Continuing After a loss  

Carol Cirulli Lanham describes her new book as something like "what to expect when you're expecting after a loss." Lanham, a longtime journalist in Texas, wrote the book ("Pregnancy After a Loss," Berkeley Books, 377 pages, $14.95) to answer some of her own questions after she and her husband lost their first baby, a son they named Patrick, late in her pregnancy in 1994.

For couples like them, she said, everything is different the next time around. For example, the joy most parents feel on first hearing their baby's heartbeat can be a time of dread and fear for a couple who have heard that heartbeat stop, she said.

Chapters indicate the scope of the book, covering such things as: looking for answers to explain the lost pregnancy, deciding to try again, feelings through subsequent pregnancies, labor and delivery, and, finally, parenthood.

-- H.J. Cummins

© Copyright 1999 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.