Show Your Support

When someone you love is in the throes of fertility struggles, choosing the right words or actions is tough. To help, WH gathered advice from professionals and women who've been there.

The first and loudest phrase you'll likely hear if you talk to someone who has experienced pregnancy loss or infertility is: It's so isolating. No matter your situation, so much can feel, well, gone: pregnancy, a baby, but also control, how you thought your life would look, and trust in your body. That's why it makes total sense to approach fertility challenges, as well as pregnancy and perinatal loss, through a grief lens, says Dvora Entin, LCSW, a specialist in perinatal and reproductive mental health.

Yet while we tend to sit with people's pain in other areas of life attending funerals and honoring those we've lost-too often these specific types of struggles are met with a flood of pat, inappropriate, nonempathetic responses: "You'll get pregnant again!" "At least you have another child." "This happened for a reason." Loss is often invalidated, which compounds feelings of aloneness. "People wind up thinking, I'm not going to tell anybody about this because no one is going to get it," says Entin.

About 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage before the 20th week; in the U.S., among heterosexual women ages 15 to 49 years with no prior births, about 19 percent are unable to get pregnant after a year of trying. So, yes, fertility issues are common-and so is not knowing what to say to communicate thoughtfulness and sensitivity to a loved one experiencing them.

To lead you through the waters, WH spoke to perinatal mental health professionals and people who have faced loss or infertility.

DO SAY, "I'm Here"

Erin Erenberg, a mom of three in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and cofounder of The Chamber of Mothers, recalls "something very specific" a friend said to her that meant the world: "Losing a baby is a very lonely kind of loss. I'm here if you want to talk." Erenberg adds, "Those words rang so true to me."