Meeting the Needs of Parents Pregnant and Parenting After Perinatal Loss

Despite research which highlights parents’ increased anxiety and risk of attachment issues with the pregnancy that follows a perinatal loss, there is often little understanding that bereaved families may need different care in their subsequent pregnancies. This book explores the lived experience of pregnancy and parenting after a perinatal loss.

Meeting the Needs of Parents Pregnant and Parenting After Perinatal Loss develops a helpful framework, which integrates continuing bonds and attachment theories, to support prenatal parenting at each stage of pregnancy. Giving insight into how a parent’s world view of a pregnancy may have changed following a loss, readers are provided with tools to assist parents on their journey. The book discusses each stage of a pregnancy, as well as labor and the postpartum period, before examining subjects such as multi-fetal pregnancies, reluctant terminations, use of support groups, and the experiences of fathers and other children in the family. The chapters include up-to-date research findings, vignettes from parents reflecting on their own experiences and recommendations for practice.

Written for researchers, students and professionals from a range of health, social welfare and early years education backgrounds, this text outlines what we know about supporting bereaved families encountering the challenges of a subsequent pregnancy.

Joann O’Leary is Field Faculty at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Early Education and Development and works as an independent trainer and consultant on issues around pregnancy, early parenting and perinatal loss. Her research focuses on the infant mental health needs of children.

Jane Warland is a registered midwife and Senior Lecturer at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of South Australia. Her research focuses particularly on complications of pregnancy and perinatal mental health.