Articles

What Can I Say?

professional_listening.jpgWhen a client or patient experiences pregnancy or infant loss, it's often hard to find the right words to say.

In this section, our contributors explain why well intentioned words sometimes inadvertently make matters even worse.

They also suggest what can be said that will be helpful, and recommend resources you might want to offer to your grieving patients or clients.

How to help Someone who’s had an Abortion

When a baby dies for any reason, the parents’ grief is silent. They usually don’t talk much about it, because they fear they’ll be judged – even if they couldn’t have prevented the miscarriage, stillbirth or post natal death. With abortion, it’s much worse…

“It was the Product of Conception”

I understand that doctors have to emotionally detach themselves from their patients, or else they’ll lose professional objectivity. But please choose your words wisely when you're dealing with patients who have lost babies: the wrong words only make the grief worse.

The Hardest Decision of All: Whether to End a Pregnancy

Here are the right words to say -- when you find out that someone had to end a pregnancy for serious medical reasons.

There must have been something wrong with the baby.

Said with the best of intentions -- even mean to comfort -- these words actually make it even worse.

You’re Young. You have Plenty of Time to get Pregnant Again.

When a young woman loses a baby, please don’t tell her she’s lucky she’s young enough to try again. Here’s why these words don’t help, as well as options you can offer your patients that do