Mothering Grief: Moving Forward After Pregnancy Loss

Motherhood fundamentally rearranges your plans, heart and perspective—even your sense of self. Losing a pregnancy, whether at six weeks or six months, can be just as life-altering.

After an often-unexplained loss, parents are thrust into a new reality with little acknowledgment and without the baby they imagined snuggling and softly singing to sleep. Loved ones might not yet know about the pregnancy, especially in the first 12 weeks, before miscarriage risk plummets in the second trimester. Women are expected to put on a brave face and move on quickly and are told to simply try again. This long-ingrained culture of silence and dismissal can leave those who struggle feeling deeply alone.

“When you aren’t seen in your grief and people don’t recognize its magnitude, the isolation can be debilitating,” said Carrie Kohler, a Christian chaplain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and its Samuel Oschin Cancer Center.

Between 25% and 30% of parents who experience perinatal loss develop “complicated grief,” a severe condition in which grief remains overwhelming beyond the first year. A lack of resolution or closure, such as the chance to say goodbye, makes you more vulnerable to this condition and, in turn, other mental health complications. Up to one quarter of parents who experience pregnancy loss also experience anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress.

The conversation is slowly opening up, as more women take to social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok earlier in pregnancy and after a miscarriage, stillbirth, termination or unsuccessful round of IVF. In marking the loss and reflecting on what their experience meant to them, women are claiming space to fully grieve.

“The grief is real. The loss is real. And so is the person who endured it.”

Be Gentle With Yourself

“The maternal instinct doesn’t disappear when pregnancy ends with loss. That care your body was preparing to give needs a place to go,” Kohler said, “and one of those places is back toward yourself.”

Looking after yourself with the same love and empathy you would give a child can help you carry grief through its immediate aftermath and your healing process. Don’t feel guilty for sleeping or napping more than usual, or if you have to cancel a commitment. Rest is restorative.

“Your body went through something. Your heart did, as well,” Kohler said.

She encourages taking time off work, if needed. California requires most employers to extend leave for reproductive loss, including miscarriage and failed assisted reproduction.

Taking a digital break, too—at least from prenatal accounts and groups—may help you avoid comparisons and painful social media reminders of friends’ and peers’ parenting milestones.

Feel All Your Feelings—Without the Weight of Expectations

When you are preparing to welcome a child, you are led by your hopes for them. You may wonder which relative they will take after, pick out nursery curtains, and choose names and the tiniest onesies.

Perinatal grief is a complex tangle of past, present and future. You may mourn the bond you’ve already grown, your baby, your newly formed identity as a mother and all the possibilities for your family. If you are co-parenting, that grief can include your partner’s emotional experience.

Miscarriages—the leading complication of American pregnancies—frequently happen without warning. Roughly half of the 1 million annual cases have no known cause. Similarly, as many as 60% of stillbirths (the death of a fetus at 20 gestational weeks or later) remain a mystery. A 2025 study published in JAMA found they are more common than previously believed, affecting more than 1 in 150 births and nearly 24,000 families.

You might never know exactly why or how the pregnancy ended. Parents must grapple with the “what-ifs,” and—in the absence of answers—they often blame themselves.

Shame may be amplified for those who have already lost a pregnancy—especially the roughly 2% of parents who have repeatedly miscarried—or endured countless fertility treatments and heartache to become a mother.

You are not a failure because of this common, unpredictable and often random medical event, experts emphasize.

Kohler suggests checking in with yourself regularly and intentionally naming your feelings as they come. If your calendar is overwhelming, try scheduling five minutes to grieve at the same time every day.

“Shutting down might feel protective in the short term,” she said, “but it can lead to numbness or anxiety that seems to come from nowhere. The best way through our feelings is to feel them.”

Each Person and Pregnancy Is Different

In the TV tragicomedy, Dead to Me, Judy (played by Linda Cardellini) joins a grief support group, claiming her fiancé had died. The show later reveals a familiar infertility montage of Judy’s years of excitedly building a home for a new arrival and returning home alone. The lie was easier than disclosing perinatal loss, which many worry isn’t enough to grieve or won’t be accepted.

Judging yourself for the whirlwind of emotions you have—or don't have—can be counterproductive, experts caution.

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“Some women are incredibly angry, and rightfully so. They feel they’ve been cheated of their entire view of motherhood as beautiful and peaceful,” explained Eynav Accortt, PhD, director of Cedars-Sinai’s Reproductive Psychology Program.

Others could be terrified to make decisions, including whether to continue trying for a child.

“They don’t trust themselves anymore,” Accortt said.

People in your life likely won’t understand what you’re going through, even if they’ve experienced the same situation, but you can advocate for yourself.

Cedars-Sinai’s mental health and spiritual care guides encourage setting boundaries with peers and sometimes well-meaning loved ones who belittle the emotional weight of pregnancy loss, such as by offering invalidating platitudes.

Like parenting, there is no timeline for grief, and having children or being able to have children later doesn’t erase this pregnancy. You also aren’t obligated to accept that you “just weren’t meant to have this child,” no matter what your religious background is.

“The person who’s experiencing the loss gets to make the rules,” Kohler stressed. “You dictate how significant this loss is to you.”

Spiritual Traditions Can Provide a Foundation

There are as many ways to understand and navigate prenatal life and death as there are religions, and humans have been grappling with this specific form of loss in temples, halls, churches, mosques and synagogues for millennia. These beliefs—such as whether you “met” your baby or will be reunited with them, or that they will live on in some capacity—often shape your grief.

For example, Accortt counseled a couple who endured a stillbirth at 38 weeks after a grueling assisted-reproduction journey and completely healthy pregnancy.

“They were grieving, upset and angry, of course,” she said. “But they had a lot of hope for the one healthy embryo left. They felt the soul of their baby meant for them had not come into this world yet and was instead waiting for a healthy body.”

You might also find solace in your traditional mourning rituals, including those not intended or usually done for prenatal or postpartum death. These include:

• Catholic last rites, performed by a priest
• Building an altar
• Lighting a candle in their memory
• Sending on their energy using crystals or drums
• Prayer
• The Jewish practice of sitting shiva with loved ones
• Funerals
• Other memorials, such as butterfly and balloon releases, or planting a tree or garden

“Honoring our grief is honoring the love that was already there,” Kohler said.

These tangible practices signal to us that the loss matters, which “in itself is healing,” Kohler suggested. And they enable you to safely lean on your community by inviting your loved ones to join you in ways you choose.

Express Yourself

Finding a release can steady your nervous system, according to experts, and help you process the trauma.

Your outlet might be journaling, writing a letter to your baby, composing poetry, painting, singing, practicing yoga or dancing in your living room—any creative or physical activity that allows the often-intense experience to flow through you.

Confide in a trusted friend or clergy leader. You can also find people who relate by joining a support group, such as Cedars-Sinai’s “Ending a Wanted Pregnancy” group. This support group cares for women who had to terminate a pregnancy for medical reasons, which brings its own unique set of emotions, especially shame.

If you can’t keep up with basic tasks, such as personal hygiene, or are frozen in fear months afterward, seek professional mental health support. A therapist can help you integrate your traumatic experience with your whole self intact and make a plan for the future.

“The grief is real. The loss is real. And so is the person who endured it,” Kohler encouraged. “What remains is you, and what you might discover is the depth of your strength, your tenderness, your compassion, your purpose and your values.”