Pregnancy loss can be devastating under any circumstances. But when pregnancy comes after months or years of infertility treatment, the loss can carry additional layers of grief.
You may not only be grieving the pregnancy. You may be grieving everything it took to get there.
The appointments. The medications. The procedures. The waiting. The financial and emotional investment. The moment you finally allowed yourself to believe that treatment had worked.
After spending so much time trying to become pregnant, losing the pregnancy can feel particularly difficult to make sense of.
When Pregnancy Finally Felt Like an Ending
During infertility treatment, pregnancy can begin to represent more than becoming a parent.
It may also represent an ending to treatment.
You may have imagined finally leaving the fertility clinic behind. No more monitoring appointments. No more retrievals or transfers. No more waiting for phone calls about embryos or test results.
For a brief period, you may have felt that you had finally made it to the other side.
Pregnancy loss can abruptly return you to a world you thought you were leaving.
And alongside grieving your baby or the pregnancy you had begun to imagine, you may find yourself confronting questions you weren't prepared to revisit.
Do we try again?
Can I go through another transfer?
What if this happens again?
Grieving While Facing What Comes Next
One of the particularly difficult parts of pregnancy loss after infertility is that grief and decision-making can happen at the same time.
There may be embryos remaining. Your doctor may discuss another transfer. You may need additional testing. Or you may find yourself wondering whether you can emotionally or physically continue treatment.
Other people may focus on what comes next.
But you may still be trying to understand what just happened.
Therapy can provide a place where you don't have to immediately turn your grief into another treatment plan.
There can be room for sadness, anger, jealousy, fear, relief, numbness, or whatever else appears—even when those feelings seem contradictory.
You may eventually decide to try again.
You may decide that you need time.
You may find that the experience changes what you want from family building altogether.
There does not have to be an immediate answer.
Sometimes grief needs space before the question of what comes next can be answered.
Infertility & IVF Therapy in St. Louis, Missouri and Illinois
Infertility and fertility treatment can bring anxiety, grief, uncertainty, relationship strain, and decisions you never expected to face. Therapy can provide space to understand what you're experiencing without feeling pressure to immediately make it better.
Joanna Haydon, JD, LCSW provides infertility and IVF therapy in St. Louis and online in Chicago and throughout Missouri and Illinois. She works with adults navigating infertility, IVF and IUI, pregnancy loss, failed embryo transfers, fertility-related anxiety and grief, and decisions about family building.
Learn more about Infertility, IVF & Pregnancy Loss Therapy or request a consultation to learn more about working together.