ABSTRACT
The death of a baby during pregnancy, at birth, or shortly after, is a deeply tragic loss affecting the well-being of the family. This chapter shares the inner experiences and personal meanings of several mothers who kept journals through the period of their most intense grief. In addition to their journals, the women and their partners further described their journeys through grief during in-depth interviews. Through content analysis of the journals and interviews, a number of themes emerged as characteristic of the journey through grief when a baby dies. The themes are: grief reactions, including emotional aspects, physical sensations, and behavioral expressions; changes in the self-image of the griever; challenges to belief systems; the personhood of the baby and their place in the family; desire for a subsequent pregnancy, reaching a degree of “recovery”; and the personal meaning of the loss experience.
