I'm new to needing this support group, but sadly I meet the entrance requirements. It hasn't been long (only weeks) since my baby girl died while I was in labour. She was full term - perfect, but gone. I have a questions I expect are motivated out of grief and my mind's feeble attempts to escape the pain. How did you arrive at the decision to try again? Did anyone else struggle with thoughts about having another child early on after your loss? I know the answer is different for everyone, but how long did you wait? Did you choose not to try again? I'm lost and yet grappling with these thoughts and feelig guilty for doing so. I just want my beautiful Ainsley Rose in my arms...

I am so sorry that Ainsley Rose isn't in your arms! I am heartbroken for you. The first few weeks/months out are so incredibly tough. I remember feeling like you do. Wanting Ruby and wanting another baby felt like two completely incompatible things. Still, almost 14 months out, I struggle with conflicting feelings about whether it is wrong to want the baby I am currently carrying when I know he wouldn't exist if she hadn't died. The guilt is overwhelming even this far out sometimes. But at only a few weeks out, I remember how that guilt seemed to strangle me. Please know that you are not betraying your sweet girl by thinking about trying again. Just as you would not be betraying or dishonoring her if you decide not to try again. You are simply trying to live in a world that no longer makes sense. I am sorry that you are here. I am glad you found this site.

As for trying again: For me, I knew right away that I wanted to try again. We found out that Ruby was probably going to die a few weeks before she actually passed, so we had some time to process this while I was still pregnant with her. We had planned to have more than 1 child from the beginning. So when we found out that she was dying, some of our earliest questions were about the possibility of a recurrent problem. After we lost her, I wanted Ruby with me so badly. Truly, my chest and arms ached from being empty. But I knew that I couldn't have Ruby. She was lost forever. The only way to fill my empty aching arms was to try again and hope to have her sibling. We waited until we got the go-ahead from the high risk OBGYN and then we started trying immediately. (We lost Ruby July 26 and started trying at the end of December).

As you said, the answer is different for everyone. We all have different stories of loss and we all cope with things differently. I lost Ruby at 22 weeks with warning. You lost sweet Ainsley Rose at delivery. These experiences are similar and yet vastly different.

I hope that you find a way to be at peace with whatever decision you make. There is no right or wrong. And nothing you choose will be a betrayal to Ainsley Rose. She will always be your daughter. She will always be loved. Another baby wouldn't be a replacement. It would be a sibling. And choosing not to have another baby is just as valid an option.

Hello, I am so very sorry you lost your precious daughter. I lost mine at full term, during delivery November 2014. I know I want more children, but it takes me a while to get pregnant (I've been pregnant twice) and I was not ready to try right away after she died. I was too sad, I needed a break from being pregnant and trying. I knew that trying would be hard, since each month that I wasn't pregnant would be an additional loss. I started to feel ready about 6 months after she died. I've been trying since then, with no success. However, I know for me it would have been to much to try immediately. Hope this helps.

So sorry again.

Thank you both for your responses. I keep hearing the "there is no right or wrong answer" and it is good to know that, and yet it feels very much like there is a right or wrong. Ainsley died betwen 5 and 7pm three weeks ago today and was stillborn only hours later, so this is all fresh, and yet there are times that I want us to try again very soon and there is another part of me that thinks that is wrong and a further part of me that has logically sorted out the possible risk levels that could come from different answers provided by the autoay (including no answer) and I can convince myself that the risk of this happening again is so high we would never end up bringing a healthy child home, so why try?
Our particular circumstances with Ainsley seem to be incredibly rare. Statistically it shouldn't happen again, but that's not how this works. It happened once, the risk of it happening again CANNOT be lower, and possibly may be higher, or at least we are aware of how high they would be.
I'm too practical a person to simply jump in and take a risk without careful consideration, and yet I'm fighting te mental/emotional gut reaction of wanting to have a child that we can invest our lives in.
Thank you again for your stories.

We lost Matthew only 10 weeks ago, and I had a C-section, so not only am I not mentally ready to try again, but it physically is not advised. But I can relate to all of your feelings. You are not alone. What happened to my son is also statistically rare, but I can also convince myself I will never bring a healthy child home, so why try. I am so defeated right now. I am so sorry for your loss.

From a slightly different vantage point as I lost my daughter to SIDS so my physical readiness was not an issue. That being said, I have been right where you are with statistics and risk. I find myself constantly questioning how I can risk losing a second child when the risk for siblings is equal if not higher. Like you wrote, the rational part of me and the emotional parts of me have been at war with each other. Some days my heart said I should never try again because the risk was too great, and my head pointed to statistics. Other days the rational part of me points out that I cannot protect any children from harm, and my heart says love anyway. I felt/still feel so much at once. I have no advice to offer specifically because this is so personal. And truly, how you are feeling is right and whatever choice you make will be because of what you and your family need. However, I took such comfort from reading about how other people decided. It made me feel less "other," so I'll share my process below.
I am currently expecting a child conceived just months after my daughter's death. Perhaps I am different from others who would say that at some point you will just know because I never knew with certainty that another loss was a risk I could tolerate. Instead, I reached a point where I realized that this grief would not kill me though I wished it would, and to live I needed hope. Trying for a sibling wasn't so much an act of faith as a necessary part of accepting that my life would go on despite everything. Choosing to try again was like saying that the world is not all bad which honestly took a little while to get there.
I am grateful for the time between our loss and subsequent pregnancy because it let me get my mental health in order. I have a therapist I trust who has been invaluable in processing my continued internal conflict. She's my safety net during this pregnancy. Also, I am well enough to care for myself again which I was not in those first few months. I cannot imagine being pregnant without having that self care piece together. I have enough guilt about being a grieving mother without having to also worry about my health impacting our new baby.
You loved your Ainsley Rose, and I am so sorry that she is not in your arms today. Whatever you decide, it will not affect how you feel about her or how much you miss her. She is always your daughter.

I'm so sorry Matthews mom, I am right there with you, feeling so defeated. It is so constant and thick that it crushes more and more eachday i find. Thank you for your response.

Christina, congratulations on your pregnancy and I pray it ends with you getting the experience all of us anticipated. Sleepless nights with a bundle of fussing and crying joy. I struggle with feelig like she was real. She is real in my heart but I feel like people around me think otherwise. That I was really just the butt of a cruel joke and everyone is laughing at me. I don't know why this is what I feel, but it is.

The self help piece. That makes sense. I know from day one I have done my level best to be up with an alarm in the morning, dressed, keep my house in order and all the things tha go with normal day to day life. It is excrutiating to do, but I didn't know what else to do. Life marches on despite my life seeming to have been stopped in it's tracks. I couldn't bear trying to pick up the pieces after having let everything go. I think it would break me even further, but I know some parts of me have stopped like that. I so want them to be under control again. I'm usually such an organized person, but I'm a disaster since this happened. Thank you, you make a good point. I wish I could see when such healing would take place for me.

My son died on his due date and was stillborn two days later. That was Nov 2011. I waited about 7 or 8 months and was pretty resentful of the wait the entire time. I got pregnant with my daughter, who is now two, and I remember calling it my "alleged pregnancy," so I guess it wasn't until about week 14-15 with her that I started to let it be its own thing and let it lead to a different outcome in my head. It helped me to think of them as spirit friends with each other, and I read a lot about Aphex Twin at the time, who was born after the full term stillbirth of his older brother.

The emotional experience changes over time. It will always be sad, but won't stay so intense and all-consuming. That took about 8 months for me. I tracked every day he was gone, and then I noticed at the 9 month anniversary, I wasn't as shattered-into-a million-pieces as I expected to be (or as I had been at say 2 or 3 months for example). There's no predicting how you'll feel in a few months from now, but nothing in your life will ever be as bad as the past few weeks you've just endured.

Nothing anyone says can make this better, so I won't try. But you will feel good again even though it seems so out-of-sight right now. Do what you need to to weather this storm: stay away from A-holes, protect yourself emotionally, and eventually you won't be so raw that it hurts just to function. Then revisit these questions. I suspect the feelings of guilt will have dissipated.

We don't get to pick which kids we get to bring home from the hospital, but we love them all.

Thank you for your words Meg. Very much. I truly don't know how I would survive the anxiety of another pregnancy, especially after losing her at term after a "perfect" pregnancy. It makes me feel that no matter what testing is done I won't be able to believe the answers anymore and what she died of can't be tested for. It leaves us helpless.

Each day is a struggle right now (as is evidenced by me again being awake from 4am and it's nearly 2am now). I truly hope that there is an easing in how much I fell the never-ending pain and hurt as I don't know how to continue at this rate. Although I don't have a choice I suppose.

Did anyone else also live with a deep sense of shame from having had a still birth and feeling like you are the odd one out in a room full of new moms overjoyed with their newborns because you are with "empty arms". I feel my shoulders collapse under that weighty realization.

Ainsley Rose is a beautiful name, my little one also has Rose as a middle name. I had a perfect pregnancy and lost her at 39 weeks due to a chord accident. I got a lot more monitoring for my subsequent pregnancy, but the doctors could never eliminate the risk of it happening again. I told my husband that we will try again immediately after losing her and felt guilty and worried about what others would think. At the end it didn't matter, because I couldn't get pregnant for two years. By then I had already survived the worst part (the first few months and the first anniversary) and the stress of the pregnancy was not as bad as what many mamas here experience. However, I would have given anything to have a more stressful pregnancy and a baby sooner, I am sure.
Almost four year out, my first daughter is still with me all the time, I am a different person, but the pain is gone. I know everyone is different and sometimes my husband tells me that when he looks at our very alive and amazing second girl, she reminds him of how we were cheated from raising both. But I don't feel that way, they are not as connected in my mind.
All of this, just to let you know that you will start to feel better, and you will get there whether you get pregnant quickly or decide to wait. Wishing you all the best, much healing and peace.

Yes, I too had a picture perfect pregnancy and was sent home from the hospital without answers. About 7 months later, I did find out I have a blood-clotting disorder that can complicate the placenta in pregnancy, but that information would have been much more helpful when I was relentlessly obsessing over what could have gone wrong. By the time I got that diagnosis, I had let go of what had happened to me as "just one of those things." But the blood thinners I was giving for it as well as the additional monitoring during my pregnancy with my daughter helped me feel more assured it wouldn't happen again.

And to your question of feeling all alone in a room full of "normal" mothers, YES, I felt like a complete freak show. I went on this mission to find someone with a story like mine, but every time I learned of someone else's loss, there would be some significant difference (a cord injury, a car accident, a heart-shaped uterus, a loss months before full term). I just couldn't find anyone with a story like mine of a baby mysteriously dying on his due date with no explanation. I remember feeling like such a freak. I remember thinking I was like Luna in Harry Potter. The only one who could see the Thestrals besides harry was this total weirdo.

I don't feel that way so much anymore, but I will admit that I resent the other women in my family who I suspect had this same blood clotting disorder but without any complications to any pregnancies, and quite honestly never really appreciated being a mother and were quite terrible at it, and then here it was my turn and I knew i could parent better than any of them and my kid died?!?! wtf?

It will be 4 years next month and I ahve healed in many ways and have accepted my son's experience in many way, but I still carry that particular resentment very strongly.

Our daughter turns 3 at the end of February. We've started trying again, and I had a miscarriage in June and think I am having the beginning of a miscarriage this morning. If so, we'll try again at the first of the year and I think I will go get some acupuncture or something just so I can feel like I'm doing something proactive.

I know trying again isn't at the forefront of you mind and that you said you feel a tremendous amount of guilt when you think about it, which is all appropriate and fair to feel after what you have been through, so I am not going to try to sell you on trying again, but for me, throughout my experience, the intention to try again got me through a lot of dark times. It gave me a long term goal to keep my eye on through the struggle. My husband and his family and I all carry with us the knowledge that my kids have some siblings who are not here, but we still want to love whoever we are lucky enough to bring home while I am in my childbearing years (I am 36 now). I hope very deeply to give my daughter one or two siblings. She'd be such a good big sister.

In the spring of 2012, when I was where you are now, it would have been really hard to think about any of this stuff, so I'm sorry if I derailed your thread to be about something that is just not where you are at right now. As a result of how shockingly sudden my loss was, it was hard for me to think/plan more than a couple weeks ahead. Sometimes it still is. It's like a PTSD residual reaction for me. But I hope hearing another woman's perspective is helpful for you and doesn't just emotionally shut you down. I want to be supportive because I know your day-to-day experiences are impossibly hard right now. Everything you are feeling is totally valid.