October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. On October 15, people around the world light candles at 7 pm local time in a wave of remembrance that moves across time zones. If you are reading this because you have experienced a loss, or because you love someone who has, this piece is for you.
There is no gentle way to open a conversation about this. The loss of a pregnancy, a baby at birth, or an infant is one of the most profound experiences a person can live through, and one of the most misunderstood from the outside. The grief has shape and weight that other people, however well-meaning, often cannot see.
What We Mean by Pregnancy and Infant Loss
The term covers a wider range of experiences than many people realize. Miscarriage refers to loss before 20 weeks of pregnancy. Stillbirth refers to loss at or after 20 weeks, including loss at or near full term. Infant loss refers to the death of a baby after birth, whether in the first hours, the first weeks, or later in infancy.
Each experience is distinct, and each person's grief is shaped by their circumstances, timing, and relationships. There is no hierarchy of loss. A loss at six weeks is not somehow less significant than a loss at thirty weeks. What was lost in both cases was not only a pregnancy or a baby, but a future, an identity, a set of hopes, and a part of your own life you had already begun to build around them.
Why This Grief Is Often Invisible
People grieving a pregnancy or infant loss often describe feeling alone in a specific way. The baby existed, but may not have existed to other people. There may be no funeral, no public ritual, no obituary. The pregnancy may not have been widely announced. Coworkers may not know. Even close family may not fully understand.
The result is a grief that lives inside you while the world around you keeps moving. People may say well-meaning things that land hard: at least it was early, you can try again, everything happens for a reason. These statements, offered to comfort, often make the loss feel smaller and the griever feel more alone.
Partners may grieve differently, which can create distance within a relationship that was already carrying something heavy. One person may want to talk, the other may want to not talk. One may want to try again soon, the other may need time. Neither is wrong, but the difference can be isolating for both.
The Timeline Is Not What People Expect
There is a common belief, sometimes spoken and often implied, that grief after pregnancy or infant loss should follow a predictable arc: hard at first, then gradually easier, then mostly resolved after some number of months. This belief is not accurate, and it causes a great deal of unnecessary shame in people whose grief does not cooperate with that timeline.
What is more common: the first weeks are an exhausting haze of logistics and raw grief. The second phase, often weeks or months in, is harder than people expect, because the initial support fades while the grief does not. Anniversaries, due dates, first words, first birthdays that would have been, holidays, pregnancy announcements from friends, all of these can bring the loss back with full force years later.
If your grief is still present a year or two after your loss, that does not mean something is wrong with you. It means you loved someone, and the grief is honoring that love in the way grief does. The question is not whether the grief should still be there. The question is whether you have the support you need to carry it.
What Support Can Look Like
There is no single right way to be supported through pregnancy or infant loss. For some people, support looks like close friends and family who are willing to say the baby's name, mention the loss on anniversaries, and sit with the grief without trying to fix it. For others, support looks like connecting with other parents who have experienced loss through in-person groups or online communities. For many people, support includes therapy.
Therapy for pregnancy and infant loss is not about moving on. It is about having a space where you can fully acknowledge the loss, where you don't have to protect anyone else from its depth, and where you can process what you are carrying at your own pace. A therapist with experience in perinatal mental health will not try to rush you through the stages. They will meet you where you are and work with you from there.
For some people, particularly those whose loss involved medical trauma, sudden circumstances, or specific memories that keep returning in intrusive ways, approaches like EMDR can help the brain process the traumatic elements of the loss alongside the grief itself. This does not erase the loss or the love attached to it. It helps the nervous system settle so you can carry the grief without being overtaken by it.
When to Reach Out
You do not need to be in crisis to seek support. In fact, reaching out earlier often means less suffering overall. Some signs that therapy may be worth considering:
The grief is affecting your ability to work, care for yourself, or engage with people you love in the ways you want to.
You are experiencing intrusive memories or images that return without warning.
You are isolating from people who could support you, or feel too tired or too exposed to connect.
A subsequent pregnancy is bringing up anxiety or old grief in ways that are hard to manage alone.
You feel stuck in a particular feeling or memory, unable to move through it.
Your relationship with your partner is struggling under the weight of the loss or the different ways you are each grieving.
If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, please reach out immediately. You can call or text 988 in the United States to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. For perinatal-specific support, Postpartum Support International offers a free helpline at 1-800-944-4773, with trained support in English and Spanish
You Are Allowed to Still Grieve
If your loss was recent, please take care of yourself in whatever small ways you can. If your loss was years ago and you still think of what might have been, you are not stuck. You are a person who loved someone who is not here, and that love does not have an expiration date.
At Hearth, we offer therapy for pregnancy and infant loss, including specialized perinatal mental health support and EMDR therapy for traumatic loss. If you are considering support, the next step does not have to be committing to therapy. It can be a free consultation to see whether we might be a good fit. There is no pressure, and there is no judgment about where you are or how long it has been.
About the Author
Marina Cline, MA, LCMHC-S, PMH-C, EMDR-CIT
Marina Cline is a licensed clinical mental health counselor, trauma therapist, and the owner of Hearth Counseling & Consulting in Raleigh, North Carolina. She specializes in working with women and mothers, particularly around pregnancy, postpartum, and the emotional challenges that come with those transitions. Marina is passionate about helping women feel supported in seasons where they are often expected to hold everything together. Whether it's anxiety, burnout, or the invisible load of motherhood, her work focuses on creating space for women to be seen, heard, and cared for, too.
