When Hope Feels Fragile: Staying Grounded Through the Highs and Lows of Pregnancy After Loss
Practical tools for finding emotional stability during pregnancy after loss.
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Trigger warning: This post discusses baby loss and pregnancy after loss.
There are two main questions I keep getting asked, whether I’m working with clients one-to-one or during Q&A sessions on Instagram. The first is always: How do I cope with the anxiety and worry? The second: How can I be more hopeful in this pregnancy?
These questions are completely understandable. Pregnancy after loss is an emotional minefield. Every day, you don’t know which emotion you’ll step into or how intensely it will hit you. It might be fear, guilt, or shame. Occasionally, it’s joy or hope—though those tend to feel short-lived and hard to sustain.
Why is this emotional minefield there in the first place? It stems from the trauma of losing a baby. For many, this involves not only the loss but the experience of pregnancy loss, possibly giving birth to a baby who has already passed. It’s the kind of trauma that shakes the very foundation of your belief system, leaving you questioning everything you once thought was certain in life.
Navigating the Complex Emotions of Pregnancy After Loss
Pregnancy after loss is an emotionally complex experience. On the one hand, you’re nurturing life. On the other, you’re deeply familiar with the possibility of things not going smoothly. That blissful innocence you once had? It’s gone. Now, you're left with a whirlwind of emotions—each one a completely normal reaction to an abnormal event.
But those emotions can be overwhelming. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them; they’re not "bad" emotions. And feeling them doesn’t make us bad. But when emotions are intense, we can easily lose ourselves in them. This is where grounding ourselves becomes vital.
In ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), there's a metaphor I love that explains this perfectly. Imagine you're a small boat caught in an emotional storm—grief, anger, fear, guilt, or any other overwhelming emotion. You have three choices:
Go with the storm. The boat gets swept away, farther from the harbour (which represents your life and what’s important to you). You end up lost in the storm, with no sense of control or direction.
Fight the storm. You try to resist the waves, but eventually, the boat capsizes. You’re left exhausted and overwhelmed.
Drop anchor. This doesn’t stop the storm, but it keeps you from being swept away. You wait it out in stillness, grounded, until the storm passes.
How Does This Relate to Pregnancy After Loss?
Many times, we find ourselves lost in the feelings, letting them carry us away. There’s nothing wrong with that—until we realise that days, weeks, or even months have passed without experiencing any joy or connection to our pregnancy. Despite being 25 weeks pregnant, we may not have allowed ourselves to celebrate the milestones. Our lives outside of pregnancy can feel distant and disconnected.
Other times, we try to fight or numb the emotions—only to find that they return with even greater force, overwhelming us. The third option, dropping anchor, means noticing when our emotional weather is shifting and grounding ourselves. This allows us to observe the storm without being swept away by it.
The Power of Grounding: Dropping Anchor in Emotional Storms
Grounding ourselves is the most important skill we can learn before trying to improve our well-being through behavioural or mindset changes. Dropping anchor helps us respond with awareness to our emotions and circumstances, rather than automatically reacting. It keeps us connected to the present moment and what truly matters to us—so we don’t lose sight of the harbour.
While grounding sounds simple in principle, it’s much harder to practice. But that’s the nature of anything that rewires our brains. I like to use Russ Harris's ACE technique1 to explain how grounding can work in the context of pregnancy after loss.
The ACE Technique: A Practical Tool for Grounding
A - Acknowledge your thoughts and feelings. Simply say to yourself, “I am noticing that I’m worrying about the scan. I’m noticing that I’m afraid this pregnancy won’t last. I’m feeling a tight knot in my stomach, tightness in my chest. I’m noticing the fear in my body, and I have the urge to Google statistics.”
Some people find this part strange. We’ve been taught to fix our thoughts or think positively. But sometimes, trying to "fix" our thoughts only creates an inner struggle (well known “Yes, but…”.). There’s immense power in saying, “I am noticing…” By doing this, we take a step back from our thoughts and feelings, creating space between us and them. As Dr. Dan Siegel says, “Name it to tame it”. When we create that space, we have the power to choose how we respond.
C - Connect with your body. While acknowledging your thoughts and feelings, gently engage with your body. Focus on your breath, feel your feet pressing into the ground, sway side to side, or place a hand over your chest. This physical grounding helps you stay anchored amidst emotional turmoil.
E - Engage in what you’re doing. Look around and notice your surroundings—the smells, the sounds, the sights. Focus on the sensations of being present. If needed, go through ACE a few more times. Ask yourself: What’s the best way to proceed?
You might be wondering:
How all this relates to what I am experiencing right now?
Let’s break it down. Think about those moments when you’re lying on the examination table, waiting for the sonographer to start the scan. Your heart races, your chest feels tight, and every muscle in your body is bracing for bad news. Or maybe it's when you walk past the baby clothes section at the store. Your mind is flooded with conflicting thoughts—I want to buy something, but what if I jinx it? And yet, at the same time, you feel disconnected, like you're watching someone else's life play out.
These are the emotional storms we’re talking about. This is where grounding—dropping your anchor—can help. Instead of being swept away by the flood of worry, grief, or guilt, you can acknowledge, "I’m noticing the fear. I’m noticing the tightness in my chest." And from that place, you choose how to move forward. You decide whether to take a deep breath and focus on the present moment, or maybe buy that baby outfit after all, because today, alongside the fear that no longer feels so overwhelming, you also notice a glimmer of hope.
Practice Grounding Before the Storm
It’s important to start practising ACE when the emotional waters are calm. Why? Because you’re establishing a new habit, a new way of responding to your thoughts and emotions. When we’re in crisis, our brain’s management centre (the prefrontal cortex) often goes offline, and we revert to old habits. So, practising grounding when things are calm helps build that new pattern in your brain.
Try it during simple moments—when drinking a cup of tea, walking the dog, or cuddling a loved one. Go through ACE: press the mental pause button, notice your body and your surroundings, and consciously decide how you want to proceed.
Over time, it will become easier to use ACE when the emotional waves rise, and eventually, when the full storm hits. This practice can help you make grounded decisions, like buying that first outfit for the baby, telling your best friend the news, or journaling your thoughts and feelings instead of being swept away by anxiety.
Final Thoughts: Finding Stability in the Storm
Grounding yourself is not about avoiding the storm but about learning to anchor yourself within it. It’s a practice that helps you stay connected to the present, allowing you to move forward despite fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. When we drop anchor, we create the space to experience both the difficult emotions and the moments of hope and joy, however fleeting they may feel.
What about you?
Have you tried grounding techniques like ACE before? If not, what’s stopping you from giving it a try the next time you feel overwhelmed?
How do you currently handle the emotional storms of pregnancy after loss? Would dropping anchor make a difference for you?
https://www.actmindfully.com.au/upimages/Dropping_anchor_script.pdf
For free dropping anchor recordings visit: https://www.actmindfully.com.au/free-stuff/free-audio/
The space to respond rather than react is some important and often a daily search for me. This is such a helpful piece, what you talk about applies to everyone as well as the women you have written it for.