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