Coping with Pregnancy Loss

"I cannot wipe away your tears, but I can show you how to make them holy."-a rabbi comforting a woman after miscarriage (quoted by Nina Beth Cardin)

For more thoughts on pregnancy loss, you can read the

Rebbetzin Faige Twersky on Pregnancy Loss

A Friend's Miscarriage

Ask the Rabbi on Miscarriage

Order a Free Pregnancy Loss Packet or join a Pregnancy-Loss Online Support Group for Jewish women at ATIME

For years I've been getting letters from women who have suffered miscarriages, and I've always been sorry that I did not have more resources on the site for these holy women who, like all of us, went into pregnancy with such high hopes- for a child to love and educate and grow old with, for a child to dance on his or her father's shoulders on Simchat Torah, for a physical embodiment of all the love they and their husbands feel for one another.

In the end, it has, unfortunately, taken some sad events in my own life to make me finally set up this pregnancy loss page. It was four weeks ago this morning that I went for a routine ultrasound for my fourth pregnancy, and I discovered that the fetus I was carrying was no longer alive. These few weeks have been the most difficult ones I have lived through.

Miscarriages are a disorienting experience for the Jewish woman- since we feel the tragedy and mourning of the death of a loved one, a baby we will never kiss or nurse or even see. On the other hand, there are no official rites of mourning around this loss- no shiva, no special prayers recited, no religious ceremony whatsoever to recognize that a soul came to the world for several months to live in our wombs, and then returned to Heaven- leaving us bereft of a baby (or at least the dream of a baby) that had already found a home in our hearts.

Many Jewish women find a way to personally mark this passing in an informal way- through reciting psalms or spontaneous prayer, through giving charity, or through speaking to the soul of the lost baby in their hearts and praying for its wellbeing. These informal ways of recognizing what happened provide a way for the parents to say goodbye, to gain closure to what has happened. The lack of official mourning, however, is related to the fact that Jewish Law does not recognize a fetus in utero as a whole person or nefesh with a separate identity from the mother.

The lack of ritual around miscarriages is also maybe a message from Above that, after we mourn, and cry, and are as sad as we have ever been- we, unlike mourners of a relative, are supposed to go back to our normal way of life as soon as possible- to heal, to get pregnant again, to take care of the children we already have, to reinvolve ourselves in serving the needs of the community. Judaism reminds us that, while painful and tragic, mothers who have suffered from miscarriage should have a sense of perspective about what has happened. Thank G-d, it was not a child who died, the mother was unharmed- what was lost was a baby in potential- but not an actual baby.

Like all people who have suffered a painful loss- our Rabbis teach us that we are supposed to recognize that difficult experiences are given by G-d for us to learn something very important. Sadness is not meant to be a pit that we fall into, stuck, depressed and unmoving for years or even the rest of our lives. In the Jewish view, difficult life experiences are meant to be more like a springboard, a catalyst, a spark to light a flame. We are meant to take that suffering, and do something holy with it- translate it into something positive, and to make the world a better place because of it.

Since my own miscarriage, I have heard more and more about women, not guided by the Torah's wisdom, who are unable to move past the sadness of pregnancy loss. I saw a support group on the internet for women who've suffered from miscarriage which is frequented by women who miscarried even five years ago. These women still finishing each message with the name they'd given to their lost fetus- followed by a miscarriage date. I have also heard from several grown women- now mothers and grandmothers themselves- with mothers who suffered the loss of a pregnancy or baby within hours of the birth, and then simply never recovered emotionally. Their mothers' endless sadness and depression still haunts these grown women today.

On the other hand, there are countless examples of people who, inspired by personal difficulties, are able to make their tears into the holy kind the rabbi describes above. Parents of a sick child establish an organization to help other sick children, family members of someone who dies donate charity to a synagogue or hospital in their memory, a person who was never connected with religion suddenly connects with G-d through prayer and Torah learning on account of personal difficulties. In our situation, we have received tremendous guidance and support from a couple that lost a baby in her first days of life twenty years ago- and now they are able to use the unspeakable tragedy and suffering that they went through in order to provide great comfort to others. Suffering, in Judaism, is seen as one of the greatest possible causes of growth in a person's life.

When my husband and I sat waiting in the hospital corridor following the miscarriage, I told him that I knew why this was happening to me. It was happening because I was meant to write about it, and provide support to other women whose experience of pregnancy ends in tragedy.

May it be Hashem's will that these words will be a source of comfort for women suffering from pregnancy loss- and may they soon be blessed, b'shaah tova, with pregnancies and healthy babies.

For more thoughts on pregnancy loss, you can read the

A Friend's Miscarriage

or Ask the Rabbi on Miscarriage

Rebbetzin Faige Twersky on Pregnancy Loss

Order a Free Pregnancy Loss Packet or join a Pregnancy-Loss Online Support Group at ATIME