Meeting the Needs of Parents Pregnant and Parenting After Perinatal Loss [Paperback]

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 Lossdevelops a helpful framework, which integrates continuing bonds and attachment theories, to support prenatal parenting at each stage of pregnancy. Giving insight into how a parents 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.

1. The Parenting Experience of Loss  2. Smooth: Preconception  3. Break-Up: A Time of Disequilibrium  4. Sorting Out: 12 Weeks to 24 weeks Gestation  5. Inwardizing: 24 to 32 Weeks Gestation  6. Expansion: 32 Weeks to Birth  7. Preparation for Labor and Birth  8. Neurotic Fitting Together: Birth Through the First Six Weeks of Life  9. Loss in a Multi-fetal Pregnancy  10. Fetal Reduction in Multi-fetal Pregnancies  11lC+