How to protect your relationship after losing your baby

[Missbcl]

Hi there

Sadly our little baby boy was taken from us last week by TFMR. We are still very much in confusion, overwhelm and grief.

I have a wonderful man who has been by my side at every moment, he took 2 weeks off work, we cried together, grieved together, shared our love, our worries and our sadness and it was painful, but it seemed to make us stronger.

This week, he has gone back to work, he has his own business and he’s under a lot of pressure in his business in general, plus at the moment he’s financially supporting me. He does so much for everyone around him and he’s such an incredible, loving man.

We have unfortunately started having challenges this week as he’s now onto the “I need to work and focus to move forward and switch off” and I’m still very much dealing with my pregnancy hormones, body changes, grief and deep sadness.

I’ve got so much sadness in my heart and body, I am still sobbing daily and can’t seem to focus on anything and he’s struggling with it, as he wants to fix me but he can’t. Plus he thinks we now need to think positive and move forward but I just can’t yet.

I’m so worried it’s going to affect our beautiful relationship. I am having therapy and trying to not put it all on him, but obviously when we live together he sees my moods going up and down and the smallest thing will set me off. And I think it’s making him feel uneasy that he doesn’t know how I will be from moment to moment.

How do we navigate this with love and kindness? I want to be authentic but I do also see his point of view in we need to keep living life and move forward. But I don’t know where to put all the pain.

I’m so sorry you’re going through this. DH and I lost twin girls in April 2023.

What helped us was understanding we grieved very differently. DH cried often and slept all the time, usually with their little hospital hats. I didn’t want to see or touch their things and often didn’t want to talk about it. I cried a lot in the shower and then the littlest things would make me snap and yell. We both agreed at the beginning to just try and understand that neither of us had ever experienced this kind of grief before and that there was no right or wrong way to grieve. That we had to give each other grace however it looked that day - if I was snappy and sullen, or couldn’t talk about them, or if DH was weepy. We just tried to promise we’d be there for one another in grief and we’d get through. I tried to not take my moods out on him. It was hard.

After a few months it got a bit less raw. We talk about them often in a wistful way, but less pain. We went on to had a baby girl 10 months ago and are due another one in 2 months. We got through it though it looked dicey for a while.

Counseling separately did help, too. As did taking a holiday together about a month after where we just chose not to talk about them at all for the week and reconnect.