Mother calls for support for physical grief after daughter’s death

When Sandra Vlachakis lost her daughter Sonja after just five days, her body struggled to understand that the newborn was gone, DR reports. She had undergone an emergency caesarean section, and her milk came in on the morning her daughter died.

Vlachakis received six months of bereavement leave after Sonja’s death on Mother’s Day last year. She says the physical effects of losing a child are not discussed enough.

“My milk came in the morning my daughter died,” Vlachakis said on the radio programme P1 Morgen.

Vlachakis, who is an artist and entrepreneur, has written in the newspaper Politiken that the body and grief cannot be separated. She questioned why the doctors, psychologists, therapists, nurses and health visitors she met did not talk about motherhood.

Feeling homeless in motherhood

During the first six weeks, Vlachakis received help from a grief group, grief therapy and a crisis psychologist. The support helped, but she felt something was missing.

She said she had gained a completely new identity as a mother, but that nobody could see it and that it was not the subject of conversations about her grief.

Instead, she was often told that joy and meaning in life would eventually return. This left her feeling “homeless” in motherhood.

“There is something so physical about losing your child. When your child is buried in the ground, part of you simply wants to go down there and lie with your child,” she said.

For Vlachakis, visits to the cemetery are a way to maintain her relationship with Sonja and remember her.

Grief can cause physical pain

For a long time, Vlachakis felt unable to sit still. Her body had spent nine months preparing to perform the tasks of motherhood and care for her child.

She described the physical longing as overwhelming, with thoughts of breastfeeding, putting her child to bed, taking her for walks and making sure she was well.

Dorte Hvidtjørn, a lecturer and PhD researcher at Aarhus University who has worked as a midwife for 30 years, said this was a natural reaction to losing a child. She has researched loss during pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period for more than 10 years and interviewed 1,500 women and partners.

“It is a very, very physical experience because the body is so prepared to be a mother and care for that child,” Hvidtjørn said on P1 Morgen.

She said grief in general was physical, but that this aspect had not received enough attention. It can cause pain in the heart, pressure in the chest, stomach pain and tension in the shoulders, she said, and these symptoms can last for a long time.

A bodily and instinctive longing

Hvidtjørn said grief after losing a child clearly differs from other forms of grief. Once a woman has given birth, she is a mother regardless of whether the child is alive or dead, and the love for the child is just as strong, she said.

After childbirth, the body goes through the same processes as it would if the child were alive. In the following months, it has to return to its previous state. This can include bleeding, pain from a stitched tear, engorged breasts when the milk comes in and difficulty controlling urination.

Hvidtjørn said there was a need to describe the “almost instinctive longing” that can accompany such a loss.

Vlachakis said the sound she made while crying in the first period after her daughter’s death felt instinctive. “There is no sound like the one you make when you have lost your child,” she said.

She wants healthcare providers and politicians to develop more services that address the body as well as the mind. She did not feel able to join postnatal rehabilitation classes because she would have been among mothers whose worst nightmare had come true.

Vlachakis meets other women who have lost a child and facilitates activities including ceramics classes and exercise for bereaved mothers.

DR contacted Danske Regioner for its response to her criticism of the healthcare system, but the organisation had not replied by the time the article was published.