I didn't imagine this would become my life's work.
Three losses. One calling. And a quiet conviction that bereaved parents deserve far more than silence and a leaflet.
From shattered to sacred
When I first lost a pregnancy, I told myself I was still young. I remember the coldness of the hospital room when I was 29 — being told my baby's heartbeat had stopped, only for the doctor to casually suggest I "hold the baby in" until Monday to save on weekend medical costs.
When I lost another, I told myself to be strong and try again.
When I lost a third, something inside me quietly broke. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But in a way that changed how I moved through the world.
"From the outside, I was functioning. Inside, I was carrying grief that had no language, fear that lived in my body, and a growing mistrust of the one place I needed to feel safe — myself."
Doctors checked my body. Friends offered well-meaning words. Life kept moving. For a long time, my life felt like a series of silent goodbyes.
What surprised me wasn't just the sadness — it was the isolation. The quiet guilt. The shame that crept in at night. And the questions that lived beneath every quiet moment:
Was it my fault?
Can I trust my body again?
Who am I without a child?
How I wish I could be like my friends who have kids.
When is my turn?
The other friend wasn't even trying. How come it's so easy for others?
What if I could never have kids?
If any of these words have lived in you — you already know. Grief doesn't just live in the mind. It settles into the nervous system. Into the breath. Into how we brace for the future.
My third loss was Violet.
I remember watching her move on a live monitor — the profound, paralysing love of a mother who could see her baby, feel her baby, and yet had to make the most agonising choice a parent can face.
Violet's organs had formed outside her body. There was no path forward that didn't break me open. I had to make the choice to let her go — not because I didn't love her, but because I loved her completely.
Termination for medical reasons is one of the most misunderstood griefs there is. You grieve a child you chose to release. You carry love that has nowhere to go. The world rarely has a name for what you've lost.
"I realised that my grief was simply intense love with nowhere to go. I stopped trying to 'get over' it — and started learning how to integrate it."
— Vernessa
Not from someone fixing me — but from being met.
For a long time, I didn't know how to heal. I just got back to a busy life — working, functioning, socialising. That seemed to be the correct way to be occupied and move on.
My turning point didn't come from someone fixing me. It came from being met — slowly, respectfully — and learning how to stay present with my grief instead of fighting it.
I began to understand that grief is not something to overcome. It is something to be integrated. Like kintsugi — the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold — the cracks didn't disappear. They became part of the story.
I realised that my body hadn't failed me. It was carrying a story that needed a safer space to be told.
When the body is finally open to receive
Grief, fear, and unprocessed loss don't just live in our thoughts. They accumulate in the body — as tension, as bracing, as a nervous system that has learned to stay on guard.
we remove the emotional blockages that keep us stuck. The body becomes more receptive, more open, more attuned to what it genuinely needs. We stop surviving and begin to inhabit ourselves again.
"Later, when I became pregnant again, every scan carried history. Every sensation woke memory. And yet — this time, I wasn't living in constant fight-or-flight."
I had learned how to work with my body, not against it. How to notice fear without letting it run the show. How to breathe, regulate, and choose presence — even when certainty was impossible.
Today, I support women and couples who are living in the after — after miscarriage, after stillbirth, after termination, after infant loss, after IVF heartbreak. This is heart-centred, trauma-informed work. Some women go on to conceive. Some don't. Yet all leave with steadier ground beneath them.
With this support, 80% of the women I coach have successfully carried a pregnancy to birth (since 2021). This number is not a cold guarantee. It is a reflection of what unfolds when the mind and body can finally rest — out of chronic anxiety and into regulated resilience.
If you are carrying a fear that lives in your bones — the kind that makes every scan feel like a countdown, or every quiet hour without a kick feel like a crisis — please know that there is room to change how you move through it.
If you've been through multiple losses, you might read this and think it's impossible. Or you might feel a thin thread of something else — curiosity, maybe, or the tiniest permission that you might not always have to live in fear.
I don't promise outcomes. Pregnancy and birth are tender and unpredictable. But in my coaching work, I have seen a pattern: when we remove the emotional blocks that keep the nervous system stuck in alarm, possibility shifts. When we practise somatic awareness and learn to steady the body from the bottom up, we move out of survival mode.
We can talk about what it looks like to find calm in your current or next possible pregnancy. There is no pressure — only a safe space waiting for you.
What happens when you trust yourself — even after grief
After three losses, I found myself pregnant again. What followed across two births wasn't perfect. It wasn't without history. But it was something I could never have imagined during the darkest seasons of my grief — it was calm.
The first time, my waters broke during a day out — two hours from Melbourne, in the middle of wine country. I knew immediately. My hypnobirthing practice had taught me to stay present, count my surges, and trust the process. I didn't tell my family until I was already at 10cm. By then, I was in a zen I hadn't known I was capable of.
The second birth arrived faster than anyone expected — at home, unplanned, just my husband and me. No midwife. No medical team. Only instinct, breath, and a faith that had been built — slowly, carefully — through years of inner work.
"I had been through three losses. A previous delivery with heavy bleeding and a warning my uterus might need to be removed. It would have been easy to spiral down and all over. Instead, I was calm and focused. A trust that came from doing the internal work."
"I told the baby — work with mummy. With one more breath, miraculously, she was here. He caught her from behind me. We heard her first cry, and a sense of joy folded through us like warm light."
I was not operating from fight, flight, or freeze. I was moving with my body. I trusted myself — even after I had known so much grief.
That is what the inner work makes possible. And I am here to do that inner work with you.
Elvanna was two years old.
And I still heard them calling.
When Elvanna was born, I thought the chapter had closed. I had my daughter. I had come through. I began to breathe again.
But when she was two years old, I could still feel my angel babies calling me. Not as grief that needed resolving — but as a direction. A purpose. A gentle, persistent knowing that the path I had walked was not mine alone to have walked.
I had searched for support in Singapore and Southeast Asia during my losses — and found a void. No specialist. No space. Nowhere to bring the specific, layered grief of pregnancy and infant loss without someone eventually steering the conversation toward "moving on."
"I didn't want other parents to feel what I had felt — that their grief was too heavy, too specific, too complicated for the spaces available to them."
So I took the courage to seek out training in Western countries — courses that barely existed in Asia — and became Southeast Asia's first pregnancy and infant loss coach. There was no roadmap. No community of peers in this region. I built it from lived experience, rigorous training, and the deep conviction that bereaved parents deserve a companion who truly understands.
My work is not about fixing your grief. It is about helping you build a container where that grief is held — and courage can grow. It is about teaching your nervous system new rhythms, so that your decisions come from steadier ground.
Many come to me saying: "I look okay, but I'm not." "I want a baby, but I'm terrified." "I am just angry, jealous and sad." "I don't know how to move forward."
You shouldn't have to navigate this wilderness alone. You shouldn't have to suppress your story to make others comfortable.
Deeply trained. Deeply passionate to serve this community with love and care.
ICF Certified Coach
Credentialled by the International Coaching Federation — the global standard for ethical, professional coaching practice.
Advanced Grief Recovery Specialist
Certified through the Grief Recovery Method (GRM) — an evidence-based, internationally recognised framework for navigating all forms of loss.
TRE® Practitioner
Trained in Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises — a somatic, body-based practice that helps the nervous system release stored grief and trauma.
Ontological Coach
Grounded in ontological and mindfulness frameworks that expand how you see, move, and act — opening new possibilities after loss.
Somatic & Expressive Arts
Sessions integrate art, journaling, mindful movement and creative modalities — because words alone are never enough.
Southeast Asia's First
Pioneer of this field in the region since 2021 — with clients across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and beyond.
A recognised voice on pregnancy loss in Asia
Southeast Asia's first pregnancy and infant loss coach — on the grief that society doesn't see.
Feature InterviewVernessa Chuah has made it her life's work to hold space for parents navigating the invisible grief of pregnancy and infant loss.
Feature CoverageThe coach filling a gap Singapore didn't know it had — talking about miscarriage, stillbirth and loss without flinching.
Profile FeatureTelevision feature on pregnancy loss awareness and the emotional recovery journey for Singaporean families.
Television FeatureAvailable for interviews & features
Vernessa is available to speak on pregnancy and infant loss, grief recovery, TFMR, miscarriage policy, and workplace bereavement support. She brings 14+ years of frontline experience and speaks with both professional authority and lived authenticity.
If this story lands somewhere inside you — I'm here.
The 12-Week Kintsugi Journey was created for this exact place — because I searched for a safe container in Singapore and Southeast Asia and found a void. After losing three angel babies, I realised that my grief was simply intense love with nowhere to go. You shouldn't have to suppress your story to make others comfortable. There is a space waiting for you.