Baby Loss Awareness - Stepping Stones in the Workplace
Summary
This event was inspired by this year’s theme of Stepping Stones, the focus is on the steps along the journey that families never expected to find themselves on, and how those steps are different for everyone.
This formed the basis of internal blogs and a more detailed personal blog as a framing device for talking through the different methods I have used since the death of my twin sons in 2011.
The event was not recorded as it featured personal stories that are not mine to share. This note provides some of the points I talked about of my own experience and addresses some of the questions asked during the event.
Stepping Stones
As stated in the blog, what works for me may not be something that works for others. What works will also change over time, with some things becoming less helpful over time and replaced by new approaches.
In the workplace
Much of what I have done is based on my experience after returning to work and helping support others, so they have a better time than I did, and equipping managers with the skills to manage with compassion and understanding.
Working as part of a staff network has been an important part of navigating grief, as a way of supporting others and creating tangible changes beyond awareness raising.
I have done this through working with others to develop guidance, policies, and events. I started by talking about my experience and then shifted my focus to the more practical skills for managers, taking a step removed from why I am doing this.
This is not without personal cost, being involved in staff network activity so deeply rooted in a personal experience is not easy and can risk being retraumatising.
My more recent work has been less about my personal experience. Having a network also allows this work to be shared across others, so we can take a break without guilt or fear that we will lose momentum in our absence. There is always the guilt that we should be doing more and that can lead to not taking a step back when it is needed. I have done that before and it was counterproductive and hugely damaging. Whatever we do is enough.
Taking leave
I was lucky enough to be able to take 7 weeks leave before returning to work. My team was supportive as I had booked this leave anyway even if I didn’t get to use it in the way that I expected.
I was also lucky that I did not have to fear that taking this time would be used against me negatively or damage my career prospects. I know that from speaking with others that this is not the norm. In conversations with HR about the impact of loss, I highlight examples of employment tribunals involving discrimination in cases of pregnancy loss to show the potential costs of getting this wrong and allowing behaviour like this to go unchallenged.
What do I need?
One question was on the other side of the coin, and how best to answer colleagues’ questions about what they could to help.
We discussed how it was OK to say that sometimes you don’t know what you need and that needs may change over time. It’s for this reason we stress to managers the importance of putting in check points to review whether any reasonable adjustments to work are still working.
For more on this, Modern Loss has a great article here.
Handling triggers in the workplace
Triggers can come from unexpected places and while we can take steps to minimise them, we can’t control when they may pop up.
Some suggestions were around excusing yourself from a meeting based on a work-related call / email that needs urgent attention. Once there’s been a chance to recover, then have a conversation to help colleagues understand why some things may be upsetting.
We talked about the importance of having a sense of where there is a quiet place in the office to take sanctuary in or a trusted colleague that can be with you during those times.
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Some of these triggers were around well-intentioned, but hurtful comments usually prefaced by “at least”.
We talked about the challenge of separating content from intent and trying to consider whether the intent was well-meant even if the delivery had unintentional consequences.
We reflected on how that may be harder to do depending on the circumstances.
Community
A big part of the initial shock is the feeling of isolation and fear of going mad. The tone of messages from the newly bereaved is often “does anyone else feel like this? Is this normal?”.
Finding others who have been through similar can help reassure that there are others and they have been through similar.
The communities for loss are as varied as the types of losses. They will differ in terms of the language they use, the approach they take and not all will suit all needs. Using networks can be a good way to find signposts to ones that may resonate with you.
It doesn’t always have to be loss-oriented groups. Some of the initial support I had was from a music forum as at the time I didn’t feel able to talk to friends and family.
Activism
Initially my grief was tempered by the knowledge that there was nothing we could have done to alter the outcome. This was the rock that helped keep me steady in the earlier days.
Sitting with other bereaved parents sharing their stories and experiences turned that rock to sand and I had to move to a new stone to avoid sinking. This marked a period of intense activity in maternity safety, learning about the research, getting involved in consultations and inquiries to add my voice.
Writing
I started my personal blog after the birth of my youngest daughter and at around the four year anniversary of my twin sons’s deaths. I had been hit by a sudden surge of grief, as hard as the initial loss and it left me fearing I had lost my mind. The way I managed that was to write a blog, getting everything down, every facet of the experience of loss of grief of parenting after loss, all of it. In the space of two weeks, I wrote around 30 blog posts.
Writing was a way to explore my grief, my understanding of it, and connect with others. Over time, it became less helpful and I became so practiced in telling the stories of their deaths I wasn’t telling the story of their lives. They didn’t get to live with us, but they did live, we saw them on scans, played songs and sang to them, made up stories for them. Telling stories of their lives humanises the medical terms that we use for these losses.
Resources
Our Knowledge Hub has a wide range of resources and materials accessible for use in your own events, and networks.
We also have a new LinkedIn group to share ideas and learn from each other as we all have very different stages of progress when it comes to supporting fertility and loss issues in the workplace.