Understanding stillbirth grief and finding compassionate professional support to help you process this devastating loss and move toward healing with time.
Important Context: Each year, there are about 24,000 stillborn babies in the United States, making stillbirth more than 10 times as prevalent as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
Stillbirth Definition: The loss of a baby at or after 20 weeks of pregnancy, either before or during delivery.
Many families find themselves devastated by a stillbirth event. The grief experienced by individuals impacted by a stillbirth is unique and challenging. You might find yourself wondering if you will ever be able to recover after stillbirth.
Long-term feelings of sadness related to your stillbirth are natural. However, with time and the right mental health support, you can find peace and joy in your ongoing life with your surviving family.
The intense devastation of grief after loss doesn't have to last forever.
At Nugent Family Counseling Center, we understand the toll that stillbirths take on expectant mothers and families.
Let our experienced counseling and psychiatry care team help you and your loved ones get through this exceptionally difficult time.
We're here to support you from our locations in:
San Jose, CA
Los Gatos, CA
Reno, NV
Any loss of a loved one leaves us experiencing grief, a complex emotion that's different for everyone and never follows a set timeline or neat, one-way progression toward healing.
What Makes Stillbirth Grief Unique:
However, stillbirth occurs in the later weeks of pregnancy, when you're likely to have been looking forward to meeting and loving your baby. The loss of a child just before birth and the beginning of life can be difficult to accept, more so in some ways than the passing of an elder.
Important: Recovering from any loss can be a triggering event, and cause you to need additional mental health support.
Stillbirth can leave you experiencing:
Shock
Depression
Despair
Anger
Guilt
Shifting emotions
Your emotions after the loss may be:
• Complex
• Shifting
• Unstable
• Contradictory
You may notice that:
You should know that all of your emotions after stillbirth are normal.
And you also deserve mental health care and support during this painful and challenging time.
All types of grief can benefit from mental health counseling, but it's especially important with traumatic losses like stillbirth events to seek care and support from an experienced counselor or therapist.
You may be able to ease your recovery by getting the care you need immediately after your traumatic loss.
Your provider at Nugent Family Counseling Center assists you in processing the complex emotions you may be experiencing:
Grief & Loss
Abandonment
Despair
Shock
We Also Support:
Mental health counseling support can also help in the aftermath of a miscarriage or SIDS-related child loss.
Finding Hope for the Future
While your life will never be the same again after the loss of your stillborn baby, you can still find hope for the future and prevent prolonged grief from negatively harming you and your loved ones.
Reach out to the mental health care experts at Nugent Family Counseling Center for compassionate, individualized grief and mourning support after a stillbirth or miscarriage.
Get the compassionate support you need during this devastating time
The loss of your stillborn baby is devastating, and your grief is valid—no matter how complex or shifting your emotions may be. Our compassionate counselors understand the unique challenges of stillbirth grief and provide individualized support to help you process this traumatic loss. While life will never be the same, professional support can help you find peace, prevent prolonged grief from harming your well-being, and eventually discover hope for the future. We also support families dealing with miscarriage and SIDS-related loss.