“She had withered and shrunk in on herself, and it began when they lost that baby,” (Ivey 20). “She should have allowed herself that grief,” (Ivey 4). The novel The Snow Child explores the reactions, guilt and grief corresponding to the experience of a miscarriage. The relationship between miscarriage and grief has been given sparse attention over the years. People vary in the way they respond to a miscarriage; anywhere from age to gender or even a child that was conceived after the previous miscarriage. Studies have been conducted over the years to observe the connection between grief and miscarriages and as a result different variables have been formed and scales and stages have been established.
Grief is a very unique nature of loss. It is somewhat similar to that of losing a family member or experiencing another traumatic event. Grief is defined as “the effectiveness, physiological and psychological reactions to the loss of an emotionally important figure,” (Brier 452). There are different types of miscarriages that can occur: an ectopic pregnancy, stillbirths and neonatal deaths. Any of these miscarriages can be defined as a “natural termination of a pregnancy before the fetus is considered viable,” (Brier 453). Unfortunately, 15-20% of pregnancies end in miscarriages and of those, three-quarters of the pregnancies end before the twelve week gestation (Puddifoot and Johnson). This is a very traumatic event to happen to anyone and can cause many complications for the individual, physically and mentally. Some symptoms include: prolonged distress, excessive guilt, suicidal, worthlessness, rejected, socially withdrawn, sleep disturbance, negative self judgment and many others. Although grief consumes your mind and concentratio...
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The characters in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones are faced with the difficult task of overcoming the loss of Susie, their daughter and sister. Jack, Abigail, Buckley, and Lindsey each deal with the loss differently. However, it is Susie who has the most difficulty accepting the loss of her own life. Several psychologists separate the grieving process into two main categories: intuitive and instrumental grievers. Intuitive grievers communicate their emotional distress and “experience, express, and adapt to grief on a very affective level” (Doka, par. 27). Instrumental grievers focus their attention towards an activity, whether it is into work or into a hobby, usually relating to the loss (Doka par. 28). Although each character deals with their grief differently, there is one common denominator: the reaction of one affects all.
...h at the idea of carrying a new life, as well as saving an older life-when aspects of her maternity give life.
Imagine that the person you love most in the world dies. How would you cope with the loss? Death and grieving is an agonizing and inevitable part of life. No one is immune from death’s insidious and frigid grip. Individuals vary in their emotional reactions to loss. There is no right or wrong way to grieve (Huffman, 2012, p.183), it is a melancholy ordeal, but a necessary one (Johnson, 2007). In the following: the five stages of grief, the symptoms of grief, coping with grief, and unusual customs of mourning with particular emphasis on mourning at its most extravagant, during the Victorian era, will all be discussed in this essay (Smith, 2014).
O'Neill, Brett. "A Father's Grief: Dealing With Stillbirth." Nursing Forum 33.4 (1998): 33. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
The event of childbirth is one that changes a person’s life. Women dream all their lives of holding their newborn child and raising them to be fine young men and women. Couples try, sometimes through many long and time-consuming methods, to conceive a child. And when that little bundle of life is born, nothing in the world is as wonderful.
Women throughout time have been compelled to cope with the remonstrances of motherhood along with society’s anticipations
When a woman gives birth to a child, it can be one of the most joyous and exciting moments in her life, yet it can also be diff...
While I had never paid much attention to expectant mothers in the past, this assignment made me a little more intrigued about prenatal development. In the beginning, it seemed impossible to properly report on prenatal development from just an observation stand point. Not being able to view the baby through a mother's exterior was my initial concern. However, I began to look around at pregnant mother's, carry children in this prenatal stage and took notes about their behaviors.
Post abortion syndrome can be described as the emotional and psychological consequences after abortion. When a person goes through a traumatic experience without the opportunity to process the experience emotionally it is expected that they have a delayed negative reaction. Abortion is a consequence to unplanned pregnancy that is often ignored. As a result, women who have experience abortion are advised to deny it because of social norms. Furthermore, they do not talk about and process the normal feelings of anxiety, fear, shame, guilt and grief, which often follow the abortion. Dadlez & Andrew (2010) explored the relationship between post abortion syndrome and psychological factors that may occur with women. The study found that there are not any psychological harms associated with the procedure .In fact the concerns already existed and possibly multiplied after the abortion.
I have felt the pain of the loss of a Sister; have felt the pain of the death of my Mother, and felt the death of my Father. I know how it feels. I experienced it. It is painful, looking at those old kind folks who bore you; who took care of you; went through all kinds of sacrifices and pains just to look after you for years and years, until one day the child stood on one’s own two feet, and then … there they are, the parents, helpless and lifeless in front of you.
Many different types of loss can elicit the chronic sorrow coping mechanism. Although it was first applied to parents of mentally disabled children, it has since been noted in a multitude of other sensations of loss (Eakes et al., 1998). While loss is generally associated with death, new evidence indicates that the sensation of loss is often present and perhaps more severely experienced with regards to a disrupted ideal or ongoing reminder of deficiency and undesirability of an expected outcome (Casale, 2009). In this way, it is clear that while death and loss are certainly linked, loss outcomes and coping responses to death as compared to an ongoing loss, such as in the case of severe mental impairment, are distinct (Teel, 1991). The distinction between these two very different mechanisms of loss can most ea...
Grief can be defined as the natural reaction to loss. Grief is both a universal and personal experience (Mayo Clinic, 2014). Individual experiences of grief vary and are influenced by the nature of the loss (Mayo Clinic, 2014). There are multiple different theories that have attempted to explain the complex process of grief and loss. Theorists such as Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, William Worden and John Bowbly explain in their theories how they believe an individual deals with the grieving process. In this essay, I will be focusing on William Worden’s theory and will be discussing the process for a child aged nine to eleven.
It was 11:45pm on a gloomy Monday night, and an excited Cynthia was putting the finishing touches on her sky blue baby shower invitations. Cynthia worked up a sweat from all of this activity, and then suddenly she felt a sharp pain in her lower abdomen. At that moment she immediately woke her husband Matthew with a loud shrill that sounded like “The baby is coming!”. Matthew thought he was still dreaming until he felt a hard thud on the top of his head, and opened his eyes to his wife’s pale face that was as bright as a ghost. Matthew did not know what to think, this was his first child, his first everything and he was nowhere near ready to become a new father. Matthew still had a lot of bottled in information about himself that he has yet
There is no voice more comforting than Mama’s. In the womb we are suspended in safe warmth, hearing every noise that Mama makes. And we don’t just hear her voice. We feel its vibrations, its muffled hum, through our ears and our entire forming bodies. It’s no wonder that that is often the only voice that can comfort us in the distress of our new little lives. Yet, what of the mother who cannot speak? Can she still comfort her baby? Yes, because it is much more than vocal chords that connect a baby with its birth mother. After all, Baby eats all that Mama eats, breathes Mama’s air, knows Mama’s way of moving and laughing…Baby feels every surge of adrenaline that Mama feels. Bonds don’t get more intimate than that. Even after Baby is born, this bond is strengthened through long bouts of staring into each other’s eyes, through feeling the lulling rhythm of Mama’s breathing while sleeping against her chest, through time spent together saturated in touch and play. This phenomenon of intimacy is so powerful that it surpasses any blindness or handicap Mama could possibly have.
According to Beckstrand, Rawle, Callister, & Mandleco (2010) “Death of a child evokes deep feelings of tragedy, devastation, and painful confusion at the injustice of a life being ended prematurely.” (p. 544) These are the raw emotions that are prevalent when a child is dying. For the child and the family, these final fleeting m...