The other week, I wrote about how no two experiences of grief are ever the same; that even the grief from losing one child can be completely different to that of losing another child.

Basically, grief can’t be compared. There is no scale or measure that can ever quantify the depth of pain someone feels when they lose someone they love. This is especially true for a mother who has lost a child, no matter how long she carried, knew, or held them.

And yet the sad truth is that in this world, and even within the grief community, there is often an unspoken comparison when it comes to mothers: Is it harder to lose a baby in pregnancy or after birth? Does the time we have together determine the depth of the loss and therefore the amount of pain we feel?

Unfortunately, I have known both types of loss – I’ve had two miscarriages (one known, one suspected), and we also lost our youngest son unexpectedly at 7 months old – and from my experiences, what I can tell you is that they both are heartbreakingly painful in their own way. Most importantly, both types of grief are just as real, valid, and worthy of their own stories.

Today’s blog post is not a comparison game. You can’t compare them because they sit on entirely different timelines of motherhood. Instead, today’s post is a conversation about recognition and understanding that despite their differences, both types of loss land in the same place: a mother’s heart.

First, let’s look at miscarriage, early pregnancy loss, or loss before birth. This type of grief is wrapped in dreams and hopes. You grieve the child and the life you were already imagining; what should have been. It's bad enough that pregnancy loss involves the trauma of physical pain and sometimes medical procedures or emergency care, but it’s also a very invisible loss because in most cases, you feel like you have nothing to show for it.

Some mums never got the chance to hear a heartbeat, to get a first scan picture, or feel a first kick. They might not even have had the chance to share the news before they experienced the loss! And especially if this was your first child, you’re then stuck in a purgatory state of “Am I even allowed to call myself a real mum?”

And because the world didn’t get to “meet” your baby, sometimes people unintentionally minimise your loss. “You can always try again.” “At least it happened early.” “These things happen for a reason.” Those are just some of the things that were said to me, but the worst was a few months later, “You’re still upset about that?”

Then, we have child loss, or basically loss after birth (because whether they were an infant, a young child, a teenager, or an adult, they were still your child). This kind of grief burns through every layer of life, and every fibre of your being. It’s not just dreams and hopes, but memories as well; you’re grieving who your child was and everything you lived with them, but also a future with them that you will now never have.

It's different from loss before/at birth in that your child got to live in the world, meet people, leave footprints – so now there’s a very noticeable hole, and the realisation that life will never look the same again. There’s still trauma, although it’s more mental and emotional rather than physical like with pregnancy loss and stillbirths.

And although people are a bit more tactful in what they say (ie they don’t expect you to “try again” or “replace” the child you lost), they can still say things that hurt and upset you. Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, some people say nothing at all and walk out of your life because they don’t know how to handle what you’re going through.

So you can see that both types of losses – before/at and after birth – are different in their own ways, but there are shared threads between them, the biggest one of all being:

You’ve lost a baby you LOVED.

Both types of grief carry the loss of future dreams and hopes. Both losses also include the loss of a piece of yourself; reshaping your world, and forcing you to have to rebuild yourself from the inside out. Both losses will change your life and motherhood journey forever. And again, both losses are real, valid, and deserve compassion, acknowledgement, space, and support.

The truth is that every mother’s grief story is deeply personal and unique. There is no “less than”, “not as deep” or “not really real”. There’s no competition in loss.

So, if you’re a mother who’s navigating grief and loss right now, I just want you to know:

1. I am so sorry for your loss.

2. You are not alone.

3. You're allowed to grieve: the positive pregnancy test, the first kicks you never felt, the baby you got to hold, the child whose laugh you can still hear in your head, the milestones you will never see, the life you imagined that will never come to pass.

4. Nobody gets to tell you how to grieve – they don’t get to measure or compare, to tell you how to heal or how long it should take. Your grief is yours.

5. You’re allowed to talk about it even if it makes other people uncomfortable – that’s on them, not you. This world needs more grief-awareness anyway.

6. Your story matters because your baby matters, and because you matter.

7. Whether you have babies on this earth or babies with wings, you are a mother because your heart knows a mother’s love. Nobody can take that away from you.

And if you’re everyone else, then I hope this blog post has helped you to understand a mother’s grief. To help you hold space for them and consider how you respond or react to them in their grief. To remember that love doesn’t start or end at birth, and that every mother who has loved and lost deserves compassion and support.

All loss is loss.