BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids help me try to understand this, please...

Wow, Elise, I don't even know what to say. I just hope that everything works out for everyone involved, without too much more heartache or issues.

Thanks, everybody, for your reflections on this complex situation. It really is a big help for me. Any of my co-workers or my friends who learn of G.'s second pregnancy light up with an immediate, knee-jerk smile...they just don't get it.

I've never heard it call a "rebound" baby, but I do think there is some truth to that. I had to analyze some data from Ethiopia for a class, and I found that women who had lost a child had more children than women who had not. And when you look at the major epidemiological transition in population, death rates fall first, then birth rates follow.

Based on those science based ideas and talking to women who miscarried or had an infant die of SIDS (my SIL), I do think that it sorta just flips a switch. So if the person wanted to be a Mom (even eventually, not when she accidentally got pregnant), I think after a death, that drive is intensified in a lot of people.

I just made up the "rebound" baby, but truly, I agree with what you're saying. I can understand it to a certain degree. When I lost my dog, it really helped me recover from the loss to get a new dog. It sounds callous to call it a replacement dog, but in truth it sort of is. Also, when I've had 2 dogs and lost one, I was especially grateful to still have one dog to hug.

To those lurking parents, I don't equate dogs with humans, it's just the closest analogy I have.

My friend did the same thing. She lost her older dog in April, and two weeks later she adopted a rescue puppy. It helped her get over the loss of her old dog. She also felt sorry for her remaining dog being alone. (Now that she has a pesky obnoxious puppy, I think the remaining dog would have been happier left alone! LOL!)

Cindy

I remember reading something a long time ago about a woman who had lost her teenage son in a car accident. She wrote about her grief and reactions in the days after the crash, and I particularly remember her saying that after the initial shock and grief, all she wanted to do was to have sex with her husband. Almost like she was subconsciously trying to replace the baby she lost.

Some sort of crazy biological response to the loss, maybe? Who knows. I just particularly remember it because I thought it was strange, and the writer did too...