Abstract

The majority of couples who experience stillbirth will proceed to a pregnancy after loss, often within a very short timeframe of their index loss. We aimed to understand how couples, as a dyad, make sense of a subsequent pregnancy. We interviewed eight heterosexual couples, who were pregnant again in the immediate pregnancy after stillbirth, using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). IPA is a qualitative methodology which explores in detail how participants are making sense of their personal and social world. We generated two themes from the data: ‘Hoping for a born alive baby’ and ‘Journey of Loss. The first, was the aim of all of the couples in a pregnancy after stillbirth. Couples made sense of their experiences of pregnancy after loss via the lens of the death of their babies. In the second theme, ‘Journey of Loss’, couples spoke about the unexpected death of their babies, their experiences at the time of loss and in its aftermath, and the impact that these events had on them as a couple. Our findings will assist in the provision of appropriate support services for couples both at the time of loss and in the pregnancy that follows.