The problem of grief following perinatal death

Grief over perinatal death is a grief like grief over the death of an adult loved one. Feelings of guilt, unreality, grief, loneliness and shame, the emotion of anger as well as depressive outbursts are encountered in both types of grief because it is the object of the loss and the relationships that existed with that object that condition the course of the grief and its outcome. However, perinatal bereavement presents traumatic components usually encountered in various other bereavements, such as the unpredictability of the baby's death. In addition, this grief is trapped in its own difficulties. The fact that death occurs in the woman's body in the case of in utero death, the non-recognition of this suffering by society, the evidence of birth tested in the woman, the lack of traces of the deceased, the physical pain of the bereaved women and the concern of the caregivers to preserve the woman's life make the work of perinatal mourning difficult. In order to help bereaved women overcome this grief, caregivers should explain and inform women in time about what is happening to their fetus.