FT-005 · After Birth and the First Year
Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support in North Texas
How families in North Texas find support after a miscarriage, stillbirth or infant death, and what a helpline or support group actually offers.
Losing a pregnancy, a baby at birth, or an infant in the first weeks of life is one of the hardest things a family in North Texas can go through, and it is also one of the least talked about. If this is where you are right now, the short version is this: a national helpline exists specifically for pregnancy and infant loss, it is free to call, and it does not require you to have already picked a hospital, a doctor or a support group before you reach out.
This page lays out who runs that support, what a first contact with them actually looks like, what the gaps are that this site cannot fill for you, and how loss support connects to the rest of early parenthood services already covered on Cradle & Compass.
What counts as pregnancy and infant loss?
The terms sound clinical, but they describe very different experiences on a shared continuum: a miscarriage is the loss of a pregnancy before 20 weeks, a stillbirth is a loss at or after 20 weeks, and a neonatal or infant death is the loss of a baby after birth. Share Pregnancy & Infant Loss Support, the national organisation this entry checked its facts against, was founded in 1977 specifically to serve families across that whole range, not just one category of loss. You do not need to classify your own experience correctly before you are allowed to ask for help; the organisation's intake exists to meet you wherever the loss falls.
Who is Share, and how do you actually reach them?
Share Pregnancy & Infant Loss Support describes its mission as serving those whose lives are touched by the tragic death of a baby. In practice that means a national helpline at 1-800-821-6819, alongside support by phone, email and in person. A call does not commit you to anything beyond that first conversation, and the organisation also runs face-to-face and online group meetings for people who want to keep talking after the first call.
What happens if you call?
Share's listed services include peer companion support, which pairs someone who has been through a pregnancy or infant loss with a parent who is newly grieving. The organisation also sends resource packets, not only to bereaved parents but to grandparents and to the professionals, nurses, chaplains, funeral directors, who are often the first people a grieving family meets. That detail matters in North Texas, where a hospital's own bereavement coordinator may be the one handing you Share's number in the first place.
Is there a group specifically in Dallas or Fort Worth?
This is the honest gap. Share's own site points visitors toward a state-by-state search for local support, but it does not publish a list of named North Texas chapters or meeting locations on the page this entry checked, so nothing specific to Dallas or Fort Worth can be stated here. What can be said is where else to look: the perinatal mental health support already covered on this site includes a national directory with a dedicated section on loss and grief in pregnancy and postpartum, built for exactly this kind of search. Between Share's national line and that directory, the practical path for a North Texas family is to start with a phone call rather than search for a local meeting that may or may not have an easy-to-find page.
Does any of this cost money?
Share describes what it sends out as free, helpful resources and information, and a helpline call costs you nothing but the call itself. Group meetings and the broader network of services are run by a national nonprofit rather than billed per family, which is part of why the phone number is worth trying even if you are not sure yet what kind of support you want.
What if it is not you who is grieving, but someone close to you?
Loss touches more than the person who was pregnant. Share's resource packets are built for grandparents as well as parents, and the organisation trains care providers specifically because so much of how a family copes depends on how the first people around them respond. If you are a partner, a parent or a friend trying to work out what to do, the same helpline is the right door: you do not have to be the one who was pregnant to call it on someone's behalf or to ask how to support them.
How does this fit with the rest of support available here?
North Texas already has a wide net of services for pregnancy and early parenthood, and grief support does not sit outside that net. The 211 Texas helpline works the same way for this subject as it does for food, housing or legal questions: you describe the need, and a specialist works from a large index of service terms rather than asking you to already know an agency's name. If a hospital stay or a home visit is part of your story, the staff you already have, a midwife, a nurse, a volunteer from a local family programme, are also reasonable people to ask whether they know of a nearby group, because loss support is one of the areas where local, word-of-mouth knowledge often outruns what a national directory can publish.
What to do today, if you need it now
Call 1-800-821-6819 if you want to talk to Share directly, or start with your hospital's bereavement coordinator or your OB-GYN's office if you would rather begin with someone you have already met. Neither route requires paperwork or a referral. If what you are feeling right now goes beyond grief into a sense of danger to yourself, the crisis lines already listed in this site's guide to perinatal mental health are the faster door, and they are built to be used before a scheduled appointment, not after one.
About Share Pregnancy & Infant Loss Support
Share Pregnancy & Infant Loss Support, Inc. is a national nonprofit founded in 1977 to serve families affected by miscarriage, stillbirth and early infant death. It operates a helpline at 1-800-821-6819, offers peer companion support by phone, email and in person, runs face-to-face and online support group meetings, sends resource packets to bereaved parents, grandparents and professionals, and trains care providers. Its site points visitors toward state-by-state support, though it does not publish a list of named North Texas meeting locations.