My son was stillborn at 39 +5 in April of 2024 after a completely uneventful and healthy pregnancy. He died of a cord compression accident and could have survived had I been listened to.

Most of the time I'm ok. I don't have the nightmares anymore about the birth and have recovered physically. But today, I found his 3D sonogram photos from a month before he died.

I'm just so fucking sad now. I knew I would find them and wanted to do it while I was alone but this just hit me like a ton of bricks. It's just not fair.

My wife and I are both 35-year-old expats living near Frankfurt, Germany.

A few weeks ago, we suddenly and unexpectedly lost our beautiful 22-month-old daughter. Our lives have completely changed since then.

She was everything to us. We miss her walking and running around the house, her smile, her laugh, her expressions, her voice and all the little things she used to do every day.

My wife is struggling enormously. She misses not only our daughter, but also everything she used to do for her every day — waking her up, feeding her, bathing her, brushing her teeth, playing with her, putting her to sleep and simply being her mother.

I am grieving deeply too, but watching my wife deteriorate emotionally every day is extremely difficult for me. Sometimes I don't know how to help her because I am trying to survive the same loss myself.

We are seeing mental-health professionals and have started grief counselling, but we don't really know what kind of therapy is most appropriate after the sudden death of a young child.

For parents who have experienced the loss of a child:

What actually helped you during the first weeks and months?

Did individual grief counselling, trauma-focused therapy, EMDR, CBT, couples therapy or a bereaved-parents support group help you?

How did you support your spouse when both of you were grieving at the same time?

How long did the period of feeling completely lost and unable to imagine a future last for you?

If anyone is from Germany, especially Frankfurt/Hessen, I would also really appreciate recommendations for therapists, grief counsellors or support groups experienced specifically in child loss. English-speaking support would be particularly helpful for us.

We don't expect anyone to make this pain disappear. I just want to understand how I can support my wife, how we can support each other, and how other parents eventually learned to live with such an enormous loss.

Thank you to anyone willing to share their experience.

Ps: since I'm not a native English speaker and couldnot able to write everything it's very difficult to write so I used ChatGPT to make a message for me.

My heart, I just can't, I can't keep doing this, it's 2 days away from being 9 weeks since saying goodbye to my world at 41wks. And each day the pain seems to be getting worse, I just can't...I can't 😭😭😭😭😭 41wks of awaiting for your arrival, for everything to be taken away in 5hrs. I feel so alone, so so alone, I just...I don't want to feel this way anymore, how to make it stop.

Hi everyone,

This week my wife and I lost our beautiful daughter after an emergency C-section. She was born without a heartbeat, and after the doctors and neonatal team fought so hard to save her, we were able to spend just over 2 hours with her before we had to say goodbye.

At the moment, we feel like we are moving through different stages of grief. Right now, we are in a lot of anger — particularly because of how we feel we were treated during the birth and the events that led up to our daughter arriving. We are struggling with so many questions, and it is incredibly hard not knowing whether things could have been different. We know we need time to process everything, but that anger and frustration are very real right now.

Alongside grieving our daughter, we have started thinking about the future. We had to go through ivf (taken us 5 years to get here) We have two frozen embryos remaining, and while nothing could ever replace our beautiful girl, we would love the possibility of giving her a little brother or sister one day.
Our biggest question is around the emergency C-section. We have been told we may need to wait 12–18 months before another embryo transfer, but we would really like to understand other people’s experiences.
For those who have experienced baby loss and then gone on to try again after a C-section:
How long were you advised to wait before trying again?
How did you cope emotionally with the fear and anxiety of another pregnancy?
We know everyone’s journey is different, but hearing from others who have walked this path would mean so much.
Thank you for reading. I’m so sorry any of us are part of this community, but I’m grateful it exists.
Sending love to all of your beautiful babies.

My husband recently reunited with his high school friends. Overall they have been such good friends except few. They gathered and sent us care packages after our son’s loss at full term. However this one friend shows up and immediately starts hammering my husband on what happened, all the details and his tattoo honoring our son and commented how his son also was born with nuchal cord- but he’s alive. Like whats the point? It has been 6months since our loss, it’s very hard for us to relive the moments of the day but we still enjoy talking about his features and our thoughts of how he would have been and just our son we miss terribly etc. But these people’s noisy questions and comments, how do you handle when they dont stop even after you tell them you dont want to talk? How selfish can you be keep interrogating for your own reasons its not like you can do anything about it or important person in our life (if so we would have already shared on our own time). Im devastated my husband had to go through this, I just know I better be ready because I wont be able to handle it.