How to Use the Directory

Welcome to the Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss Directory. This blog is maintained by volunteers to act like a "telephone book" for blogs dealing with the loss of a baby. It is open to anyone who has ever lost a baby in any way - we do not discriminate by age of your baby or circumstance of your loss. If you think you belong here, then we think you belong here.

When you submit your blog, it is manually added to the list, so it may take some time for it to appear on the list. When you submit your information as requested below, it is easier to spot those emails that have been redirected into the spam mail.

Blogs are listed by category of loss. This is to help you find blogs that deal with circumstances that may be similar to yours. That being said, it can be a moving and healing experience to read the blogs of people who's loss is not similar to yours. You are welcome to read any of the blogs listed here.

Though there could be literally thousands of categories of loss, we have created 4 broad categories: before 20 weeks, after 20 weeks, after birth, and medical termination. Please note that most blogs dealing with extreme prematurity are listed in the "after birth" category even though the gestational age might suggest a different category.

As a warning to those feeling particularly fragile, many of the blogs listed here discuss living children or subsequent pregnancies. In the sidebar links, those blogs are usually marked with an asterisk(*). However, the circumstances of individual bloggers will change, and sometimes the listings do not get updated. It is possible to encounter pictures of living children or pregnant bellies on the blogs listed here.

We also have a list of resources (books), online links, and online publications that you may find useful. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to see the full listing of links.

We are so sorry the loss of a beloved child has brought you here. We hope that you will find some solace within the community that has gathered.
Please help us set up this resource for grieving families by:

Welcome

A. Submitting your blog information
(Email Subject: Please Add My Blog)
  • The link to your blog
  • The title of your blog
  • The topic of your blog (see sidebar - Personal Blogs)
  • If your blog discusses living children or subsequent pregnancy after loss

B. Submitting links to helpful web resources
(Email Subject: Please Add This Link)

C. Submitting titles of helpful reading materials or videos/films
(Email Subject: Please Add This Resource)

D. Adding a link to this site from your blog

***************************************************

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Short film

You can see a short film named Stars made by Robert Stillman for his wife after the stillbirth of their son at 8 months here.

Update: thanks to the commenter who highlighted that this video has been removed. Hope some readers were able to view it before this happened.

Friday, February 15, 2008

New Finding May Help Explain Development Of Preeclampsia

ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2008) — In a study of pregnant women, those with pregnancy-induced high blood pressure were found to have higher levels of a peptide that raises blood pressure in the pieces of tissue linking mother and fetus, according to researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. The finding, reported online in the journal Hypertension, may help explain how the disorder develops.

Preeclampsia, or high blood pressure induced by pregnancy, affects 7 to 10 percent of pregnancies in the United States and is the second-leading cause of maternal mortality. It is the leading cause of pre-term delivery and contributes significantly to stillbirths and death in newborns.

The researchers found that in women with preeclampsia, levels of angiotensin II (Ang II), a hormone that constricts blood vessels and causes blood pressure to rise, was doubled in the chorionic villi, part of the placenta that links mother and fetus and supplies food and oxygen.

"This finding may be part of the preeclampsia puzzle," said Lauren Anton, a graduate student who is first author on the research. "Anything that gets us closer to understanding this disease is important because there is no treatment and no cure and women are still delivering babies too early."

The researchers theorize that Ang II may restrict the fetal vessels that lie within the chorionic villi, which not only raises blood pressure, but also lowers oxygen and nutrient flow to the baby and may result in lower birth weight and other complications of preeclampsia.

The study involved 21 women with preeclampsia and 25 women without the disorder. After delivery, tissue sections were taken from the center of the placenta for analysis. More

KickTrak counts baby's kicks for you

February 11, 2008

The American Pregnancy Organization recommends that mothers-to- be pay close attention to the inter-uterine movements, rolls and kicks of their unborn child, as this is a good indication that all is well with their baby. If fetal movement changes significantly or there are less than ten movements within two hours it could be an indication of problems. Many obstetricians recommend daily monitoring, particularly from 26 weeks and there is good reason to do so, as stillbirths claim a shocking 70 lives per day in the United States.

Kick count is the term used to describe maternal counting and monitoring of fetal movements. It is recognized that it is a reliable and effective way to safely keep a close check on baby. Until now, kick-counting meant that mothers had to sit with pen and paper in hand to time their baby’s movements for a period of ten kicks, record the results and then compare the details with the previous timed periods. This is no easy task and most mothers can tell you about “pregnancy brain”, the total inability to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. Now they won’t need to, kickTrak is a handheld digital monitor which offers an innovative and easy solution to kick counting More

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Healing and hope through stillbirth research

The hardest day of Tara Adams' life was the day she returned home after giving birth last summer. Instead of carrying Kylie in her arms, Adams clung to tokens: molds of her stillborn daughter's hands, wisps of hair, a photograph. And she made plans to bury her baby.

Adams had a healthy pregnancy she felt her daughter kick just one week before her delivery one month early so one question was constant: "Why? Why would this happen?" the 31-year-old South Jordan mother of three recalls. "You almost think back, what did I do wrong? Did I do something I shouldn't have?"

To help parents nationwide seeking similar answers, the University of Utah is analyzing all stillbirths in Salt Lake County from 2006 through 2008 and attempting to pinpoint the many causes of death.

Most parents who lose their babies during pregnancy never find out the true cause. With almost 27,000 losses a year, stillbirth is 10 times more likely to happen than Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. But pregnancy loss remains largely unscrutinized in the United States. Doctors are hesitant to suggest autopsies. Insurance companies may not cover them. And there's an attitude that fetal death is "God's will," or is at least unavoidable.

For the thousands of parents who never get to bring their babies home, the research under way represents hope. Doctors can't prevent stillbirths if they don't know what caused them in the first place.

"Look at SIDS: SIDS deaths have dropped dramatically [since] they started doing research," says Rose Carlson, program director of the Missouri-based national office of Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support. "People haven't focused." The U. is doing its research as one of five universities in the Stillbirth Collaborative Research

The network is attempting to answer basic questions: How often does stillbirth occur? What are the causes, and what are the best protocols to investigate the deaths? Robert Silver, chief of the U.'s division of maternal and fetal medicine and principal investigator for Utah's portion of the study, notes researchers have done a better job of preventing infant death. Infant mortality dropped 35 percent from 1985 to 2001; stillbirth rates declined just 17 percent in the same time period. More