Women's voices after pregnancy loss: couples' patterns of communication and support

Abstract

This paper reports results of a study of prenatal diagnosis patients who lost pregnancies. The women felt they shared much in common with their male partners and generally felt understood and supported by the men. However, many of the women also saw their responses to the loss as different from those of their male partners. A variety of coping patterns were adopted by the women in the face of these differences. Implications are considered for preventive efforts to minimize distress; treatment approaches to help couples who experience greater difficulties; and future research directions.

PIP: To study women's emotional and coping response after loss of pregnancy, a group of 121 women who had participated in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development collaborative Chorionic Villus Sampling and Amniocentesis Study and who had elective abortion or miscarriage were interviewed. The group was mainly white, married, university educated, and affluent. They lost their pregnancy at mean 13.7 weeks gestation. They were interviewed with a semi structured telephone interview at 1-2 and again at 6 months after the event. The quality of the marriage was judged by the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, and each women also completed a Partner Support Scale and the Profile of Mood States. The women's scores on partner support were close to the norm soon after the loss, but declined slightly (p = .03) at 6 months. Qualitative results of the interviews pointed out several differences in the experience between women and their partners: women experienced the pain, inconvenience, and physical recovery; women felt grief for a longer period, and they tended to express their feelings verbally. Women noted that men often either expressed less distress or were less verbal. Men's coping styles included intellectualizing and physical acting-out, e.g., purchasing a motorcycle. Descriptions of couples' coping patterns evidenced some struggle in achieving understanding after the loss. These interviews suggest that most couples who lose a pregnancy do not need therapeutic intervention from a mental health provider, but some may benefit by supportive follow-up, education about the impact of genetic disorders on families, and assistance on decisions about future pregnancies or dealing with the decision not to have children.