Friends baby born sleeping

[wellywelly]

A dear friend of mine had a stillborn baby girl at 36 weeks 4 weeks ago. We are a very tight group of friends and trying to do our very best to support her. I know people advise to talk about the baby, use her name and not shy away from mentioning her but we're struggling to find ways to do that. How do we bring her name up in conversation when we have no experiences to talk about? Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated.

How lovely of you to want to be so supportive. I'm sure your friends will be really grateful to have such a lovely group of friends.

There is no right or standard answer. Every parent is different in the way they want to process their grief, and they may change numerous times through ththe grieving process.
Be guided by them. If they want to talk about their baby, listen. If they want to want to discuss her, ask questions about her and what she looked like or whatever else they want to talk about.

But there may be days or even months when they don't want to discuss it, and you need to give them space and possibly talk about absolutely anything else.

SANDS has good advice for friends and family which might be worth looking at.

I have two friends who've lost babies like this. Neither live close so I make dude to Facebook message them on the anniversary and on Mothering Sunday. For now, have you asked to see pictures? Assuming they want to share them you could gave a look and admire their beautiful baby. Does she look like parents or siblings? You could ask how they picked the name? What meaning did it have?

Just be there for her, often, and let her talk. Listen, ask questions, maybe, listen, and mop tears. Just simply spending time with her, maybe in groups, maybe just one at a time. Don't let her isolate herself. Sometimes she'll want to talk about her dd, sometimes she won't. You don't necessarily need to mention the baby until she does; take your cues from her.
She'll be a mess, mentally and physically for a while, so don't tire her out, but call often. Lots of people are sympathetic and supportive for the first couple of weeks; the real friends are there for the long haul.

Thank you all, I'll check out the SANDS website. They brought their little girl home for a few days so we all got to meet and hold her. I'll definitely ask how they picked her name. She's a mental health professional so has done an amazing job so far of letting us all in but she's also an incredibly selfless and positive person so I'd hate her to feel she needs to put on a brave face for those around her. We all just want to keep the conversation current and are just finding it a bit hard to think of ways to do that the more time passes. I suppose following her lead as suggested is the way to go.