136: Before You Try Again: What Couples Need to Talk About After Baby Loss

Grief after stillbirth doesn't just live inside you — it can quietly settle between you and your partner, too. And if you've ever looked at him and wondered how he can just go to work and act like everything is normal... you're not alone.

In this episode, Jennifer sits down with Miranda Bayard Clark, a licensed therapist turned coach and founder of the Baby Ready Blueprint. Miranda helps couples prepare their relationship for the realities of parenthood — and today, she's getting real about what loss does to a relationship, why partners grieve so differently, and how resentment can build without either of you realizing it.

This conversation is for the mom who feels like she's carrying her grief alone — and the one who's wondering what it would even look like to feel like a team again.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why partners almost always grieve differently after loss — and why that doesn't mean he doesn't care
• How resentment quietly builds when needs go unspoken, and what to do when you notice it happening
• Why trying again — whether naturally or through IVF — can bring up so much more than just hope
• The one conversation Miranda says every couple should have before moving forward after a loss
• What it actually means to ask for what you need, even when you're afraid of what he might say
• Why men tend to jump into "fix it" mode — and the simple language shift that can change everything
• What "score keeping" in your relationship really signals, and why it's worth paying attention to
• How the stories we tell ourselves in silence can quietly become resentment over time
• Miranda's Baby Ready Blueprint and her upcoming Us Before Baby course — and who they're really for

Miranda's Links:

www.loveafterlullabies.com

@mirandaforcouples

@loveafterlullabies

Read the full blog post here: LINK

https://navigatingbabyloss.com/workshop

Free workshop for moms grieving stillbirth or pregnancy loss. Learn simple, trauma-informed practices to release guilt, calm the what-ifs, and honor your baby's memory with love instead of pain. Includes bonus Grief & Guilt Release Journal.

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Download my FREE "Guilt and Grief Release Journal" at navigatingbabyloss.com/journal

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Transcript

Jennifer: I'm here today with Miranda Bayard Clark, and she is a licensed therapist turned coach, the founder of the Baby Ready Blueprint. She and her husband Erin host the Love After Lullabies podcast — it's a great podcast for what happens to your relationship after you have a baby. And today we are talking about her journey and her mission to help moms prepare their relationship for a new baby, which there are so many layers to. So welcome, Miranda. I am so excited to dig into all of the facets of what you're working on.

Miranda: Thanks so much for having me. I love being on the opposite end of podcasting. I don't get to very often, so this is fun.

Jennifer: I know, it's so fun. Tell me a little bit about how this whole thing started with you, because you are initially a relationship therapist.

Miranda: Yeah, and so that's where the podcast started. We're currently in season four, taking a little bit of a break during spring break until we get taxes done and all of that. But I think it just started with me wanting some sort of creative outlet. I've been in my mental health private practice for 14 years and I work primarily from home now since COVID. I just needed something a little different, and my passion has always been working with new and expectant parents on how to maintain their relationship after this huge change. Premarital is a very common term, and my goal is to make pre-parental just as common — and just as intentional.

So my initial plan was to interview couples and have them share their story, with no particular direction. I just wanted to help normalize it for other couples who don't have children yet. I approached Erin and said I was going to be interviewing couples — we're together as a couple — and he was like, "No, no, no, I don't think I want to do that." But the more I talked about it, the more he would give suggestions, like, "This would be cool," or "That would be cool." I thought it kind of sounded like he might be a little bought in. So the rest is history. And we don't always have just couples — we'll have professionals and experts in the field, which is how you came on the show. It's been nice to have a mixed bag of everything we incorporate.

Jennifer: Yeah, and he's so great at it, too. He seems like such a dream partner — which we'll get into. So sensitive to the struggles of parenthood, and especially what moms go through after babies arrive. I love what your podcast is about. It's just so easy and fun. The one thing I always think is so interesting is how many couples believe that if they're struggling in their relationship, a baby will help fix things.

Miranda: Oh my gosh. And you're surprised that people still think that? Having a baby is going to accentuate the problems that are already there. Even if you think you're in a great place with your partner — and I say this because I was there myself — I thought, what do you mean? We have a great relationship. We don't need to do any pre-planning. But with sleep deprivation and all of the added pressures from external family, work, and societal standards, it's going to bring up the problems that exist underneath, and bring them up even more. So if you're thinking about having a baby to fix anything, you are vastly wrong.

Jennifer: And I think that's really what intrigued me about talking to you today, because when you suffer a loss, it really affects your relationship.

Miranda: It does. I mean, there's almost no case where it doesn't. And then of course, I think the next step is often, "Let's have another baby." Especially the men, who didn't go through the physical part of it, are often like, "Let's just have another one, put this behind us."

Jennifer: Right. Here you are, you've got this loss and this grief, and you're grieving in completely different ways. And now we're going to go right back into it — whether or not it's your first child or your fifth. This is a whole different person. And the word that keeps coming up, and I saw a lot of this in your social media too, is resentment.

Miranda: Yes. There can be a lot of resentment. So if there is some resentment and you are wanting another baby — wanting the one you had, maybe wanting another one now — but feeling resentment toward your partner because they just don't understand what you're going through... Especially if IVF was involved, that adds a whole other layer.

When you're in this place of wanting to try again, I think something that's been really helpful for couples is to sit down and talk about it as a trauma, because it is traumatic. Even if it does result in a child, it's still a very traumatic event. Sitting down together and talking about how that impacted each of you — because you're going to have very different experiences, and sometimes that can feel very lonely.

Knowing what the experience was for each of you, and what you need from each other moving forward, can help heal a little part of that last experience and also help you feel more like a team going into the next one — whether that's trying to conceive or using IVF.

The hard part is that you want to be able to listen to each other's experiences without getting defensive. Because we all have our own experience. My partner could view how I treated him very differently than what was actually going on for me. So it's important for me to hear his experience, and important for him to hear mine. "I was doing this all alone. Here's what I need from you moving forward. I need you to ask how I'm feeling, even if it seems like I'm doing fine. I need you to check in with me more. I need you to attend more of the appointments with me."

Really being able to empathetically hear each other's experience before doing it again.

Jennifer: And what I heard you say too was — asking for what you need. Which is something we are really not great at.

Miranda: We're not. And I think there's an expectation, especially if you've been together for a really long time, that your partner should just know what you want. But we absolutely don't. And our needs change all the time. So being really open about it is so helpful.

Jennifer: That's such great advice, especially on the heels of a loss, because you are experiencing the same loss but in different ways. My expectation of my husband was, "I can't believe he doesn't feel the exact same way I do. This was his baby too. How dare he just get up and go to work and act like it's a normal day." And then I didn't dare say what I was feeling because I was afraid he'd think something was wrong with me, or that I should be over this by now. So having the same conversation — letting them know what you need, and knowing it's okay to do that — that's huge.

Miranda: And also being open about the grief, because it's very cyclical and there's no timeframe for it. In our culture there's this expectation to move on, which is ridiculous, because you can never fully move on. Some days are going to be really hard and some days are going to be fine. Reminders and trigger moments are going to come up. Sharing that with your partner gives them the opportunity to support you on an emotional level. I know you've spoken about how you were hiding things from Erin when you were postpartum and struggling — was he surprised to hear that?

Miranda: He was a little bit dumbfounded, understandably, because I'd never been in that place mentally before. And I always wonder what it would have looked like if I'd been open with him as it was happening. I don't really know. But even if we'd talked about it and I had educated him more about postpartum blues versus depression versus postpartum psychosis, I still may have experienced the same emotions. However, it would have felt so much more like a team effort, and I wouldn't have felt so alone. And the shame probably wouldn't have been as bad as it was.

Jennifer: Well, and I think that's the basis for what you do, right? Having those kinds of conversations when you're postpartum — hormonal, exhausted, baby on your boob most of the time — it's just not realistic to have them in that moment, even if you would've wanted to. You probably didn't even have the energy to. Which is why you are so passionate about pre-education versus waiting until things are burning down around you.

Miranda: Exactly. A lot of people think pre-parental planning is just making a chore chart — great, you've decided who's washing the bottle parts and who's doing the nighttime feedings, all laid out. And that's all going to go out the window, by the way. I'm for chore charts; I'm for discussing chores because if anything it offers communication. But the work I love to do is identifying a couple's conflict pattern. How do they have conflict? Who brings it up, and how does your body respond? Taking a deep dive into their specific pattern opens up so much more awareness for when things start to go in that direction. We've talked about this with Miranda — "I tend to withdraw, you tend to advance. We're in the pattern again." And then you have the tools to work through it.

Because when you are sleep deprived and your hormones are all over the place, your brain is not fully functioning. You're not sitting down to make a chore chart at that point. It's pure survival. The pre-planning is about analyzing how you show up when things get stressful — knowing it's going to get stressful even in the most perfect scenario, even with the baby you've always wanted.

Jennifer: And things happen that we have no control over — hormones for both men and women. So you want to be as prepared as possible, and just assume it's going to be a challenge, but one you can get through together rather than feeling so isolated.

Miranda: Yes. And even at the worst times, you normally do manage to get through it. But it could be so much easier.

Jennifer: So how far ahead do you think someone should start this pre-planning?

Miranda: It could be as early as just thinking about starting a family. Because in every relationship you have a conflict pattern, you have extended family dynamics, there are boundaries to talk through, family history to uncover together. But I've had couples at every stage — from the newly pregnant to ones just about ready to give birth. And there is an aspect of being able to do this work after baby has arrived too, though it does offer a little more challenge.

If you could pick an optimal time, I'd say three to six months. That gives you enough time to work through anything that comes up that feels a little raw. Right before your due date, you don't even know when the baby's coming. So six months might actually be the more optimal choice.

Jennifer: What if you're a brand new parent and you didn't have a great experience being a child yourself? Is this kind of work really important for breaking those cycles before you even become a parent?

Miranda: It can be really helpful. I think this particular generation has an added challenge of reparenting their inner child while also parenting their actual children. I saw this post — I can't remember who started it — but it struck a nerve with me: we're the bedroom generation raising living room kids. We were encouraged to go play, go outside, stay away from the adults. And now we're incorporating kids into everything, our living rooms are full of toys.

Some of that comes up for me and Erin around noise — we were both pretty quiet kids, and we have one in particular who is quite loud. We have to catch ourselves and say, "Nope, this is old stuff." So recognizing how we were raised and how we want to raise our children — and knowing that no matter how much preparation we do, it's still going to come up and trigger us — that's part of the work.

And this connects to your relationship too, especially around extended family. Who's going to be at the birth? What do visits look like afterward? What are your boundaries around vaccines? Grandparents have a lot of advice. I was told by my mom that I picked up my daughter too much. I said, "What do you mean? She wants to be held. She's a baby." I understand where it was coming from — wanting to teach independence — but there's so much to work through with your partner around family boundaries.

One of my favorite tools is the Compromise Wheel, which the Gottmans coined. There's a big circle and a smaller one inside it. The outer circle is what you can compromise on; the inner circle is what you're not willing to budge on — and those are usually tied to core values with a deeper story. Talking about that deeper story is where the real work is. Establishing core values as a new family — that's a whole conversation in itself.

Jennifer: Another thing you've mentioned is that parenting becomes a magnifier. What kinds of things can be changed or reduced if you do some pre-planning — and what gets magnified if you don't?

Miranda: Expectations around parenthood are a big one. What do you expect of me as a mom, what do I expect of you as a dad — those conversations often never happen. Mental load is another one that's fortunately being talked about more. And unfortunately, things are still very genderized in the way our society is set up. In heterosexual relationships, there's a tendency to fall back into those roles. Women tend to have a circle — sisters, friends, mothers — to help care for her and the baby, and men can end up feeling boxed out. So they do what they know, which is work more. And then you've got a much bigger disconnect.

There's a lot to talk about: what are your values as a new family unit? If those values feel like they're being violated, how are you going to bring that up?

Erin and I went through a big one around working out — figuring out who gets to go to the gym and when. I took the martyr role. "It's fine. She won't take a bottle. You go, I'll be fine." And then it became resentment.

Jennifer: I'm having some deja vu myself.

Miranda: Right? Couples get into that battle of, "You get to do this and I had to do this." And it becomes competition. As soon as you find yourself score keeping, take a pause — something needs to be figured out, whether it's needs or revisiting expectations.

Score keeping is a good red flag and a mild one. As soon as you start tracking things, something's off. Stop right where you are, take a breath, and even if you don't know how to fix it right away, that's okay. I love just saying, "I'm finding myself score keeping right now, and that's just where I'm at. How are you doing?" It opens the door. I'm a late processor — it takes me so long to figure out why I'm upset. I've just learned to say, "I'm really upset. My feelings are hurt. I don't know why yet." And that's okay. You don't have to know why yet. It's just about keeping that line of communication open.

Jennifer: It always comes back to communication, doesn't it?

Miranda: It does. And here's a metaphor that helps me explain why expectations matter so much. Imagine Erin and I decide to go out to a restaurant on Friday with young kids. I'm excited. The kids are going to have a little coloring thing, we'll relax, have a cocktail — my expectations are really high. Then the kids don't want to sit still, things start to spiral, and we're frustrated with each other. But if we go in saying, "Hey, the kids might be a wreck, but let's give it a shot" — our expectations are a lot lower. That gap between high expectation and reality? That's where frustration lives.

Jennifer: I don't know if you have a module in your course for this, but I have a suggestion — a sense of humor. That's how our family survived some of those days. I remember my grandmother laughing at my craziest ideas, because I'd have these beautiful dreams of going strawberry picking and coming home to make homemade jam — and it was always a dumpster fire. But it never stopped me from dreaming. I think she secretly couldn't wait to hear what happened because it never turned out the way I planned.

Miranda: Humor is so helpful, especially in conflict. Once we identify a couple's conflict pattern, I always have them name it. It does two things: it externalizes it — it's no longer me against you, it's us against this thing — and if you can name it with something funny, it adds levity. I've had couples use vegetables, like, "We're in the eggplant again." It kind of resets you. A good code word for anything is powerful.

Jennifer: So what's the gap you're seeing, and what are your plans to bridge it?

Miranda: It sounds basic, but communication is at the center of everything. We each go through our own separate experiences once we become parents, and sometimes it's really hard to share them. For me, it was hard to tell Erin I was struggling to bond with our first child because of the breastfeeding difficulties. I just kept it all in.

Being vulnerable is scary. But if you stop communicating, you start creating your own stories in your head — and those stories translate to resentment down the road.

Jennifer: And so much of that is the fear, right? When you were talking about the breastfeeding — feeling like a failure at motherhood and being afraid to say it out loud. What if he agrees with me? What if my fear that I'm failing is real? And so you go into this whole thing where you have to be superwoman, do all the things, prove you are as good of a mother as you think you are. And the communication just stops.

Miranda: Exactly. What I love about this is that you don't have to dive all the way in at once. You can just put your toes in the water. Share that you have some things you want to say but you're afraid of being seen a certain way. Give your partner the opportunity to respond. Let them say, "I'm here for you. Of course you're not a bad mom." Give them the chance to show up. Then you can go a little deeper.

Something I'm seeing a lot is that there is a genuine desire to be open and vulnerable with a partner, but especially in heterosexual relationships, men are really good at fixing things. Women tend to seek empathy, and when empathy is met with, "Here's what you need to do," more disconnect happens. Teaching couples how to be empathetic is big.

Erin and I went through this even though I'm a couples therapist. I'd go to him wanting emotional support and he would jump into fix-it mode. So now I come to him and say, "Hey, I need to just verbal vomit to you for a minute" — or "I need help with something." He knows exactly how to show up for me.

Jennifer: I preach the same thing. "I just need to say this and I need you not to fix it. I'm just saying it to you because I can only say this to you, and I don't expect you to have a solution." And that is huge.

Miranda: It really is. And sometimes I'll forget to preface, and Erin will ask, "How can I support you right now?" After several years, they get it.

Jennifer: Well, tell us how someone can get help from you, because parenting is such an amazing gift — and also the hardest thing you can ever do.

Miranda: So I've got a couple of things. The Baby Ready Blueprint is the most personalized option — six individual sessions with me, each on a different topic, and at the end you get a written summary with your conflict pattern, communication tools, family boundary work, all of it.

If you're not looking for that level of investment, I am launching a course next month — April 2026. It's called Us Before Baby, and I'm only taking 20 couples right now because this is a founding cohort. In the fall and winter, I'll create a more evergreen version that's fully video-based and easily accessible. But the Us Before Baby program is go-at-your-own-pace modules, includes one session with me, and some bonus content around postpartum mood support, recipes, all of that.

I've got a wait list going, so if people are interested, they can reach out. I'm on Instagram — my handle is @mirandaforcouples. And Love After Lullabies is more of the podcast side of things, where Erin and I talk to parents in the thick of it.

Jennifer: So listen to the podcast if you're already in it, and check out the course or the Blueprint if you want to go in as prepared as possible. Right?

Miranda: Right. Thank you so much for having me.

Jennifer: Thank you so much for your expertise and for being here. For the mission you have for parents. Parenting is such an amazing gift — and also the hardest thing. Thank you.