SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — March is pregnancy after loss awareness month, a recognition Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton began in 2012 to help raise awareness of the challenges many couples face as they grow their families.

Last year a Sioux Falls mom released a new resource to help women who are courageously expecting.

“We become pregnant after loss because we’ve lost a baby, so acknowledging that there is pain involved in the experience, even though it is a time of joy and excitement,” Jenny Albers said.

It’s a feeling of mixed emotions Sioux Falls mom Jenny Albers knows all too well. She had two miscarriages between her daughter and her son, including losing her baby Micah after delivering at 20 weeks.

“You’re on this trajectory towards having another baby, but it’s very isolating and a misunderstood time in a mom’s life. We carry grief from pregnancy loss with us into a subsequent pregnancy,” Albers said.

Along with grief, she says constant worry throughout her next pregnancy was another major complication of pregnancy after loss.

“I was about 30 weeks pregnant and my doctor was like, I thought you would be feeling better by now? But I just never quite got there. I hear that from a lot of women too, that you’re holding your breath until you’re holding your baby,” Albers said.

Her youngest is now six years old, but when she was pregnant she felt lost and alone because there were so few resources to help women through that complex time.

“There’s a lot of fear and anxiety, so I wanted to write a resource or provide a resource for women who are pregnant after loss,” Albers said. “To normalize the difficult emotions that can be involved in that, to say that you’re not alone in that and that when other people don’t necessarily understand it, some do.”

She released Courageously Expecting last year, a book with 30 days of encouragement for any woman experiencing pregnancy after a loss.

“The book has been out for about a year,” Albers said. “I hear from women all the time through messages on social media and email and things like that, just how glad they are to have this resource, how it has made them feel seen in their pregnancy after loss.”

Courageously Expecting is available anywhere books are sold. Albers also has a large following on social media where she posts daily encouragement for moms walking through pregnancy after loss.