I went through the loss of a premature daughter (30 weeks) 28 years ago. Though it's a different situation, you are correct in that most people are speechless and say really stupid things.
You need to go through the normal grieving process, despite the fact many people don't see this as the same type of loss. Please, please contact either your ob's office or the hospital's social work/counseling department for local pregnancy loss support groups. I am not aware of any on line support for this; it will really help to talk to others who understand. If this seems like too much, a few counseling sessions with someone who specializes in loss/grief or women's issues may help.
We went to Compassionate Friends, which is a support group for people who have lost children. There were some people there who were still grieving over the deaths of children who had died many years before; when we saw that, it sort of snapped us out of the initial grief, because we did not want to be like the people we saw, 20 years later. One thing that helped me was just talking about my daughter, as though she was a real, living being, with friends. After I was able to talk about my hopes and dreams for her, I was able to "bury" them. I got pregnant again fairly quickly (5 months) and I was fine. People told me that I would "confuse" the babies and project my feelings about my daughter onto my son, but it never happened.
When I look at him as an adult, it only makes me smile to think about what kind of woman she would have become (she looked very much like him).



Reply With Quote