Resource for Perinatal Loss Ministry
Resolve Through Sharing (RTS) is an in-depth, multi-layered resource for chaplains who want to learn how to provide meaningful support to patients who have experienced a pregnancy loss.
“RTS Bereavement Training: Perinatal Death” is a 10-hour online training program that focuses on caring for families experiencing early pregnancy loss, ectopic pregnancy, life-limiting diagnosis, stillbirth and newborn death. Topics include foundational relationship-based concepts and theories, grief and bereavement, communication skills, meaning-making projects, perinatal mental health, self-care and more.
Using Bowlby’s attachment theory, we learn that attachment can begin the moment the couple learns they are pregnant. Especially if a late-trimester pregnancy ends in loss, the parents need to be given the opportunity to continue that attachment as long as possible. This can be done by allowing them to keep the baby in the room, as well as to hold and bathe the baby. Chaplains can provide supportive spiritual care by providing a naming and blessing ritual that acknowledges the importance of the baby’s existence as part of the family. Empirical studies show higher satisfaction of hospital care when the family is allowed to spend time with the baby as opposed to someone whisking the baby out of the room immediately after birth to “protect” the family from seeing their deceased baby.
Care providers also need to consider the dynamics when a loss occurs with a “non-traditional” patient. For example, LGBTQ partners often feel invisible, and thus they feel de-legitimized and/or experience disenfranchised grief. Teenaged mothers may have oscillating feelings of relief and grief. Grandparents may undergo compounded grief – not only the loss of their grandbaby but also the sadness they feel for their adult children.
RTS offers other bereavement training programs, including adult death and neonatal and pediatric death. In addition, the website provides position papers addressing unique bereavement issues and topics that may be helpful for hospitals and care providers. The web address is resolvethroughsharing.org.
