Donna Rothert - At a Loss: Finding Your Way After Miscarriage, Stillbirth, or Infant Death

A heartfelt and wide-ranging series of encouragements for dealing with grief.

Kirkus Reviews

If there was ever a book that could be your true friend when you most needed one, this is that kind of book. Open these pages and you will find comfort and relief.

Mira Ptacin, author of the award-winning memoir Poor Your Soul

At a Loss is an important modern guide to navigating life after the passing of your baby during pregnancy or infancy. Dr. Rothert offers wisdom and real-life suggestions, drawing from her personal experience as well as the countless hours she has spent counseling other parents who have endured this unimaginable tragedy.

Kiley Hanish, OTD, OTR/L; founder, Return to Zero: HOPE

This is a lovely and much-needed book. Donna Rothert takes an overwhelming experience and helps the reader process it a piece at a time. Her essays are little gems, thoughtful and practical, but also written with depth and humor.

Jeanne Menary, EdD, founder and leader of Beyond Choice Support Group

I highly recommend this book to men, and really to any family member or friend who also experienced the loss of an unborn or new baby in their life. As dads, we too need a guide to help us unlock our feelings. Take Donnas hand and allow her to walk with you through the darkest night.

Bruce Linton, PhD, founder of the Fathers Forum and author of Fatherhood: The Journey from Man to Dad

Fortunately for us, Donna Rothert is not at a loss for words. In At a Loss , she speaks not only from clinical experience but also from personal experience, including a variety of voices to help us navigate the complexity of perinatal loss. Hers is definitely a comforting voice. As Rothert herself puts it, Whoever and wherever you are, Im sorry for your loss. I wish you comfort and I wish you strength.

Monica Wesolowska, author of Holding Silvan: A Brief Life

At a Loss offers gentle guidance for anybody navigating the terribly tumultuous terrain of perinatal-related grief. Seemingly insurmountable sorrow is given a most sincere, respectful, and honoring reprieve throughout these pages. Readers will find solace in the soul-sourced wisdom as well a dedicated place to rest, connect, and recalibrate.

Meghan Lewis, PhD, founding executive director, LGBTQ Perinatal Wellness Center

To chronicle your own painful and revealing search for meaning after pregnancy loss and to make your story intimate with the solitary hearts of other bereaved parents requires courage, clarity, and faith. Donna Rothert possesses these qualities. At a Loss also speaks to professionals. Her insights and observations will be valuable to those looking to help and support bereaved parents. Donnas book is a treasure. I highly recommend it to bereaved parents and the professionals providing their care.

Molly A. Minnick, LMSW, co-author of A Time to Decide, a Time to Heal

At a Loss

Finding Your Way After Miscarriage, Stillbirth, or Infant Death

Donna Rothert, PhD

Open Air Books

Oakland, California

C opyright 2019 by Donna Rothert

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2019

ISBN 978-1-7334386-1-2

Open Air Books

Oakland, California

For Greta

Introduction

Grief is a house

where the chairs

have forgotten how to hold us

the mirrors how to reflect us

the walls how to contain us...

Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

E verything feels different .

How do people get through this?

I cant imagine life without our baby.

Losing a baby, either during pregnancy or after, is the passing of a dream and the end of a particular journey. It can feel like life has gone off the rails and now our pain and fear color everything. Its an upsetting yet fitting reaction to the disappearance of something or someone so meaningful and so deserving of our heart. Part of us has shattered, and we may fear that we will never be whole again.

Pregnancies, however they come to be, are wrapped up in intimacy, vulnerability, and emotion. They speak to a possible relationship with someone who wasnt there before. A pregnancy starts us on a path, and it can have a surprising and compelling momentum. Pregnancies change us physically, emotionally, and hormonally. They change our identity and role in our family. And we never know for sure where all those changes will take us.

Because a pregnancy is a direction for our future as well as a physical status, it sparks strong emotions. Its normal and expected to get attached, and this can happen very quickly as we learn due dates, sex, genetic details, and physical developments. Even if we feel fear, physical discomfort, or ambivalence, those feelings usually coexist with a sense of connection to the pregnancy and the new course that has been charted.

Expecting a baby is a powerful and multifaceted experience. So when something goes wrong, the effects on us are complicated and profound. Such a loss is private and physical, and at the same time public and relational. Because the loss can have many different associations for any of us individually or as a couple, its tricky for us to process. It can be challenging for others to know how to help us, and it can be hard for us to know how to help ourselves.

I know this because Ive been through it myself. My first perinatal loss was more than seventeen years ago. I was at twenty-two weeks gestation, and the loss was discovered during a routine exam. That evening I was sent to the hospital to have labor induced. After I delivered my daughter the next day, I had time to hold her and look at her. The cause of death was later found to be a blood clot in the umbilical cordsomething that doesnt happen often but does happen.

My second loss was six months later, at eight weeks gestationa miscarriage that required some extra time and a number of medical appointments to work through physically. The two experiences were both similar and different. They were devastating and surrealand ultimately, to my surprise, bearable.

Those losses have taken me to some challenging and unanticipated places as a woman, mom, and psychotherapist. My experience has carved out spaces within me that resonate when I hear the stories of those who have lost someone so smalland yet something so bigthat it brought them to their knees.

When I became a bereaved mother, I was also a psychologist, and my personal experience led me to specialize in working with those affected by pregnancy and infant loss. In the years since, working with women and couples who have known these types of losses, Ive been honored to hear the stories of so many people from a variety of backgrounds. These women and men continue to add to my understanding of both the differences between those of us who have lost a pregnancy or baby and, I think more importantly, the striking, recurrent similarities among us on our shared journeys. It has also made me passionate about giving voice to these experiences that are all too often invisible or minimized.