Loss...Part 1

This is a very difficult topic, both for me personally, as well as for many couples out there, and especially my wife.  I would love to be able to say that our journey to build our family was without experiencing the feelings and emotions associated with loss, but unfortunately I would be lying.  I would also be lying if I told you I felt qualified to discuss this particular topic.  Nevertheless, having personally experienced loss with my wife, I have some thoughts and perceptions that I would like to share.  My hope is that somewhere in my ramblings another husband might glean some understanding about what his wife might be going through, or conversely, perhaps a woman might gain some insight into what her husband might be feeling.

This is directed towards my fellow males out there.  A loss very early on in pregnancy, regardless of how many weeks pregnant your wife is, be it four weeks, six weeks or more, you are still loosing a living being that is your baby.  This is not a religious, life starts at conception, argument.  The fact of the matter is that in a woman's heart, mind and soul, she knows that there is a child growing in her belly, and she is already formulating in her mind what life will be like with a baby, the dream that is a child has come true, even just days after finding out that she is pregnant.  In the event of a loss,  that dream has been violently disrupted, just a few moments prior your wife was on cloud nine, now she feels a void, like something is missing, like something has been unfairly or unjustly taken away.  She has lost something that was very real to her, she as lost her baby, and with that comes very deep feelings of grief, confusion and possibly even guilt.  This can be, for some males (me included), very difficult to comprehend, albeit understandably so, particularly with a loss that happens very early on in pregnancy.  While your wife is starting to feel changes in her body, she is making not only a mental connection, but a physical one as well to the new life growing inside her.  We as men are just observers at this point.  We do not experience the same emotional and physical connection that our wive's feel at this stage.  Those feelings of attachment typically come a bit later for us when we can see the changes in our wive's body, when we can see her belly has grown, feel the kicking and squirming, see the baby on the ultrasound.  If for only this reason, the emotions a husband and wife feel, are in my experience, very different during and after a loss.  And both husband and wife should accept that this is okay.  I think the key to helping each other navigate this difficult time is to understand the above reality.  With that understanding comes the compassion that will be necessary to make it through.

In my case, I remember feeling as though my role was to be the strong shoulder to cry on, the one that ensures that life moves on, and as such I did not take the time nor make the effort to share in the emotions my wife was feeling.  I thought that being the "voice of reason", being emotionally void, was the best way to help her. I was wrong. At the time, I did not understand or appreciate what I  wrote above, and as such we experienced not only the pain of the loss of our child, but also the loss of the emotional connection that a husband and wife share.  This was a difficult time, however we learned a lot about eachother, how we respond to difficult situations as well as what each of us needs to grieve. We got through it and I can say that we as a couple are stronger for it.