Education and Child Matters

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Dealing With The Loss Of A Child Through Abortion

 

Under no means is an abortion an easy decision to take, an easy option to pick or easy to go through with. There are many reasons why an individual may have an abortion: 

  1. The females health is at risk
  2. It is best for the females mental health
  3. The pregnancy is the outcome of a crime such as rape
  4. The unborn child would have been born with a genetic, physical, or mental disability.
  5. Poverty
  6. The female is too young
  7. The female cannot cope with another child
  8. The female has a mental condition and does not understand her pregnancy

Although there are some women who could feel relieved once an abortion has taken place, there are many who are left upset, traumatised, in shock, with an overwhelming feeling of loss and in grief.

Whether or not the female believes the decision to have an abortion was correct, or for the best, there is a high chance she could be left grieving for the child. Some reasons could be:

  1. She may have bonded with the child while pregnant
  2. She may be sad the pregnancy came at the wrong time
  3. Hormonal changes in the body may affect her and make her feel more emotional.
  4. She may experience confusion because sometimes she will agree with the abortion and feel relief and then there will be times where she may start to regret it and feel sad. This is very normal.
  5. During the abortion the female may have been focused on the process and then recovery. After recovery, over a period of time the emotions involved could start finding their way to the surface. This sudden surge of emotion can be quite overwhelming and destabilising.

THE STAGES OF GRIEF EXPLAINED FOR THOSE WHO HAVE HAD AN ABORTION

In our write up ‘child loss through death’ we explain the 6 stages of grief for child loss. Please click on the link below to be taken to that webpage. Here we adapt these 6 stages of grief for those of you who have had an abortion. 

LINK TO OUR L.I.P HELP GUIDE FOR CHILD LOSS THROUGH DEATH.

Stage 1 Initial shock – Unless planned, finding out you are pregnant can be a shock to the system. You may think ‘how could this happen?’ and go straight into panic mode.

Stage 2 Denial – After the initial shock the first thing you will do is disbelieve what has happened. You may feel numb and feel that it’s not possible you are pregnant. You will start to think that the test was wrong or you may be mistaken. You may even check the tests a few times or even retest to make sure. This is the stage where you are hoping that what is happening to you is not real and you are going to wake up and it will all go away. 

Stage 3 Anger – Anger will start seeping into your mind and your whole being because you will feel life has cheated you and that your situation is very unfair. You may be angry because if the circumstances were different your choices would be too. You will ask yourself again and again ‘Why can’t my choices be different?’. You may take this anger out on yourself or others around you by snapping and being irritable. 

Stage 4 Guilt – There will be times when you will be overcome with guilt about what you have had to do. The sight of a baby will remind you of what could have been. These guilty feelings will naturally lead to the next stage of depression. 

Stage 5 Depression – You may cry and be down. Sadness may start to engulf you and you may long for what could have been or be depressed about the choices you made. You may feel sad a lot of the time and you cannot concentrate on the other parts of your life. The length of this stage varies from person to person.

Stage 6 Embrace – There will come a time when you will start accepting what has happened, you will stop kicking yourself and think less and less about the baby/pregnancy and what could have been. 

HOW CAN YOU HELP YOURSELF WHEN YOU ARE GOING THROUGH THE ABOVE STAGES?

There are many things you can do to help you travel the journey of grief. They are:

1) Take the support around you – If others around you are aware of what has happened, they will offer their support during this time. Accept their support. If you do not have the support then you can find a support group in your area. Ask your GP to refer you or go on your local authority website and there may be a link to a local support group.

2) Meditate, do deep breathing exercises and relaxation exercises –  These therapeutic things will help you relax and cope with your thoughts and feelings. They will help bring a sense of peace to you and help you recover.

3) Let it out – You have suffered a loss, it is real. What you feel is real. It is important to cry and express your feelings rather than deny what has happened or minimise the effect it has had on you. Bottling things in is okay temporarily but please remember one day these bottled up feelings will come out.

4) Memorial service – If you feel it would help your grieving process then hold a private memorial service or something similar for the baby. You can write a poem or write a letter. These things will give meaning to the whole episode 

5) Stop your thoughts – This is a technique which will enable you to override and control fantasy (thinking about what the child would have looked like), upsetting or negative thoughts. Stop your thoughts and as you do, replace them with the other or opposite thoughts so you change the way you feel. If you are thinking about what it would have felt like to hold a baby in a quiet nice room, replace it with thoughts of a messy kitchen, carrying a crying baby and being overwhelmed. 

6) Set an afternoon out for grieving – It may help you to take some time out each week or every few days to think about what happened, reflect, grieve for your loss and get your feelings out. Make this your healing time. Have a start time and a finish time, and once this time is over you must choose not to grieve until the next set time. 

7) Be kind to yourself – Please under no circumstances batter yourself mentally. You were put in a position where you did what you had to do. It was for the best all round. Nothing is going to be achieved by punishing yourself. If you do have anger or pain, direct it towards positivity in helping others and helping out in the community.

POST ABORTION STRESS SYNDROME (PASS) 

It is common to find the whole process of abortion frightening and traumatic. Many go through with the abortion but are left hurt, pained, shocked and go on to suffer from:

  1. Guilt 
  2. Shame
  3. Anger
  4. Regret
  5. Depression
  6. Flashbacks.
  7. Nightmares
  8. Physical stress
  9. Physiological stress
  10. Numbing of emotions
  11. Anxiety and they keep thinking something bad is going to happen again.
  12. They keep reliving the experience. 
  13. They feel alone 
  14. They feel helpless.
  15. Being unable to forgive themselves

These symptoms are part of a recognised disorder called post abortion stress syndrome or PASS for short. The symptoms of post abortion stress syndrome are very similar to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Some may suffer from anniversary anxiety and feel stressed, upset and depressed on the anniversary of the abortion. Some have these feelings consciously and for some who don’t realise it is the anniversary they may experience symptoms subconsciously. 

Please do not ignore PASS and contact your GP to refer you for counselling or contact your local authority to find out about any support groups in your area. 

LINK TO GOVERNMENT WEBSITE TO FIND YOUR LOCAL AUTHORITY