How to keep your relationship strong after miscarriage

Relationships are tricky at the best of times, but are especially hard after losing a baby. I’ve been getting some questions lately about how we navigated losing three babies without our relationship falling apart completely.

It’s a great question and some days I’m not 100% sure. All I know is that it was bloody hard at times.

This post is an honest share of all the things we did ‘wrong’ and some suggestions for keeping a relationships strong after losing a baby. I am by no means a relationship expert, this is just our experience.

3 tips to keep your relationship strong after miscarriage

1. Find ways to talk about your loss separately and together

I think it’s really important that you both have someone to talk to outside of the relationship. Whether this is a counsellor, or just a close friend or family member –  because there will be some things that you need to say and share that your partner will not be the right person to hear.

At the same time, I also think it’s really important that you find ways to share how you’re feeling and grieving with each other.  If you spend all of your time ‘dealing with your own stuff’ and not sharing any of it with your partner, both of you can start to feel like you’re grieving alone, or worse, the only one feeling anything.

2. Stay connected as partners not just as parents / parents to be

You might be tempted to jump straight back into trying to conceive, which will give you a shared focus together, but you also run the risk of it becoming your only focus.

Whether you decide to take a break from trying to conceive or not, I think it’s really important to make sure you stay connected as a couple, outside of your desire to have a baby.  Keep planning holidays together.  Nurture your shared interests. Keep dating.  Don’t put it all off just because you’re so focused on when and if you might be pregnant again.

3. Don’t expect their grief to look the same as yours

I definitely got caught in this trap.  His grief didn’t look like mine at all. I cried and fell apart when I needed. I talked and talked and talked about the unfairness of it all. I poured my heart out in writing.  I went looking for answers in all the places… the internet, counselling, body work, testing, naturopathy, etc, etc.

But from the outside his grief was barely visible. At our lowest points this caused tension because it felt like I was grieving alone.  When the truth was he was just trying to hold it all together for the boys, for me, for us. It wasn’t until we started talking openly about it all that I realised that just because his grief didn’t look like mine, didn’t mean that he wasn’t feeling it just as much as me.

Like I said, I definitely don’t consider myself a relationship expert. These three points are just lessons that stood out to me as things I wish I’d known.

What advice would you give parents who are experiencing their own loss?