While there will likely be many decisions that have to be made in the moment during labor, delivery, and postpartum care, a birth plan serves to help you ensure that your parents’ wishes are honored.

You may be wondering how to even begin the process of telling your children about the diagnosis affecting their baby brother or sister. Know that there is no perfect set of words when it comes to this experience.

When a woman loses a baby, her body still responds in the way it was designed: to produce sustenance for the life she spent months growing and nurturing.

Agency is the ability or capacity a person has to act within an environment or a given set of circumstances. Medical professionals, you are a major character in the worst moments a family’s life, and that role comes with tremendous responsibility.

Like grief, pregnancy after loss is a sensitive time. It is a new and transformative experience, and as the network of support walking with parents through this experience, a level of self-awareness is necessary.

No matter if you are the mother or father, or this is your first or third pregnancy after loss, your experience matters.

Grief is a complicated emotion because it can leave a family with fear and sorrow, but it can also create perspective that gives families a whole new understanding of the precious and not promised nature of pregnancy and childbirth.

A father’s role is vital to the well-being of the mother, and in order to ensure that fathers can care well for and support their partners, their paternal needs and grief cannot be ignored.

It might be easy to assume that men are less emotional and more capable of compartmentalizing grief. While this may be true in some, it is important to not generalize and dismiss the very real emotional toll grief and loss have on men.

Families need to be notified of all the options they have when they encounter a prenatal diagnosis. They have the choice to terminate or to carry their babies to term. Both choices should be communicated clearly and without bias.

Carrying To Term’s mission and vision are the result of two broken-hearted parents who love with abandon and genuinely want to see the standard of care improve and change for other parents facing a prenatal diagnosis of a life-limiting condition.

If you are not currently or have never been an employer of a person facing a life-limiting prenatal diagnosis or the loss of their baby, this insight is still helpful for you. After reading this post, I encourage you to consider putting some guidelines in place to ensure that, if the time comes when you do have an employee facing these experiences, you will be ready.