How to Cope With Losing Your Baby

Step 1: 

Cry a few times.

Step 2:

Throw a lovely memorial service.

Step 3: 

Spend a month or two journaling and staring introspectively at the ocean.

Step 4: 

Take an exotic vacation with your husband to learn to have fun again.

Step 5:

Have "another baby." You know. The one everyone keeps reminding you that you can have.

Step 6: 

If previous steps were ineffective, take antidepressants.

You're right. I'm so NOT serious about this.

But it seems like this is how society often expects us to mourn our babies. Just take a few months off, get your grief "over with" in a month or so, then get back to normal. Please? Because I can't deal with an emotional, crying mess. 

But the real process of grief isn't linear. To paraphrase The Doctor, it's more like a big ball of wibbly, wobbly, withering, dithering...stuff. You take three steps back for every two steps forward. You hit every stage of grief (from denial to acceptance) in random order, like a living, crying pinball machine.

If I were to outline a true-to-life process of mourning, it would look more like this:

Step 1:

Realize that you will always be sad.

Step 2:

Cry. A lot.

Step 3: 

Take that exotic vacation. Climb a waterfall. Have a lot of fun.

Step 4:

Realize your life is a swirling, black vortex of grief that consumes everything. Wish for death.

Step 5: 

Go back to work. Cry in the parking lot before you even get out of your car.

Step 6:

Wonder how you will ever love another baby as much as the one you lost.

Step 7:

Write some poems. Start a blog. Write letters to and from your baby. Let your emotions out. Heal a little more.

Step 8:

Hate every aspect of your life and scream out at the God you think did this to you. 

Step 9: 

Think of your baby and, for the first time, smile instead of cry.

Step 10: 

Attend an outing that you have been looking forward to and, for the first time, cry instead of smile. Have a lot of fun.

Step 11: 

Visit your baby's grave with flowers and a toy. Or spread your baby's ashes somewhere beautiful. Or keep your baby's ashes with you at all times. Whatever helps.

Step 12: 

Put pictures of your baby (or ultrasounds or pictures of the positive pregnancy test or things that remind you of your baby) all over the house.

Step 13:

Get irrationally angry at someone who says something stupid.

Step 14:

Become irrationally understanding towards someone who says something stupid.

Step 15:

Backslide into unfathomable, all-consuming grief. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

Step 16:

Decide you are actually excited about having another baby, because you need a reason to be happy.

Step 17:

Realize that it is possible to be happy again.

Step 18:

Repeat steps 1-18.

If I've learned one thing about grief, it's that you can't look for a way out of it. Or over it. You simply have to get through it. And—like swimming into the ocean—you'll get knocked back a few times (maybe almost die) before you get through the breakers. But you won't ever find yourself on shore again.

I know it's difficult to go through something like this for the first time. You wonder if you're doing it "right" or if you will ever be past it. In short: yes and no. 

Yes: you are doing it right. As long as you are moving (even if it's backward) you're okay. Immobility is the enemy (that's how you drown). 

No: you will never be done. You might make it past the breakers and find a boat out there in the ocean of grief, but that boat doesn't go to any harbor. This loss will always be something that happened to you, so it will always be something that made you who you are.

The important thing is to make sure it turns you into something better. The only thing worse than losing a child is letting it turn you into someone you hate. Suffering has an extraordinary ability to make us remarkable (whether for good or bad). Take advantage of it.

And don't let anyone tell you how you "should" be grieving.