How do you navigate the fear, manage the stress and relearn trust, in order to let joy back in? What support systems should you put in place for both you and your partner? How do you deal with the new normal of being happy and sad at the same time? Melissa Krawecki is back to share her wisdom and knowledge. Check it out!
Listen directly through our website player, or however you usually listen to podcasts.
What we talked about:
- A brief recounting of Melissa’s story
- The importance of normalizing grief
- Setting up support systems to prepare for pregnancy after loss
- The importance of self care
- Recognizing your limitations as the pregnancy progresses
- Managing your stress
- Designating a people manager (especially during the birth and postpartum)
- Honoring the time to get yourself ready (aka. ‘wait a year’)
- Suggestions on how to support someone going through this experience
- Setting milestones and allowing the joy to filter in
- Being sad and happy at the same time (aka. ‘brutiful’)
- Creating rituals to recognize and include the baby that died
- Bonding with this baby
- Helping your living child relate to their deceased sibling
- The immense fear, and relearning trust
- Bringing your new baby home
- Returning to a sense of normalcy and feeling bad for feeling good
- Making sure your partner is also supported
Resources and links:
- PALS: Pregnancy After Loss Support, choosing hope over fear while nurturing grief
- Preeclampsia Foundation and Preeclampsia Foundation Canada
- Emdr.com, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing website
- Avastree.com, Melissa’s blog
- Elgin Community Pregnancy, Infant, and Child Loss Peer Support Group
- 23 Things I Wish Someone Told Me About Pregnancy After a Miscarriage, from Pregnant Chicken
- Having A Baby After Infant Loss: The Complicated Mix of Grief & Joy, from Postpartum Progress
- Pregnancy After Loss articles, from Still Standing Magazine
About Melissa Krawecki
Melissa is an author, advocate, wife and mother of two children, one living and one deceased. She has used grief to propel her work as a blogger (AvasTree.com) and author of the published book “In the Shade of Ava’s Tree” published with Praeclarus Press in 2015. She works alongside the bereaved in honoring grief as well as teaching birth workers about loss and birth trauma. A PTSD survivor, EMDR advocate and experienced in pregnancy after loss she has created the “Navigating Pregnancy after Loss” and “Supporting the Bereaved” workshops, among others, all tailored toward these experiences. Melissa is a course creator and professor of Thanatology at Fanshawe College, Melissa facilitates several grief groups and donates her time in her community as co-creator of the Elgin Community Pregnancy, Infant, and Child Loss Peer Support Group. Melissa lives in St. Thomas Ontario with her husband and daughter, remembering Ava always.
Learn more at AvasTree.com.
Title music: “Vibe Ace” by Kevin MacLeod, from the Free Music Archive / CC BY (edited for length).
Sponsorship music: “Air Hockey Saloon” by Chris Zabriskie, from the Free Music Archive / CC BY (edited for length).
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