Chapter 9: The Experiences of Women after the Early Loss of a Child: Conceptualizing a Semiotic Theory of Coping and Mourning

Motherhood is seen as a social role transition, and one of the biggest transitions in the life cycle, not only because of the necessity to reconstruct the female identity, but also because of the addition of new meanings which emerge with this new condition. The existence of disruptive events, such as the death of a child, makes the transition to motherhood and childbirth a moment of grief and worry, which can further lead to unhealthy ways of coping with emotions (Silva, 2010).

This chapter seeks to understand the semiotic mechanisms involved in the grieving process after the loss of a child and how this impacts the various dimensions and positions of the self. In this chapter, we propose a semiotic mechanism called semiotic elaboration. This semiotic mechanism will be understood in the context of mourning, to be presented below and further illustrated based on the interviews of two women who suffered early gestational losses.