Joann O’Leary PhD. Pregnancy and Parenting after Loss

My guest today is Dr. Joann O’Leary, who holds a Masters Degree in Maternal-Child Health from the University of MN and a Masters in Psychology from Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Joann has published 5 books including 
Different Baby, Different Story: Pregnancy and Parenting after Loss
2020
Meeting the Needs of Parents Pregnant and Parenting After Perinatal Loss
2016
Pregnancy After Loss: A Descriptive Phenomenological Study Of Parenting A Subsequent Baby Following A Perinatal Loss
2010
After Loss: Parenting in the Next Pregnancy: A Manual for Professionals Working With Families in Pregnancy Following Loss
1998
A parent involvement program for preschool children with special needs
1978
Joann does research and writing on prenatal parenting, and the impact on parents and siblings and on the child born after the loss of a baby.

How it all started 35 years ago. Joann and Linda Parker, a nurse, led their first pregnancy after loss group. “We were going to do it twice a month, like most infant loss group, but the parents were like, Oh, my God, we can't wait another two weeks. We want to come next week too. And when they left Linda being the clinical nurse specialist said, did you see all those moms with high risk pregnancies? And I said, did you see all those babies with attachment disorders because I envisioned all these little babies in their mothers’ wombs, saying I'm here, I'm here, because the moms weren't paying attention, they were afraid to embrace this new baby. And so that's kind of how our program started.”

She works with grief and attachment at the same time. Because it's a whole new layer of grief when parents become pregnant again, because they think they're going to be so excited to have this baby. Of course, it just brings up Oh, my God, this baby could die too.

Joann’s approach, in a nutshell, is showing pregnant parents after a loss how they can still be parents to their deceased baby while working to embrace this new unborn baby.

I asked her whether she thought think that her work had influenced physicians’ attitudes towards pregnancy and pregnancy loss since physicians usually are just interested in the physical aspects of a baby. How much does it weigh, what is the Apgar score, stuff like that? And they don't give a hoot about the psychological emotional aspects of pregnancy and births? Joann obviously does. Her answer was not encouraging.

“I wish I could say yes. But I'm afraid I can't. The perinatologists
 that I worked with, they always still thought I did a grief group. Right? They never understood that it was a group to build attachment. Right. And we have very, very few physicians that come to our presentations. Very few.”

We spoke of embodied grief. How grief stays in the body and the importance of releasing it with massage, Reiki, other types of body work.

Joann says that the babies that have been in her groups have been observed to be sensitive, caring adults. They have  learned about grief in utero. Their teachers report that they're the first child in class to reach out to children with special needs. Parents and teachers agree that they're just wonderful, caring people.

Joann can be reached at [e-mail]. 

My next week’s guest, will be Dr. Steven Cole, Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science in the UCLA School of Medicine with whom I will discuss  the molecular pathways by whi

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