Home > About Baby Loss >
Stillbirth
The death of a baby before birth, from 24 weeks gestation.
Approximately 1 in 250 babies are stillborn in the UK every year.
Common Thoughts & Feelings
Clients who have experienced a stillbirth often express feeling:
- Numbness, disbelief, shock, panic, feeling out of control
- Feeling scared, horrified, disgusted
- Frightened, vulnerable, fragile, despairing
- Deep pain, yearning, feeling empty
Common thoughts or questions of someone experiencing this type of loss might be:
- This cannot be true – they must have got it wrong.
- Why me / Why us?
- What did I / we do wrong?
- This is cruel; it feels unbearable
- I/we will never get over this
- How did this happen?
- Will this happen again?
How Petals can help:
Petals provide the safe space to bring the pain and the helplessness that parents feel following the tragedy of stillbirth. The counselling relationship becomes the place where the real experience suffered for each of the couple can be expressed and held, whilst the impact of such a devastating experience can be absorbed.
Most will have suffered a degree of trauma through this experience and the healthy processing of this, ideally together as a couple, is crucial to enable a natural grieving process to begin.
Petals counsellors work sensitively and carefully with you through the different phases of trauma and grief through the sessions. Slowly the reality of the loss unfolds as the counsellor supports you to understand what has happened and what it means to you individually and as a couple that this has happened.
As the sessions progress, hope starts to grow and a future emerges.
Read Kirsty & Nathan’s Story
Read Katie & Sarah’s Story
Read our Counsellor’s Blog
Join our closed Facebook group, Petals Together: a supportive group of others with shared experiences, who know how you are feeling.
You can also find out more about our specialist counselling here.