First person

When Thelma Williams' baby died at birth, his body was whisked away and he wasn't spoken of again. It took 40 years to confront her grief and finally give a name to her lost child - James
As told to Kate Hilpern

The Guardian, Saturday 10 January 2009

I know I'm not the first woman to have found something she would rather not have discovered in her husband's suit pocket. In my case, it was a notification of the burial of our son. I didn't even know he had been buried until that moment. I had been told when I was six months pregnant that he would die the moment he left my body and somehow I just accepted it when he was whisked away and never spoken of again. This was the 1960s. You didn't talk about such things.

At least, I think it was the 1960s. That's the thing. It could have been 1970. I couldn't tell you what day it was, what season, let alone which year - such was my determination to follow the advice and forget, a task only momentarily but acutely interrupted by the burial slip.
We had another baby later on. I did everything they told me, resting almost solidly for nine months. On 26 December 1971, in the afternoon, Emma was born, a beautiful little girl weighing 7lb 13oz. Home we went with joy in our hearts and everything ahead of us.

It was only when Emma had her own baby, Millie, that it hit me. They say time heals, but there has been nothing chronological about my journey of grief. Nor anything predictable. Out of nowhere it came, threatening to drive a wedge between me and my granddaughter, a granddaughter I had loved unconditionally from the moment I knew she was conceived. But love is different from bonding, I have learned. Bonding is something I could not do with Millie until I acknowledged the loss of my baby boy. And when I had done that - and at last found a place for him to rest in my consciousness - I discovered a bond closer than I could have imagined.

It was 2004, the year before I turned 70, that Emma became pregnant. It was such wonderful news and at first I accepted my niggles of fear as normal. Doesn't every mother of a pregnant daughter worry like mad that everything will be all right? But my anxiety kept growing. Emma knew the reason immediately. Once she reached adolescence, I told her about my stillbirth. She had wanted to know why she had no brothers and sisters. I had surprised myself with how "together" I sounded when I spoke of it. I could relay the facts - facts of which I had hardly mentioned in decades - without a tear in my eye and after I told Emma, I found I could tell others too. Provided I stuck to the facts - and didn't enter the realm of feelings - I sounded like a survivor.

Emma knows me very well and as the weeks of her pregnancy totted up, she spotted the cracks in my shield. She wanted to protect me, to reassure me that everything was OK, but understandably she was starting to feel anxious too. Could what had happened to me happen to her too?

We spoke to the midwife and the specialist. They assured us that all was well. The specialist knew about the condition that befell me when I was pregnant and was shocked to hear how I was treated. He used the word barbaric. He asked if I would like to see the scan of Emma's baby for myself, so I could feel comforted. I did see the scan but I didn't feel comforted. More

My First Son, a Pure Memory

By DAVID HLAVSA
Published: September 19, 2008

HAVING waited until we were in our 30s to start a family, my wife and I were having trouble conceiving, leading to sperm tests, hormone shots and other extraordinary measures.

Over many months, the process of conception became so technical that when Lisa told me she was at last pregnant, I found it hard to know what to credit. After the first ultrasound, she came home with a black-and-white picture of a tiny curled-up creature. We put it on the refrigerator: my son, the lima bean.

At 20 weeks, we went in together for the second ultrasound. The technician made small talk and popped his gum as he dimmed the lights. Lisa lay back on the table. I shifted in my seat, jammed my hands into my pockets, and stretched out my legs like a teenager settling in to watch a movie. As the technician slid the paddle around on Lisa’s belly, the image on the computer screen wheeled, dipped and blurred.

Finally my son’s image popped into focus. Arms and legs folded, he seemed to be resting on his back, as if lying on the bottom of a pool, waiting to spring to the surface.

I said, “Cool.”

The technician muttered something, hit a button to freeze the image and walked briskly out of the room.

A few minutes later, in walked a small man wearing a rumpled white coat and steel-rimmed glasses, his bow tie askew. He shut the door behind him.

I don’t remember exactly what he said; he looked as if someone had left him out in the rain. What we had taken for a frozen image, he explained, was in fact absolute stillness.

We still refer to the man as Doctor Death, perpetually forlorn, always breaking bad news. They keep him in a closet. (A year later, pregnant with our second son, Benjamin, my wife turned a corner at the hospital and saw him at a nurses’ station; she did an abrupt, involuntary about-face.)

After Doctor Death left, our midwife arrived to explain that we had a decision to make. Did we want to schedule a D and C or induce labor? Her language was very plain, but it took a while for me to understand what she was really asking: Did we want the pregnancy to end in a surgical procedure in the outpatient clinic, or in the maternity ward as a stillbirth? We asked whether there were medical advantages or disadvantages to either choice. She told us it was simply a matter of preference. No hurry. Let us know. More

Upcoming Documentary for Broadcast in Canada

Sheona McDonald recently finished a documentary film called "Capturing A Short Life". It will broadcast on CBC Newsworld, The Lens, on December 9th, 2008 at 10pm.

Miscarriage: must doctors make our grief worse?

Insensitive health workers compound the suffering caused by miscarriage, but a Mumsnet campaign aims to change matters

Belinda Benton's second pregnancy was going swimmingly - or so she thought - until she went to hospital, at 12 weeks, for a routine ultrasound scan. “On my way to the appointment I realised that I was bleeding,” she says. “When I got there they said they would go ahead with the scan and see what was happening.”

When the ultrasound equipment was switched on, says Benton, “there was just silence. No one said anything until I said, ‘There's nothing there, is there?' And the doctor burbled and eventually said, ‘No, there's no baby'.”

For Benton and her partner, the loss of their longed-for second baby was a tragedy - the scan picture showed that the foetus had stopped growing at six weeks - but there was scant sympathy from the hospital staff.

“No one offered any condolences or said they were sorry for our loss,” she remembers. “We were terribly upset, and we had to leave the same way we'd arrived, walking through a waiting room full of women waiting for scans. I felt awful, and the last thing these people needed was to see our devastated faces.”

Benton was told that she could have her uterus emptied surgically - “evacuation of the retained products of conception” or ERPC, in hospital parlance - or she could go home and miscarry naturally. “I asked how bad that would be and they said that it would be like a heavy period, so I thought I'd go home and wait for that,” she says.

In fact, the next few days were agony. “It was horrendous,” she says of her miscarriage three months ago. “It was like a birth. I had painful contractions; it was labour. I almost went into A&E.”

“I was given misleading information on what the experience of miscarriage was like. If I'd known how awful it was going to be, I'd have opted for surgery,” she says. “There is no help for women who are miscarrying at home - there should be someone you can phone or get advice from. I also object to the terminology - ‘evacuation of the retained products of conception' sounds horrible; they should call it something like surgical assistance around miscarriage. And there needs to be a lot more understanding on the part of health professionals that miscarriage is an emotional experience as much as a physical one. It's a huge shock, a terrible loss, and it helps to have those feelings at least acknowledged by the hospital staff with whom you come into contact.”

In recent weeks and months Benson, and hundreds of others like her, have been logging on to the parents' website Mumsnet to chart their experiences of what can seem like the uncaring, insensitive face of the NHS - doctors, nurses, midwives and protocols that appear to take no account of the pain, physical or emotional, involved in miscarriage.

To judge from the Mumsnet comments, health professionals often don't take account of the extent to which losing a baby is a personal tragedy More

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day

Today, October 15th, is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day in the US. The Wave of Light that marks the day is an international affair, something everyone can be part of. At 7pm local time, across every time zone, all are invited to join in lighting a candle in remembrance and honour of little ones loved and missed.

A wave of light around the world may only go a small way to brightening the darkness and silence of babyloss...both as an individual experience and as a taboo subject. But it is a beginning. May the light illuminate and honour, and if it is bright enough, foster discussion, research and prevention, empathy, and support for those who grieve.

In the UK: http://www.babyloss-awareness.org/

New Blogs Submitted

A warm welcome to the following Bloggers:

• A Journey of Love and Faith
• The Dortenzos
• Choose Joy
• In My Heart Forever
• My Storm
• Our Loss
• Three Little Birds
• Missing Our Little Peach

Information from the National Stillbirth Society

The body of evidence is growing that fetal heartbeat monitoring is an effective tool in identifying signs of a potential stillbirth before it has a chance to occur. It is the next step up from Kick Counting and looks at the baby's heartbeat in cases where the potential for loss is above average, possibly due to an earlier stillbirth. (Go to our site, www.protectyourpregnancy.com, and click on the link in the last paragraph for a pamphlet explaining the procedure available on an experimental basis from The Pregnancy Institute.)

Next go to http://www.nbc11.com/video/17479363/index.html# to see a newscast feature from NBC Channel 11 San Francisco. It is an interview with a stillbirth mother who, having lost a daughter a year ago, is using a home monitor to safeguard her current pregnancy. After testing she sends the results via the Internet to The Pregnancy Institute where they're reviewed. She is called if the printout suggest her baby is in any distress. For infomation you can email Dr. Jason Collins at haydel1@bellsouth.net.

Richard K. Olsen
Founder & Executive Director
The National Stillbirth Society
www.stillnomore.org

Blogs Recently Submitted

A warm welcome to the following Bloggers:

• Fertile Ramblings
  
• One More Day
• Sands Queensland Australia
• Losing Kara
• Grace
• Yaya Stuff
• The Greatest Blessing: Hope In Heaven
• Hot Mama Bear's Premature Delivery: When the Water Breaks
• Walking the Journey
• Mi Isla Sola
• Hailey's Place
• Taking the Time You Need
• Just a Diamond in the Rough
• Loving Rylie, Missing Sophie
• Standing Firm in Quicksand
• To Baby and Beyond
• Mama's Boys
• Motherhood The Sequel
• Making a Baby From Scratch
• Building Heavenly Bridges
• A Fifth Season
• France and the Unknown
• Maybe Baby
• Miscarriage Support & Info
• Quips of Motherhood
• White Picket Fence, 2.5 Kids

A Mother's Meditation on Loss

AN EXACT REPLICA OF A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION
A Memoir
By Elizabeth McCracken
Little, Brown. 184 pp. $19.99

Some friends and I used to call ourselves "The Dead Babies Club." We would meet for brunch and talk about our losses -- miscarriages, stillbirths, terminations after amnios revealed acute abnormalities. We may have been a grief-stricken lot, but we weren't going to be a silent one: We wanted to be seen, to be acknowledged, to mark these events that didn't exactly make us mothers, but made us . . . something. And so, we were willfully conspicuous, overly loud. Because we knew: No one wants to hear about your dead baby.

Elizabeth McCracken knows that, too. That's why, in her lovely, crystalline meditation on the nature of grief, motherhood, marriage and France -- a memoir occasioned by the stillbirth of her first son -- she opens with a quip: "Once upon a time, before I knew anything about the subject, a woman told me that I should write a book about the lighter side of losing a child." See, she seems to be saying, this won't be so bad. What's more, she reassures us, a healthy infant lies on her lap as she writes.

I hope those signposts are enough to ameliorate readers' aversion to the subject matter, the excuse that the book isn't for them unless they, too, have borne a dead child. After all, you don't have to be an alcoholic to love Caroline Knapp's "Drinking: A Love Story." Nor do you have to have lost your jaw to cancer to appreciate Lucy Grealy's "Autobiography of a Face." The best memoirs transcend their particulars, offer a fresh look at the bumpy terrain of sorrow, love, youthful folly, aged folly, resilience and selfhood. McCracken's is one of those, and it would be a shame to pass it by because it strikes at one's deepest fears.

The dead baby has a name, by the way: He is Pudding, one of those goofy place-holders you give a fetus after seeing its inscrutable shadow on an ultrasound screen. McCracken, author of the wonderfully weird novel "The Giant's House," tells his story, and hers, with heart and wit, but amazingly little self-pity. Like any woman who loses a child -- say, to a random comet that drops from the sky -- she strafes herself with self-blame. Our bodies, ourselves, our fault, right? Eventually, she displaces that recrimination onto the entire country of France, where she and her husband, Edward, led a classic boho writer's life before Pudding's death. Understandably, she swears she'll never go back. I imagine she will even shun French dressing, french fries, French braids. It seems a reasonable and healthy choice. More

Stillborn baby given proper funeral service by area pastor

Stillborn baby given proper funeral service by area pastor
By ANNYSA JOHNSON
Posted: Aug. 19, 2008

The Rev. Debra Trakel of St. James Episcopal Church prayed for his eternal life, and a dozen strangers mourned him.

Then Bernie Schroedl, owner of Good Hope Cemetery at S. 46th St. and W. Cold Spring Road, lifted the tiny white box in which Michael’s body lay and placed it in the earth.

Michael Gabriel was born still on July 4 and left unclaimed at a local hospital. As such, he is consigned to a pauper’s grave. But Trakel and the members of two area churches made sure he did not go there alone.

“We come together as a community to claim this child for God,” said Trakel, who has volunteered her prayers at 66 funerals for those abandoned or forgotten in Milwaukee County over the last four years.

Tuesday’s was her first service for a child.

“No one should be buried alone,” she said.

Trakel began her funeral ministry in 2004 after reading a newspaper article about a homeless man who died of exposure in a parked van.

Her own church ministers to the homeless, feeding as many as 300 people a day, she said. But she realized that she’d never pondered the question: What happens to them when they die?
What happens, she said, is that the county arranges for their burial, but no service. In most cases, family or friends come forward to remember their dead. But there are always those who have no one.

It is for them that Trakel gathers, with members of St. James in Milwaukee and Trinity Episcopal Church in Wauwatosa, to pray at the graveside.

They gathered Tuesday around the tiny white box adorned with a single stem of black-eyed Susans. Many of the people wept as Trakel reflected on this life unlived. He had no legal name, but they called him Michael Gabriel, from the Hebrew words for “who is like God” and “man of God.”

“This child, the perfect innocent, is with God,” Trakel said. “Where else could he possibly be?”
Joanne Oliver of Trinity, who buried her own newborn son 27 years ago, struggled through tears to recite the Episcopal Prayer at the burial of a child.

Schroedl lifted the box into the grave and, on his knees, shoveled the dirt inside.

Michael Gabriel’s name will be inscribed in a plaque at St. James Church, 833 W. Wisconsin Ave., along with all the other indigent Milwaukee residents whose funerals Trakel has presided over.
Trakel knows there are people who will judge this child’s mother, but she will not.

“My belief is there is a mother out there who is grieving, who for some reason — whether emotional or financial — couldn’t handle the burial of this child,” Trakel said.

“My hope is that she knows her child was buried well, by people who shed tears for him, people for whom his birth and death mattered.”

MISS Foundation Update

A message from MISS Foundation Legislative Liaisons, Richard May and Kelli Montgomery re: Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network‏

Dear Friends of the MISS Foundation,

The following is an update on both the stillbirth research, the politics regarding the appropriations for stillbirth research through the NICHD and the NIH and the grassroots advocacy for MISS members to execute to help address stillbirths in America.

Regarding the Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network pioneering five-year research study on stillbirths, I recently spoke with the lead research scientist Dr. Uma Reddy and have prepared an update on the status of their research.

The 500 stillbirths necessary for the study is about to be complete. As a consequence, the SCRN will need two more years and funding to complete the analysis from the 500 stillbirths researched.

They have already received a small funding extension as the appropriations from NICHD has been spent from the 2002 $3 million appropriations. The stillbirth research will help determine how stillbirths are reported, to find out better ways to determine the cause, and, better yet, to find better ways to prevent future stillbirths.

The research has also prompted the necessity and funding to:
1. Complete the analysis from the current study.
2. Conduct a follow up study from the mothers and parents of the stillbirths regarding their next pregnancy and/or their psychological state from their stillbirth and the best ways to address both.
3. Conduct a comprehensive study of 10,000 women in their first pregnancies to better predict the stillbirth possibility and/or risks of stillbirths.

Regarding the politics of stillbirth appropriations, the following is generated from a series of conversations with congressional appropriations staff members.

In 2007, the NIH Appropriations bills (both Senate and House) inserted legislative language directing the National Institute of Health (NIH) through the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) Agency to dedicate funds to continue the research and analysis regarding stillbirths in America. The language was inserted, in part, due to the great grassroots advocacy from MISS members throughout America supporting further stillbirth research appropriations from the U.S. Congress. The problem, though, is that President Bush vetoed the bill and threatened the veto again this year forcing Congress to pass a continuing resolution to appropriate the NIH and NICHD at the same levels as 2006.

Therefore, the congressional directive was never enacted and the stillbirth research is coming to a close needing funds for the next level of research,analysis and action. We are waiting until next year to put the pressure on Congress through the MISS membership and grassroots advocacy when we have a President who is much more sympathetic to the stillbirth concerns. Both Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama have expressed their public desire and/or action in supporting such research and not vetoing the appropriations thereof.

In the meantime, we need the commitment of all of those Congress members running for re-election to support the continued research and analysis of this pioneering study. We need all MISS members to contact their U.S. Senators and Congress members NOW during the upcoming election season asking for their support to insert NIH/NICHD appropriations directive language supporting the continued funding of the Stillbirth Research Collaborative Network's research, analysis and recommendations.


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


Here are the key points in a sample letter that you may use or refer to:

Dear Senator/Congress Member,

I am your constituent requesting your support for NIH/NICHD appropriations of the Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network's continued stillbirth research project through appropriations and appropriations directive language instructing the NIH/NICHD to fully fund the continued SCRN's Stillbirth Research Project.

Stillbirths are the number one cause of infant deaths in America. According to the Bureau of Vital Statistics and the Center for Disease Control, stillbirths account for 25,000 - 30,000 infant deaths in America every year. Stillbirths account for 10 times the number of deaths than SIDS yet stillbirths are still unknown, undocumented and not properly addressed by the medical community or our public health system in America. In 2003, Congress appropriated a $3 million pioneering stillbirth study by the Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network through the NICHD under the NIH. Now, that study has been completed and Congress needs to address its follow-up and further appropriations to analyze and address the research conclusions. Therefore, as your constituent, I am asking you to support the further and continued NIH/NICHD appropriations of the Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network's stillbirth research project through appropriations and appropriations directive language instructing the NIH/NICHD to fully fund the continued stillbirth research and analysis.

As a grieving parent whose family has suffered a tremendous loss through stillbirth, I await your response to help research and prevent the number one killer of our children in America.

Thank you on behalf of the MISS Foundation,

Name

Address (to prove you are a constituent)

Phone Number

Blogs Recently Submitted

A warm welcome to the following bloggers:

• BabyBound
• You forget how small they are
• Our Loss
• Remi's Gift
• And Then There Were Three
• Streaks On the China
• I Just Can’t Keep My Mouth Shut!
• Blooming Faith
• Creating Precious Memories Through Scrapbooking
• Savage Family
• Emerging from the Cocoon
• Waiting for Happy
• Of Love And Loss
• River of Dreams
• Mom 4 Life – Sharing the journey
• Ripping the Bandaid Off
• The course of true love never did run smooth...
• A Memory in My Heart
• butterfly on my shoulder
• Dr. Cacciatore's Blog
• The Journey Within and Without
• Rising and Setting
• Homesick
• Life in a Holding Pattern
• Knocked Up, Knocked Down
• Beauty for Ashes
• Stillborn Loss
• And so it is…
• Faraday's Garden
• The Johnson Family Journey
• The Ragan's Ramblings
• My Life on the Fertility D-List
• Expecting a Miracle
• Our Boys
• It all started at Kent State University!
• Our Own Creation
• Life after Levi
• The Wonders From My Sleepless Nights
• Certificate of Birth Resulting in Stillbirth Bill - NY

Fundraising Request

A Small Victory is a nonprofit in Washington which helps newly bereaved parents by providing families who have experienced the loss of a child, through miscarriage, stillbirth or in the first few months of life, with 'Loss Kits' which gently guide the parents in making memories with their children as well as provide them with long term support and information concerning their loss. To learn how to support their endeavours, click here or to make a donation, click here.

'No stillbirth link' to Caesarean

Having a Caesarean does not raise the risk of a stillbirth in a subsequent pregnancy, a study has found.

The University of Calgary study contradicts previous research which suggested an increased risk.

The study suggests a mother's obesity - not whether she has a Caesarean - may instead be the key factor.

The study, which appears in the journal BJOG, suggests that previous research has failed to take this factor properly into account.

Our study strongly suggests that previous Caesarean section does not increase the risk of stillbirth in subsequent pregnancies

However, health professionals advise woman not to opt for a Caesarean lightly, as it is a major surgical procedure, with a risk of complications.

Researcher Dr Stephen Wood said the finding was particularly important as the number of Caesareans had increased in recent years.

He said obesity had been consistently linked to both Caesareans and stillbirths, but it had proved difficult to tease out its independent effect on each.

Confounding factors
The Calgary study examined 157,029 second births, and took potentially confounding factors, such as maternal weight, into consideration.

Once they had done that they found that, among women who had previously had a Caesarean, the stillbirth rate was 2.1 per 1,000, compared with 1.6 per 1,000 in women who had no Caesarean history - not a statistically significant difference.

The researchers admit that they were not able to completely account for maternal weight, but had done so far more than previous research.

Dr Wood said: "Our study strongly suggests that previous Caesarean section does not increase the risk of stillbirth in subsequent pregnancies.

"Although previous research has made a link between the two, it is likely that maternal obesity played a part as it was not controlled for."

Professor Philip Steer, editor-in-chief of BJOG, said: "Caesarean section rates are increasing across the developed world and the increase in risks for subsequent pregnancies have been well-documented.

"The increase in stillbirth risk previously reported was especially concerning, so it is somewhat reassuring that the study by Dr Wood and his team suggests that this may have been due to the confounding factor of maternal obesity."

Link to story

Stillbirth rate not coming down

The number of stillbirths remains stubbornly high, a report says.

The Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH) study blames factors such as obesity, social deprivation and mother's age.

In 2006 the stillbirth rate in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was 5.3 per 1,000 total births, compared to 5.4 per 1,000 in 2000.

However, the report found there has been a reduction in the number of babies dying in the month after birth.

These neonatal deaths went from 3.9 per 1,000 live births in 2000 to 3.4 per 1,000 in 2006.

These new figures confirm that more research is desperately needed into finding the causes of stillbirth, so that more babies lives can be saved

The number of babies dying in the neonatal period from twin pregnancies has also fallen, from 22.3 per 1,000 births in 2000 to 19.3 per 1,000 births in 2006.
The report also highlights the poor uptake of post-mortem examinations for stillbirths (38% in 2006 compared with 48% in 2000) as one key reason why the cause of so many stillbirths is still unknown. More