank you so much for this post… I’m reading this two years after you wrote it. Its August 2010 and I lost my baby in December 2009. I have a way of pushing pain aside and moving on with life… with the loss of the baby, I went through a depressed stage for a few months after the surgery. I lost a tube too, I’m terrified of falling pregnant, I feel incomplete as a woman, I’m scared of having children in the future…I found out that I was pregnant and that it was ectopic and that I had to have emergency surgery all at the same time. I conceived during a one night stand – stupid, dont tell me… with someone I had known for about a year, but we were never an item, merely just acquintances. I made a mistake and paid dearly for it. He wasnt interested in my pregnancy, he didnt care where I was hospitalised, as far as he was concerned, I had an abortion, even though I tried to explain to him that an ectopic pregnancy was something very different. He didnt care, he didnt contribute financially towards my ordeal, fortunately I had good medical insurance that paid for everything. The emotional trauma of loosing a child has been intense… I am battling to get to terms with it completely. I think I have made progress, but the pain is still tender. As I’m writing to you write now, I was suppose to be giving birth this month, maybe even be a mother already by now… I have close friends who are pregnant and having successful pregnancies and I’m happy for them, but I also find myself being unable to be around them because I’m scared I’m going to burst into tears, this is a happy time for them and they dotn need me making them feel bad about such a happy time in their life… I’m so scared of loosing the one tube I have left, even though the gynae said I have healthy eggs and everything else on my left side… I’m an emotional wreck even though I do try to keep it all together.. I met a counsellor last week, and I”m thinking that maybe I should go for counselling, even though its been 8 months now.. The father of the child continued being unsupportive, telling me that he’s not interested in talking about my “so-called” pregnancy. I made a resolve to never talk to him again, so I saved his number as “dont answer”. He has tried to call me a few times over the past few months but I just cant bring myself to talk to him, the raw wounds would just open up and I”m not sure if I can contain my anger at that time, and also, would it not be pathetic to still be going on about it after 8 months??? I had the support of friends and some family that I told, but of course, once you out of danger, people forget and move on with their lives. Only, I’m still left with the pain…. Thank you for sharing your story and making me feel less like a looser for not being okay yet… I pray God will heal me, my body, my emotions, my spirit…

Thank You so much for sharing.

Regards,

Miss K

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As for the healing process, I would advise you to just take it slow, eat lots of iron- and other nutrient-rich foods to build up your strength, especially if you’ve had blood loss (iron-rich foods include molasses, eggs, oatmeal, spinach and other leafy greens, liver). It’s great that you have a supportive partner to help you out. Take advantage of that and don’t feel that you have to do much right away.

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