I must agree with Barbara that attitudes toward pg loss are
improving.  When I had a miscarriage over 40 years ago, I was
devastated.  However, at my 6 week checkup the doc reprimanded me
for still being weepy about it and said, "Come on, now.  You should
be over it by now."!!!!  Many years later, I took training for
perinatal loss counseling and I remember the instructor commenting
on a study of attitudes about loss.  It turns out that the general
population allowed a person more time to adjust to the loss of a pet
than to the loss of even a spouse, let alone a child.
Programs like RTS and others do help parents cope with perinatal
loss.  However, even within such support groups there can be an
attitude of "my loss was harder than yours" which the group
facilitator has to watch out for.  For example, some might say that
early pregnancy loss should be easier than neonatal loss because you
never really got to know the baby.  Those "on the other side" would
argue that not knowing anything about the baby makes it even
harder.  (For example, I still find it a challenge to talk about the
baby I lost because of the lack of a neutral pronoun in our
language.  I don't feel I can talk about "him" or "her" because it
was too early to know that, but saying "it" just seems all wrong.  I
did eventually give the baby a non-gender name in my mind which
helped resolve that issue.)  There needs to be a recognition that
each loss is unique and each person experiences their loss uniquely.

So, the point it that while we may still have a ways to go,
attitudes are definitely improving.

Winnie

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