137: How to Survive Mother's Day After Losing Your Baby

If you can already feel it, the tightness in your chest, the heaviness settling into your bones weeks before the day actually arrives, I want you to know something right away. Dreading Mother's Day after stillbirth is one of the most normal things you could be feeling right now. You are not being dramatic. You are not being ungrateful. You are not failing at grief.

You are a mom whose baby is not here, and a holiday built around motherhood is barreling toward you whether you are ready for it or not.

This post is not going to try to fix Mother's Day for you. There is no fix. What I can do is sit with you in the truth of what this day brings up, and remind you that whatever you are feeling about it makes complete sense.

The Dread Starts Long Before the Day Itself

Here is something that took me a long time to put a name to, even though I felt it for years before I knew what it was. It is called anticipatory grief, and it is very real.

The dread you feel weeks ahead of Mother's Day is not in your head. Your body remembers. Your heart remembers. And your nervous system braces for impact long before the calendar catches up.

For me, it was not just dates. It was the smell of the air around the time I was pregnant with my twin girls and the time I lost them. That seasonal shift would settle in my body as grief before I could even name what was happening. I just felt heavy. I felt sad. And then I would look at the calendar and remember why.

The same thing happens with Mother's Day. It is not just one day. It is weeks of seeing the moms in commercials, the brunch promos, the flower ads, the "best mom ever" posts on social media. Your body starts bracing before you fully know what is happening. And that bracing is exhausting.

Here is the relief I want you to hold onto. Often, the actual day is not as bad as the lead-up. Anticipation tends to be heavier than the reality. That is not a guarantee, but it is something I have seen over and over again, both in my own life and in the lives of the moms I work with.

The Guilt That Sneaks in Right Behind the Dread

Then comes the second wave, the guilt.

You feel guilty for dreading a day that is supposed to be beautiful. I remember telling my husband, "I just don't want to celebrate Mother's Day at all. Why do I even have to do it?" And the moment those words left my mouth, the guilt rolled in.

I had my mother. I had my grandmother. I had my living children who wanted to celebrate me. There was so much love around me, and yet I could not summon the energy to want any of it. And I felt awful about that.

If you are feeling pulled in a hundred directions, like you are supposed to celebrate everyone else but you cannot bear to be celebrated yourself, you are not alone. If you are wondering whether participating in Mother's Day at all is somehow disloyal to your baby, that thought makes sense too. None of these feelings make you a bad mother, a bad daughter, or a bad person.

They make you a grieving mom trying to figure out an impossible day.

The Quiet Question Underneath It All

There is another thought that often shows up around Mother's Day after baby loss, and it is one of the hardest ones to say out loud.

If I do not celebrate it at all, does that mean I was never really a mother?

That question can sit in the chest like a stone. You are a mother. Your baby was real. Your love is real. Whether or not you mark this Mother's Day in any traditional way does not change that. Nothing changes that.

But the fact that the question even shows up tells you how complicated this day is. It is not a simple holiday for you. It is layered with love, loss, longing, and the ache of being a mother to a baby who is not in your arms.

The Pressure Coming at You From All Sides

On top of your own internal struggle, there is the outside pressure too. Your family wants to do brunch. Your friend group sends cheerful Mother's Day wishes around the group text and they include you, but they were not sure if they should, and honestly you are not sure if you wanted them to either.

Your partner does not know what to do. Should they wish you a happy Mother's Day? Should they try to make the day disappear? Should they ignore it altogether? They are guessing. They love you and they are guessing.

And in the middle of all of it, you can feel deeply, deeply alone. Surrounded by people who care about you and still completely isolated in what this day actually means for you.

Permission for the Things You Are Already Thinking

So let me give you explicit permission to think the thoughts you are already thinking.

I hate this day. I wish I could skip it. I don't feel like a mom. I feel like everyone forgot.

You are allowed to think every single one of those things. None of them mean anything bad about you. None of them mean you are doing grief wrong. They mean you are honest, and they mean this day is genuinely hard.

What you actually need more than anything is permission to decide what Mother's Day looks like for you. Not for your mother-in-law. Not for your friend group. Not for the version of yourself you think you are supposed to be by now.

If no one else were standing there with brunch invitations or flowers or expectations, what would Mother's Day look like for you? Would you want to do something quiet to honor your baby? Would you want to take the whole day off from everyone? Would you want a small ritual that belongs only to you?

You are allowed to choose. You can say no to plans. You can leave early. You can light a candle. You can stay in bed. You can do something that has nothing to do with traditional Mother's Day at all. You do not owe anyone an explanation for any of it.

A Gentle Word About Planning Ahead

The one thing I want to encourage you to do, and the one thing that has helped me and the moms I work with the most, is to plan ahead a little.

Not to control the day. You cannot control the day. But to think about it before it arrives so you are not blindsided.

Who might be there? What might they say? How do you want to handle it if a family member says something well-meaning but painful? If you go to brunch, what are your boundaries? If you decide not to go, how do you want to decline?

Even just thinking through these things in advance can lift so much weight. The hard moments are still hard, but they are no longer ambushes. You have already imagined them. You already know what you want to do. That kind of gentle preparation can make the difference between surviving the day and getting through it with your sense of self intact.

You Get to Decide What This Day Means

If you take one thing away from this, let it be this. Mother's Day after stillbirth does not have to look like anyone else's Mother's Day. It does not have to look like your Mother's Day from before. It does not have to look like the Mother's Day people around you are expecting you to have.

It gets to be yours. Quiet, loud, private, shared, traditional, untraditional, painful, peaceful, all of those things in the same hour. Whatever it needs to be.

You are a mother. Your baby is a part of you. And however you choose to move through this day, you are doing it as the loving, grieving, courageous mother you have always been.

If you want a little more support as you plan for the hard days ahead, I'd love to invite you into my Stillbirth Roadmap Experience. It is a 10-day experience where I send you bite-sized lessons straight to your inbox on how to cope with the things that come up most: handling comments from other people, reconnecting with your partner, planning for the days you know are going to be heavy, and so much more. At the end, you and I sit down together for a personal call to talk through what you got out of it and what you need next. You can learn more at navigatingbabyloss.com/roadmap.

Until then, I am sending you so much love. Take care of yourself this Mother's Day. And remember, you get to decide what this day means.