When the Caregivers Grieve: Midwives and Nurses Open Up About Their Own Pregnancy Losses

In the delivery wards and maternal health clinics of Jordan, a group of women spend their working days guiding others through pregnancy and birth. But a new phenomenological study reveals what happens when these same maternal nurses and midwives suffer pregnancy losses of their own, then return to workplaces saturated with the very reminders of what they lost. The research, published in the journal Nursing Open, offers one of the first culturally situated accounts from a West Asian setting of clinicians navigating grief while continuing to provide compassionate care to pregnant women.

The study, led by researchers at The Hashemite University in Jordan, used a descriptive phenomenological approach to capture the essential meaning of pregnancy loss as experienced by 20 maternal nurses and midwives working in health centers and government hospitals across the country. Participants ranged in age from 26 to 55 years, and 17 of the 20 had more than a decade of nursing experience. Their loss histories varied considerably: seven had experienced one pregnancy loss, six had endured two, three had suffered three, one had lost four pregnancies, and three reported more than four losses. Most losses occurred early, with seven at two months of gestation and six at three months.

Recruitment proceeded through professional networks and snowball sampling across roughly five referral waves, a strategy the researchers chose deliberately to reach clinicians willing to discuss a deeply sensitive personal experience. Each participant completed a single semi-structured interview lasting between 45 and 60 minutes, conducted in Arabic by a female, PhD-prepared interviewer with professional familiarity with maternal nursing. The interview guide covered four domains: pregnancy history, physical and psychological effects, effects on work, and decisions about future pregnancy. Thematic saturation was judged to have occurred at approximately 13 interviews, with subsequent data collection confirming the recurrence of existing themes.

Analysis followed Colaizzi’s seven-step descriptive phenomenological method, in which transcripts are read repeatedly, significant statements are extracted, meanings are formulated close to participants’ own language, and theme clusters are integrated into an exhaustive description of the phenomenon. All participants were invited to review their transcripts and the team’s interpreted accounts for accuracy. Trustworthiness was evaluated using Lincoln and Guba’s criteria of credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability, with an external qualitative nursing researcher reviewing the process. The study was reported according to the COREQ 32-item checklist and approved by the university’s Institutional Review Board.

Four themes emerged from the data, tracing a movement from unexpected loss through bodily and emotional recovery to the challenge of returning to maternal-care work and contemplating another pregnancy. The first theme, loss without warning, described pregnancies that had seemed entirely normal until a sudden sign, medical visit, or bodily change revealed the devastating truth. One 32-year-old participant recalled that her pregnancy had been uneventful until she noticed her symptoms of fever had disappeared; at her fourth-month appointment, there was no fetal pulse. Another described taking folic acid and eating well, only to begin bleeding suddenly two months in. The loss was experienced not as a gradual clinical event but as an abrupt rupture between expected pregnancy progression and unexpected fetal absence, shattering participants’ trust in their own bodies.

The second theme, embodied loss, captured how inseparable physical and psychological suffering proved to be. All 20 participants described pain, bleeding, medical procedures, depression, and fear of recurrence as interwoven parts of a single experience rather than separate bodily and emotional tracks. One 33-year-old participant described labor-like pain after her loss and a persistent fear that the same thing would happen in subsequent pregnancies. Another suffered severe bleeding at home after an operation, requiring hospital readmission, further treatment, and blood transfusion, an experience she called physically and psychologically exhausting. A 42-year-old participant credited religious practice, reading the Qur’an, and the help of others with preventing what she believed would otherwise have been a full depressive collapse, noting that she did not think about becoming pregnant again until two years later. In the Jordanian context, faith functioned not as a peripheral detail but as a source of psychological survival and meaning-making.

The third theme, grieving while caregiving, revealed the particular cruelty of returning to workplaces that could trigger memories of pregnancy and birth at any moment. Occupational responses varied widely. Some participants considered leaving their jobs entirely; one described the physical toll of dragging beds, strollers, and chairs in her department and frankly contemplated resignation. Another actually resigned, but only after later giving birth. A negative case showed a different path: one participant who had suffered severe complications did not plan to leave her job at all, instead relying on formal leave of more than a month and a half. Pregnancy loss, the data suggest, does not produce one uniform occupational response; clinicians negotiate between bodily recovery, workplace demands, and the feasibility of changing jobs.

Peer support emerged as a practical and emotional resource, but it proved conditional on participants’ readiness to disclose their loss. Some colleagues reduced physical workloads and absorbed work pressure for grieving coworkers, who described the relief this brought. Yet at least one participant explicitly declined to share her experience or listen to anyone’s advice, saying she did not enjoy talking about personal things. Workplace support, the findings demonstrate, depends not merely on the presence of colleagues but on privacy, trust, and openness to discussing pregnancy loss. The researchers also situated their work within Jordan’s cultural and religious landscape, where marriage, family formation, and childbirth are highly valued and where religion shapes views on fertility and pregnancy, though the authors emphasize that these expectations do not mean women remain silent about loss.

The fourth theme, trying again with fear, described future pregnancy decisions as a tension between desire and dread. One participant declared that even if she lost 30 pregnancies, she would keep trying, and conceived again four months later. Others re-entered pregnancy with heightened vigilance: one planned earlier and more frequent medical follow-up, stronger doses of folic acid and iron, and preconception checks of her iron levels; another, terrified the experience would repeat, switched from monthly to fortnightly antenatal visits. A 43-year-old participant prayed not to become pregnant at all, calling the experience very tiring. Future pregnancy, the study shows, is neither simply accepted nor rejected but re-entered with vigilance, prayer, fear, or avoidance depending on each woman’s prior loss and recovery.

The discussion extends a scoping review by Musodza and colleagues that found no evidence from West Asian settings on maternity healthcare professionals returning to work after personal perinatal loss. The authors argue their unique contribution is identifying how re-entering a professional setting associated with pregnancy and childbirth can contribute to re-experiencing grief among maternal nurses and midwives. Their practice recommendations, grounded directly in participants’ accounts, include confidential opportunities to talk, flexible workload adjustment after loss, nonjudgmental peer or supervisor support, and culturally sensitive acknowledgement of religious coping when the clinician raises it. The authors caution that support must be individualized rather than assumed uniform, and they note that Jordanian evidence on organizational barriers to research utilization suggests bereavement-support policies will require institutional backing rather than individual motivation alone. The study’s limitations include its small snowball sample, potential self-selection and social desirability biases, the Muslim-specific Jordanian context, possible translation distortions, and a demographic dataset that did not distinguish nurses from midwives. The authors call for further research comparing nurses and midwives across different Jordanian environments and examining the influence of role, timing of loss, complications, and religious coping on pregnancy loss experiences.

Subject of Research: Experience of Pregnancy Loss Among Maternal Nurses and Midwives: A Phenomenological Study

Article Title: Experience of Pregnancy Loss Among Maternal Nurses and Midwives: A Phenomenological Study

Article References: Abuhammad, S., Hamaideh, S., Alhawatmeh, H., AlMaaitah, R., Hijazi, H. H., El‐zubi, M. K., Mehrass, A. A.-K., Hamaidi, A., Seshan, V., & Yateem, N. A. (2026). Experience of Pregnancy Loss Among Maternal Nurses and Midwives: A Phenomenological Study. Nursing Open, 13(10), Article e70892. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.70892

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/nop2.70892

Keywords: pregnancy loss, midwives, maternal nurses, Jordan, phenomenology, perinatal grief, workplace support, qualitative research, religious coping, future pregnancy, Nursing Open, bereavement care