Real Support for Stillbirth Loss: What Actually Helps

Aly, a mom and educator, went to her 20 week scan expecting all to be well, without a shred of doubt for her son’s well-being and their life together. When they couldn’t find his heartbeat, she felt her life’s foundations fall all at once. She looked up at her husband with fear for their future and said, “Don't let it change what is so special about us.” She reflected, "Something in me knew what was about to happen, and now it's a constant struggle.”

Aly describes herself as reserved, timid, someone who used to keep her emotions close. That is changing. "I'm transitioning from someone who liked to hold back to now being more proactive," she says, "I like to speak up around this kind of loss."

Aly is also mother to two living children, and she carries all of it at once, her love for the children she is raising and her love for her son, Creed, who died in utero.

When asked what she wished she had received in her experience of birth and loss, she answered, "I wish I'd had more support right after," Aly says. "I wish I had been told, processed - I had given birth. I wish it had been held as I had given birth."

When a baby dies before birth, the birth itself often goes unnamed and is often far less supported, with parents sent home only hours after the birth, with few resources.

Aly did give birth. Her body carried this pregnancy, labored, delivered her child and went through her postpartum time, but without the respectful care, advice and help a birthing person usually has with a living child.

Naming the birth and postpartum time of stillbirth and miscarriage isn't a technicality. It is vitally important. As a therapist working with parents who have faced miscarriage, stillbirth and infant loss, I see regularly how honoring that these parents gave birth to their child allows them (and their providers) to respect the intensity of what their body has gone through and to receive the support that the postpartum period actually requires: to be fed nourishing food, to be surrounded by caring people, to be encouraged to really rest, to have help with other children, to bring in support for the grieving heart and body. Parents, and siblings, need a tremendous amount of grief support in this time, and for years afterward.

The birth of a child that has died is many things at once. For parents,  meeting their child for the first time, even in death, can be a precious, sacred, full moment that imprints on the heart forever. Parents see themselves in their baby’s face, their hands, their chins. Their hearts swell with love. And in that moment they also carry the entire life that came with this child that is not going to be. The void, the finality of their death, the years they will never get; this is a weight of great suffering. The physical and psychic task of taking all this in at once is immense.

As a therapist of parents going through loss, I like to emphasize how the bond with a baby builds for months before the birth. It is a private, whole relationship formed in a time that feels outside of time. Parents come to know their baby's movements, their patterns, their personality, long before anyone else meets them. Their body, mind and heart are primed for caring for this child, for decades to come. For the baby, those months were the completion of their life. Their entire universe was within the body of their parent. It was real and full. A life their parent will always hold close, and that deserves remembering.

Holding the time they did have with their baby in this framework can help parents as they pick up the pieces of their child’s life and death. It says that their life and all the love attached to it, matters, and always will. 

Aly and her family did not receive the kind of respect and support they would have liked to have to get through such a shattering experience.  Aly’s husband had parental leave when their living children were born. When Creed died, he had none, likely due to laws that define maternal/paternal benefits to apply only if the baby is born after 20 weeks. "That's something that has to change," Aly says. Rest, grief, and time away from the demands of ordinary life are so necessary after a loss like this. They are part of what postpartum and bereavement care requires.

"Families need so much support," Aly says. "We have to be better and able to do that."

The need for this support is starting to have research behind it. Roughly 1 in 150 pregnancies ends in stillbirth, and studies suggest that close to a third of parents meet criteria for PTSD afterward, alongside depression and anxiety. Yoga,  already used to treat trauma in other populations,  has been studied specifically with stillbirth mothers, with meaningful decreases in PTSD and depression and improvements in self-rated health following 12 weeks of practice. The body that walked through so much  loss can also be an instrument of how a parent finds their way through it.

"It still knocks me down," Aly admits. "There needs to be more education, more options, more awareness of trauma."

Aly offered some strategies for support in the hospital itself. "There needs to be a sign on the door for stillbirth," she says, "so that the nurses know that parents are holding a baby that has died. Having staff be less cheery in those situations is so important." Parents and grandparents in that room need people who can meet the ache and the solemnity with quiet respect. Aly made her own signs when she gave birth to her next baby, “Birth After Loss” so staff understood the complexity of what she was holding in her birth.

In thinking about the years after Creed's life and death Aly shared, “I still feel like I need to do something for my son. He needs to be recognized.” In order to keep showing her love for her son, she has set up an instagram account called Creed’s Legacy, where she supports families like hers.  Every year on his birthday, she delivers 10 boxes to her local hospital, full of things that will support families who go through loss of their baby like she did. Every year, they are given to families who need them. Her generosity offers her a path to keep loving her son, and help others who are heartbroken as she was.

Aly also wrote a book to help comfort the siblings and families going through this loss. You can order "My Invisible Brother" here.

If you are in this:

If you are holding a loss like this,  or accompanying someone who is,  a few things may help in this time.

Rest, and let your body be tended to. Whatever your baby's due date or birth date, you gave birth. Your body needs recovery the way any postpartum body does, and your heart needs the same kind of unhurried care. Let yourself be cared for, and allow your body the healing it needs.

Find a grief group or a therapist who understands this specific loss and supports the grief process. You don't have to carry this alone, and you don't have to explain the basics to someone before they can be present with you. Support that already speaks this language of grief, and perinatal loss, stillbirth, infant loss, can hold what generic support often can't.

Know that this is a long road. There is no timeline for your love, and no end-date for your sorrow. As long as you love your baby, you will grieve them, and that grief, however it moves through you, months or years from now, is not a sign that something is wrong. It’s a sign that you love your child, and deserve support for this road.

Join us:

At Revolution Yoga in Santa Rosa, CA on October 10th, 2026, I'm hosting an event with prenatal yoga teacher, Lyla Moore, for anyone carrying the loss of a baby through infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, TFMR, or infant loss. This is a gathering for tending the sorrow,  a chance to be in a room with others who understand, where the grief has room. We will be guided in poses that help access and move the grief, and be led in circle by myself around the unique experience of this loss.

October 10th - 1pm to 3pm

Revolution Yoga - 510 Lewis Rd. Santa Rosa, CA

Tickets and info here:

Online Grief Group for Pregnancy loss and Infant Loss: The Hollows

The Hollows opens November 3rd, 2026 : a small circle, held to eight, for those living alongside the loss of a baby, a pregnancy, or the losses that come with infertility and IVF. Your loss is understood here, your love and your pain held with respect. Together we create a path in life that holds it all.

This non-clinical group supports people from anywhere in the world.

Learn more and reserve your place → HERE

Registration closes October 24th.

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Jessica Malmberg, LMFT is a therapist in Santa Rosa, CA who supports parents walking through miscarriage, stillbirth, infant loss, TFMR, infertility and birth trauma.

She is the mom of a little boy who died at 8 days old, and two living children.