In the U.S., around 21,000 babies are stillborn each year. That means about one in 175 pregnancies end in stillbirth. Most women who experience that loss become pregnant again within 12 months.
Jenny Albers is a 2025 Pulitzer Reporting Fellow and journalism graduate student at South Dakota State University. Her own experiences led her to investigate how other women navigate the emotional and physical trauma of pregnancy after loss.
A transcript of the interview follows:
JENNY ALBERS
I have had two pregnancy losses. It’s been many years, but it’s still a topic that’s close to my heart and that I just see so often now in my life.
The fellowship was focused on mental wellbeing in the U.S. And when I heard that, the light bulb went off. I think we can talk about mental wellbeing in relation to pregnancy loss.
I think we’re getting better at doing that. But something that often gets missed in that conversation is what comes next and what happens when you are pregnant again after a loss and how is that pregnancy impacted.
I was mildly aware of a clinic in New York City that has been open for a few years now that’s called the Rainbow Clinic. And this is a clinic that specifically focuses on women and families who are pregnant after loss, whether that’s a stillbirth that the family has experienced, whether it’s a miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, different kinds of losses that kind of fall under that umbrella of unintended pregnancy loss.
LORI WALSH
We’re going to get into your reporting in a minute. But one of the things I learned from the reporting I want to circle back on is humanizing the experience by asking the name of your children. So you mentioned two losses. Will you tell us your baby’s names?
JENNY ALBERS
Yes, thank you. One of them I did not name. It was a very early loss, and that was a personal decision. And my second loss, we named Micah.
LORI WALSH
Micah.
JENNY ALBERS
Yes.
LORI WALSH
Why is that important? As you experienced that and as you talked to other women who have experienced this?
JENNY ALBERS
Because I know that it’s their baby. This is not an idea of a baby for these women. This is a baby. And many of them told me this was a member of their family that they expected to bring home that they went through an entire pregnancy with that did not come home. And it really validates their experience of loss and grief.
LORI WALSH
So many women … first of all, the statistics, do you know them off the top of your head?
JENNY ALBERS
Yeah, it’s approximately one in four.
LORI WALSH
That seems like a shockingly high number for as often as we talk about it.
JENNY ALBERS
Right.
LORI WALSH
Which means so many people are not ever talking about it.
JENNY ALBERS
Yes. One in four pregnancies will end in loss.
LORI WALSH
One in four pregnancies will end in loss.
You talk to women in New York. This Rainbow Clinic is where you find some of the people who are experiencing the clinic’s specialized treatment.
Some of the words that they use to describe being pregnant after the loss are: Terrifying. Harrowing. Petrifying. They’re suffering from PTSD, paralyzing anxiety, hyper-vigilance. This is an agonizing experience.
Tell me a little bit about what you learned from these women you talked to.
JENNY ALBERS
I learned that they are not okay. I think culturally — And even when we’re talking with and about medical providers — we tend to think you’re pregnant again, that’s what you wanted. This is gonna be great, you get a second chance.
But these are women who have experienced the worst outcome for a child who they wanted, who they loved, who they were ready to bring home, and they didn’t get to do that.
And so when you have lost a baby, whether it’s 12 weeks, 36 weeks, 40 weeks, you’re aware that pregnancy doesn’t always end in bringing a baby home, and they carry that grief and they carry that trauma with them into a new pregnancy.
I always tell people, imagine you go into your 12-week appointment, are told there is no heartbeat, walk back out, and you’re surrounded by pregnant women sitting in a waiting room, and you hear crying babies sitting in that waiting room.
That’s traumatic. Or when you have a stillbirth, at 40 weeks, and you leave the hospital without a baby. Meanwhile, you have other women carrying their newborn babies out. You hear other women laboring. You hear newborn babies crying, and your room is silent.
That’s traumatic, not to mention the physical aspect of that, your body giving birth, going through postpartum, not having a baby after that. Your body still has delivered a baby.
The whole experience is traumatic, which leads these women to say that their next pregnancy or to describe that is harrowing.
They’re terrified that they’re going to have to go through that again. They haven’t forgotten. They remember every time they go into a hospital ultrasound room checkup.
LORI WALSH
And that creates a hypervigilance, too, of maybe wanting to see a doctor more often or wanting more reassurance or more updates about a pregnancy.
It’s not quite as easy to say, “Go home, your body knows what to do, relax into it.”
So let’s talk about the Rainbow Clinic in New York that you visited and how they are meeting some of those unique individual needs.
JENNY ALBERS
Sure. I will say there are two things that really stood out in each woman that I talked to. While the story focuses on one woman, I talked to several who had been patients there.
They have at least weekly appointments if they want them, which is a huge comfort for to the patients. They don’t have to wait for four weeks to see how their baby is doing.
Something else that I learned that I actually wasn’t aware of too, that is once you’ve had a stillbirth, you actually are at a higher risk than the general population of having another stillbirth. And so that is something that many of these women carry with them into another pregnancy. And so the Rainbow Clinic … there’s many reasons that it exists, but one of them is, of course, to reduce recurrent loss, reduce recurrent stillbirth.
And so they are there to check on the baby, but also to check in with the mom and ease some of that anxiety, even if it’s just temporary. So the weekly appointments was a big deal.
And then they also have a peer-to-peer mentoring program where they will pair up. um, previous patients of the Rainbow Clinic with current patients of the Rainbow Clinic, which is huge because when you don’t have … I will say that a lot of women who are pregnant after less don’t have like access to therapy and things like that.
When you don’t have a lot of resources, the next best thing, as I mentioned in my story is having someone who understands and having someone who can support you fully through your experience because they have been through it themselves.
LORI WALSH
One of the most effective therapies is EMDR, which is a specialized therapy with … eye movement?
JENNY ALBERS
Yeah, it’s eye movement.
LORI WALSH
So if you are resourced and have access to that in your community, which most people don’t, there’s data that shows that can be very helpful for PTSD, for embodied trauma.
And that’s exactly what this is, is a deeply embodied trauma.
JENNY ALBERS
Right. Yes, and so that is super effective treatment. Talking with therapists who do that, they specifically see women who are pregnant after loss and who have had that kind of trauma in their life. But again, it’s not realistic to think that most women are going to have access to that.
LORI WALSH
How did you approach, as a journalist, entering into these women’s lives and doing trauma-informed interviewing?
JENNY ALBERS
Well, it wasn’t quite as tricky as I thought it was going to be. I think probably because I was able to share a little bit of my experience. But I found these women by contacting the Rainbow Clinic. These are the women who responded that they were willing to talk with me.
What I believe ever since my own experience of loss and moving forward, and doing this story it’s proven to be true, that I think women want to talk.
That’s not always the case. Not everyone wants to. But we’ve kind of been told not to. And we’ve kind of been told just to be silent and move on. And I think women don’t want to do that anymore.
I was grateful and I was honored that so many women who had been patients there were willing to speak with me. We started off through email. Then phone calls, and I was surprised at the depth of those phone calls and how long they went on for. Not just a quick 15 minutes, but we’re talking hours.
They want to tell their story. They don’t want this for other women. They want to see change. And then I had the opportunity to fly to New York City to meet some of them in person and sit down with them and see their tears and see that even though they have living children now, they are still impacted by the losses of their children.
JENNY ALBERS
There are going to be people listening to our conversation in rural South Dakota who have this as an experience. And, well, when we’re done talking, some of them have nothing to, no one to call.
You’ve written a book called Courageously Expecting. So you’ve thought this through as an author and as a person who’s lived it and as a journalist.
If you listen to this conversation and you’re in tears, what do you do next? What are some of the ways that you can begin, especially in a rural or under-resourced community, or if you’re just not ready to make a phone call, what are some of the things that you can start doing?
JENNY ALBERS
I would say one of the biggest resources that it’s kind of like a love-hate thing is social media. There are so many women talking about their experiences there. And honestly, 10, 15 years ago, that’s where I found comfort.
I can also tell them there’s an organization that they can still find online, Pregnancy After Loss Support.
RTZ Hope has now taken over Pregnancy After Loss Support, but they have online support groups, virtual support groups.
You can listen in if you don’t want to speak. No forcing to participate in ways you don’t want to participate in, but utilize internet access. It’s there.
Books are great too. I’m not sure about Sioux Falls and resources available specific to pregnancy after loss.
I know hospitals have loss groups. but pregnancy after loss is a little different. So online and books, those are my two.
LORI WALSH
Talk to a librarian. If you don’t have the internet and you have a community library, that is a great place to start and ask for resources about pregnancy after loss.
If you’re listening to someone and you know that that is their story, what are some ways that you can be supportive? What have people done to be supportive of you in your life that has meaning?
Because I feel like a lot of people don’t say anything because it’s so easy to get this wrong.
JENNY ALBERS
It’s easy to get it wrong, but I think it’s worse to not say anything. It’s better to acknowledge. You know, when we’re talking about pregnancy after loss, I think it’s great just to ask, how are you doing? And acknowledge that this must be hard.
Acknowledge that they have lost a baby still, even though they’re pregnant again. Say the name of their child. This is a little bit lighthearted, but don’t pressure them to have baby showers. Don’t pressure them to do things that you want to do or that you want them to do that we normally do, those can be really painful.
Respect their boundaries, I think, too. But ask questions. Definitely ask questions.
LORI WALSH
What do you hope the impact of this reporting is? We’re going to put links up to your reporting on our website at sdpb.org. When people interact with the reporting and hear Stephanie Lee’s story, who is featured heavily, you got to be with her throughout the day and take photographs of her. And what do you hope happens next?
JENNY ALBERS
I hope that we are able to expand access to Rainbow Clinics. I know there are three right now in the U.S.
I mentioned in my story, the goal is to have one in each state. I hope that that’s a conversation that South Dakota will have is opening a Rainbow Clinic in our state.
But even some of these other things like peer-to-peer support, I mean, without resources, without a lot of money and budgets and things like that, that is something that we can implement locally.
And then another thing for providers, whether it’s here or across the country, is I found out through my reporting about an online training for healthcare providers, therapists, professionals who are working with women who are pregnant after loss that provides, it’s an accredited training that provides trauma informed training for anyone who’s working in birth, labor and delivery, things like that.
And so that would be a resource that I would love for our providers to use. That’s a training I would love them to take so that they can provide better care for the women that they see.