Anniversary grief

Grief about the loss of your pregnancy can take time to ease, and everybody can experience this differently. There is not timeline for how your grief should look, or how long it takes for you to process. While you may start to feel that your grief is easing over time, there are times where your grief may be triggered, and you may feel a wave of stronger grief again. These times can include anniversaries of the loss of your baby. You may find that that the anniversary of the day you ended the pregnancy, the date that your baby was due, dates that you found out you were pregnant, days like Mother’s or Father’s Day, or others you may not have expected. While it can feel like your grief is renewed, and this can be a difficult time, there are some ways you can prepare for anniversaries, and ways that you can support yourself during this time to make it easier.

Remember that the time around the anniversary may not feel as you expect it to. That’s ok.

You may like to make plans to spend time with people who care about you, or to organise an event (big or small) to remember your baby.

Make sure that you have support in place to access if you feel overwhelmed. This may be friends and family, or your GP, counsellor or Psychologist.

You may like to prepare meals ahead of time, so that if you don’t have a lot of energy, you can easily make sure that you’re eating well and looking after yourself.

Importantly, try not to set expectations about how you should be feeling on the anniversary. You may feel that your grief gets worse for a little while, or you may feel numb, angry, or nothing at all. You may cry, or feel agitated, or experience physical symptoms of grief like disrupted sleep, tiredness or lack of appetite. Allow yourself to feel whatever feels natural for you. This is the best way to allow the process to occur.

Spend time with family and friends who support you in your grief, and who allow you to feel the loss freely. If you have support in the form of a support group or church, you may like to be around these people on the anniversary.

You might like to establish rituals as ways of remembering your baby that you can do every year. You could spend time with family and close friends who would like to remember your baby with you, or spend time on your own or with your partner if that is what you need. Rituals may be something that you have seen someone else doing, or it may be something that is special to you. You may find it helpful to tend a memorial garden, or to release balloons. You may like to light a candle for your little one, or visit the cemetery or location of ashes if there is one. You may not want to establish a ritual at all, and you may find that distracting yourself with something different altogether can ease your grief. There are no rules about how you should remember your baby, or how you should approach the anniversary.

Ask for help when you feel you need it: whether it be from friends or family, your GP, or a counsellor or Psychologist. It’s ok to reach out when you are feeling overwhelmed.

While the anniversary can stir up feelings of grief, it often begins to improve again over time. If you find that your feelings are not improving over time, and are interfering with your day to day life, or if you feel like you are finding day to day life a struggle as time goes on, it is important to seek help from your GP or a psychologist.