Pregnancy loss can be a grief that is not always visible to the people around you. Depending on the circumstances, there may be few public markers of the loss, little to no time away from work, and sometimes only a small circle of people who even knew about the pregnancy.
Yet the loss can include so much more than the pregnancy itself. You may be grieving the child you had already started to imagine, the future you were beginning to picture, and the version of your life you thought was unfolding, all while your body is still recovering.
Even one pregnancy loss can have a lasting psychological impact. In a large study following women after early pregnancy loss, 16% still screened positive for post-traumatic stress nine months later, while 17% experienced moderate to severe anxiety (Farren et al., 2020).
Nine months is a long time to carry something that others may have assumed you had moved on from much earlier.
And the reminders do not stop.
A pregnancy announcement. A growing belly. An ultrasound photo. The baby aisle at the grocery store. A pregnancy storyline on television.
You can be moving through an ordinary day and suddenly find yourself pulled back into grief.
That is part of what can make pregnancy loss so difficult to carry. Reproductive stories are everywhere, and sometimes they touch directly against the future you had imagined.
Grief does not follow a schedule, and it rarely waits until you are somewhere private.
When Pregnancy Loss Happens Again
Recurrent pregnancy loss can affect someone differently than a single loss, and I say that carefully because grief is not a competition and nobody needs their pain ranked.
The difference is not that a second or third loss hurts more but what begins to happen to hope in between.
After a first loss, someone may enter the next pregnancy with cautious optimism, still able to believe that what happened was terrible luck and that this pregnancy might be different.
After repeated loss, that can become much harder.
The brain is constantly using past experience to predict what may happen next. When pregnancy has repeatedly been followed by loss, the nervous system can begin to treat hope itself as risky. It remembers what came before the pain and starts looking for signs that it may happen again.
A positive pregnancy test can bring joy and dread at the same time. You may find yourself checking for bleeding before allowing yourself to feel excited. You may hesitate to tell anyone or say the words without much emotion because making the pregnancy feel real can also make the possibility of losing it feel real.
Some clients describe feeling as though they are already grieving while they are still pregnant. That is not necessarily pessimism. It can be a protective response from a nervous system that has learned what happened before.
The psychological weight of recurrent pregnancy loss is significant.
Post-traumatic stress symptoms affect approximately 25% to 39% of people experiencing recurrent pregnancy loss, with distress tending to increase as losses accumulate.
The grief accumulates, but so can the fear.
The moment you start imagining a future, another part of you may respond: Don’t get too excited. Don’t tell anyone yet. Don’t assume this pregnancy will be different.
Hope can start to feel difficult to hold onto. It appears for a moment, and then the mind quickly brings forward every memory, warning sign and possibility that something could go wrong.
Why it Can Feel Like Everyone is Pregnant
While all of this is happening internally, the outside world keeps moving, and reproductive reminders can seem impossible to escape.
A colleague announces a pregnancy at a team meeting. A cousin posts an ultrasound photo. The woman ahead of you at the grocery store rests a hand on her belly. A show you chose because it seemed light suddenly introduces a pregnancy storyline or miscarriage scene. A pregnancy app you forgot to delete sends a notification about what size fruit your baby would have been this week.
After pregnancy loss, these reminders can become much harder for the brain to ignore.
Part of the reason involves the brain’s attentional system, including the reticular activating system, or RAS. Its job is to help filter the enormous amount of information around you and bring forward what seems important, relevant, or potentially threatening.
Before your loss, a stroller, ultrasound photo, or pregnant person at the grocery store may have blended into the background. After loss, those same things carry emotional meaning. Pregnancy is now connected not only with love and hope, but also with uncertainty, fear, and devastating news.
So your brain becomes quicker to notice pregnancy announcements, babies, pregnant bodies, and conversations about children.
It can feel as though pregnancy is suddenly everywhere. The world may not have changed as much as what your brain has learned to pay attention to.
This does not mean you are obsessing over other people’s pregnancies or deliberately looking for reminders. Your brain is prioritizing information connected to something that affected you, partly in an attempt to anticipate what might hurt.
That experience has also been documented in research. In a study of women who became pregnant after recurrent miscarriage, participants described pregnancy as seeming to be everywhere, and some withdrew from social media or social situations because encounters with pregnancy and babies repeatedly brought up grief, envy, and fear (Bailey et al., 2019).
The same system trying to protect you from being caught off guard can leave you feeling surrounded by reminders.
Pregnancy Envy
What comes up in these moments is often described to me as jealousy. Clients sometimes say it quietly, followed by an apology: I know how awful this makes me sound, but I was so jealous of her.
But jealousy and envy are not quite the same thing.
Psychologist and emotions researcher, Brené Brown, describes jealousy as the fear of losing something we already have, often within a relationship. Envy is wanting something that someone else has.
When a friend announces a pregnancy, what you may be feeling is envy.
You are not afraid that her pregnancy is taking something away from you. You are suddenly confronted with the fact that she has something you have wanted, tried for, paid for, injected for, and lost more than once.
That distinction matters because calling it jealousy can quickly turn the feeling into a judgment about your character. Then grief gets followed by shame.
Envy tells a different story. It points to the depth of the longing.
And it does not cancel out love for the person in front of you. You can genuinely be happy for your sister and still find her baby shower painful. You can love someone and need distance from what their pregnancy brings up for you.
Both can be true at the same time.
Navigating The Losses
Name what you are feeling. Sometimes simply saying this is envy, and it makes sense that it is here can create a little space around the emotion. Naming it helps separate the feeling from the story that there is something wrong with you for having it.
Expect waves rather than stages. Grief rarely moves in a straight line, especially after repeated loss. You may feel relatively steady for weeks and then be hit hard by a due date, a pregnancy announcement, or a first birthday post from someone who was pregnant at the same time as you. A difficult day does not mean you have gone backwards.
Ask what you need, not what you think you should be able to handle. If attending a baby shower feels like too much right now, that matters. You do not have to prove that you are coping by putting yourself into situations that leave you overwhelmed.
Give yourself permission to step back. You can send a gift without attending. You can mute someone on social media without ending the friendship. You can delete the pregnancy app. You can leave the group chat for a while. Creating distance from a trigger is not the same as not caring about the people involved.
Plan ahead for the things you do attend. Give yourself an exit plan. Drive yourself if possible. Decide how long you want to stay. Tell one person you trust what may be difficult for you. Knowing you can leave often makes an event feel more manageable.
Tell someone the unedited version. Recurrent loss can become incredibly isolating, especially when the people around you do not know what to say or reach too quickly for reassurance and silver linings. Having even one person with whom you do not have to minimize what you are feeling can make a difference.
Consider additional support when your world starts getting smaller. If reminders are affecting you every day, you are increasingly avoiding people or places, intrusive memories keep returning, or a new pregnancy brings overwhelming dread, it may be helpful to work with a therapist who understands pregnancy loss and reproductive trauma.
A Final Thought
If other people’s pregnancies bring up a physical or emotional reaction, it does not mean there is something wrong with you. It may simply mean that your body and mind are responding to everything you have been through.
Envy after recurrent loss does not need to be corrected or apologized for. It is often a reflection of how badly you wanted something, and how painful it has been to lose it repeatedly.
You can be happy for someone else and still hurt for yourself. Both can exist at the same time.
That pain deserves compassion, especially from you.
References
Bailey, S. L., Boivin, J., Cheong, Y. C., Kitson-Reynolds, E., Bailey, C., and Macklon, N. (2019). Hope for the best … but expect the worst: A qualitative study to explore how women with recurrent miscarriage experience the early waiting period of a new pregnancy. BMJ Open, 9(5), e029354. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2019-029354.
Brown, B., Guillen, B., & Ruiz, A. (2021, December 15). Atlas of the Heart: A Sisters Book Club, Part 3 of 3 [Audio podcast episode]. In Unlocking Us. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/atlas-of-the-heart-a-sisters-book-club-part-3-of-3/
Farren et al. (2020), “Posttraumatic stress, anxiety and depression following miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy: a multicenter, prospective, cohort study,” published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31953115/
Kuhlmann, E., Scharli, P., Schick, M., Ditzen, B., Langer, L., Strowitzki, T., Wischmann, T., & Kuon, R.-J. (2023). The posttraumatic impact of recurrent pregnancy loss in both women and men. Geburtshilfe und Frauenheilkunde, 83(1), 88–96. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9835763/
Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. (2026). Recurrent pregnancy loss: A committee opinion. Fertility and Sterility. https://www.asrm.org/practice-guidance/practice-committee-documents/recurrent-pregnancy-loss-a-committee-opinion-2026/
About Delia Petrescu
Delia Petrescu, MA, RP, is a Registered Psychotherapist and founder of Get Reconnected Psychotherapy Services. She specializes in trauma therapy, reproductive mental health, fertility counselling, and postpartum struggles. Delia has pursued intensive training in reproductive psychology and is an Article Columnist for Psychology Today, writing about reproductive trauma and infertility. She has been a guest speaker at the University of Toronto on reproductive mental health and at the Canadian Fertility Show, where she presented on infertility trauma. She is a professional member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and Fertility Matters Canada, and she serves on the Executive Committee of the Counselling Special Interest Group of the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society (CFAS).
Psychology today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/therapists/delia-mihaela-petrescu-toronto-on/928463
Psychology Today Articles: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/delia-m-petrescu-ma-rp
Dedicated site: https://fertilitywithdelia.com/
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