What if feelings you thought you'd worked through come back?

*Trigger miscarriage story* I'm looking for support and advice.

Two years ago I went to therapy to deal with a miscarriage I had in 2016. A lot of my feelings were centred around a c*** of a midwife who never got back to me when I started bleeding, and as a consequence I had an incredibly painful and traumatic miscarriage at home where I was left unable to walk for the better part of a week. I ended up storing my baby in Tupperware in the freezer, because I literally didn't know what else to do. After a couple of months I got in touch with the bereavement midwives at my hospital and they were helpful and lovely and eventually took my baby to be buried and organised a memorial service.

It took me until January of this year to get pregnant again. I have a really wonderful midwife this time, mostly because I called the bereavement midwives at the hospital and threw a stink -- there was absolutely no way I was going back to the same midwife who was still at my doctor's surgery.

So this week my new midwife informs me I have AB negative blood, and because of that I'll need a shot at 28 weeks to protect the baby in case it has a positive blood type. My midwife also told me they provide this shot after any pregnancy (including miscarriages) to women with a negative blood type as it protects future pregnancies.

My first midwife never organised this shot after my miscarriage, and I'd had blood tests done so she would have known my blood type. I'm back to how I felt three years ago. She didn't care about the first baby and now she's put the health of this one in needless danger because of her incompetence. I feel like she's crept out of the past into the now.

Feelings I thought I'd made some peace with have completely resurfaced, and I don't know what to do. My therapist and I had a falling out, so there's no way I'd contact him. I don't want to discuss this with anybody IRL, as I've found most people are, at best, clueless about the toll loss and infertility takes on you.

But I genuinely need to know what do. My old midwife works in the same building as my new one, and I'm dreading going to my appointments now. Has anyone had something they thought they worked through (whether in therapy or not) come back?

I’m so sorry for your loss!

I don’t think it’s unusual to feel like something is resolved in the moment, but have it triggered out later in a painful way.

At least in my experience, I haven’t found therapy to be the place to work through past events in a way where they totally lose their power. However it can be a good place to seek support, feel heard, and work on skills to manage and tolerate difficult emotions going forward.

I think in this situation, having SOME historical emotion behind your maternal care is a good thing. You’ve suffered tragedy and experience is making you appropriately vigilant. Though I recommend finding someone to talk to if you feel like it would help. I’ve learned that even the worst emotions pass with time, so hang in there.

I had a difficult medical experience with miscarriage on my first pregnancy, with a clueless resident (no slam intended on residents in general). I don't think the medical system deals well with pregnancy loss. During my next pregnancy, resulting in a healthy baby, I revisited that experience many times, especially when I had some complications that turned me into a high risk and I had to switch from the midwives to an OB (who, it turns out, I loved).

However, I did have a different experience (than you) talking with friends about it. I found almost everyone supportive and understanding, and so many of those had losses themselves. I also found incredible support in a therapist who was something of a specialist in infertility issues, and I saw her for a few months until I delivered. Might you consider seeking out a new therapist, perhaps a woman with children and/or pregnancy loss, to try out to see if that support might help you?

I just think it's very normal to be angry and distressed by what happened. I also think it would help to talk about it. In my community there are also infertility/loss support groups, although you might not fit now that you're pregnant. I can understand if you want to swear off all therapy based on your prior experience, but I think it might be worth a try, one session, no commitment. IMO

I am so sorry for your loss.

I'm not sure that working through loss in therapy is a one-time thing. My t often says that issues and griefs cycle around. Each time they come up for us, we take another bite, process a little more, come to a new understanding, and each time that happens it becomes less large.

((tn)) I can imagine that this new information makes the grief and loss and anger come right back. Of course it does. I agree with Anne about finding a support group, connecting with others who will understand what you're experiencing. Your current midwife sounds lovely, as does the group of bereavement midwives. I'd expect that they would be well acquainted with community resources and could offer you some kind of referral to a group or have some ideas that might be helpful.

Hi all,

Thank you for your kind replies and thoughts.

I'm not the kind of person who would swear off therapy forever -- my experiences in therapy have been both good and bad, and I don't think there's any reason to assume all therapy experiences would be the same, or that I'll feel this way five years from now. It's more that I don't feel like therapy is right for me at this point in time.

My husband and I are saving as much as we can so we have a good buffer until our child turns three, when the government pays most of the cost of childcare. I also live in a fairly small town, and there's nobody local who specialises in loss/infertility.

I think I'll take Fuzzy socks' suggestion and ask the bereavement midwives if there are any groups I could go to. I've always felt like I didn't fit into a group -- there are groups for infertility or miscarriage, but not one for people who go through both. People I've spoken to have generally experienced one or the other, and I don't know how to explain that the two together is an entirely new grief. Honestly, I feel like the world is setting me up for a hat trick right now: stillbirth.

My midwife is lovely but she's basically got enough time to take my blood, urine sample, weight, and listen to the baby's heartbeat. It's not really set up for the emotional stuff. She knows my history because I refused to see the midwife at my regular surgery and our appointments were made by the bereavement midwives. She's sensitive, but it's not really her job to go deeply into the emotional side.

I also have one lovely friend who's had two losses herself who was and is supportive. It's more that I feel when I've taken the chance of telling other friends or work colleagues or fertility docs, I've had everything from kindness to extreme insensitivity. My fertility Doc's comment to me was to "do IVF now. I don't want to have you in my office crying that you can't have a baby a year from now because your blood levels make you ineligible". Opening up feels like a massive gamble.

But I'll start by talking to the bereavement midwives. Now that I'm showing and my colleagues know, I'm finding it harder. Well meaning people who don't know the history sort of just assume everything will be fine. And the people who do know often act like this is the *first* baby, which is definitely isn't. The first baby meant as much as this one. It felt like a different soul. This is my second child and I don't know how to explain that.

To me this baby *might* happen. And the *might* is an even bigger possibility now, thanks to midwife 1.

I used to think that when I worked through something, that would be the end of it. Then, after many more years of therapy, I came to know that some things come back, over and over, for some people. I don't see it as a bad thing; I just work through it some more, and try to figure out what triggered it (once, or repeatedly).

I'm sorry you had a miscarriage.

I'm AB Negative, too, and had my baby just BEFORE the shot (to prevent problems) was "invented." My daughter is A Positive (I believe). But she was ok. However, my obstetrician told me to wait a few years to consider having another child, because the Rh antibodies were really high in my system. I waited the suggested years and had another blood test done, and the antibodies were still there. So I was advised not to get pregnant again. I cried a long time after that. It wasn't a miscarriage, but it was still a loss. My daughter has grown into a beautiful woman in her mid-thirties and this coming weekend, we will celebrate the 4th birthday of her son. Being a grandmother has brought me joy in a way that wasn't understandable at all, prior to his birth.

I never really understand what it means to "work through" feelings, whether in therapy or elsewhere. If it means diving into them, analyzing where they come from, tracing cause-effect - that can lead to understanding, but understanding does not mean eradication. Even seeing things from a different perspective is unlikely to just erase feelings completely. As said above, feelings can be easily triggered unexpectedly, probably because emotional memory works via associations, that is how the brain stores them. So, as long as we actually remember events, the associated feelings have a chance to come back with them. My goal would not be getting rid of the feelings and possible discomfort, more learning new way how I react when they surface. New ways of distress tolerance and coping.