~Stillbirth~
A Broken Promise of Birth
In a stillbirth, the promise of pregnancy is broken when the baby is born dead. Perhaps the most difficult time for mothers is the time between learning their baby has died and delivering the infant. Physchologically, mothers feel trapped, frustrated and sometimes, horrified that they are carrying a dead baby.
The rate of stillbirth has remained relatively unchanged in recent years. There still is no good explanation for why one in 100 babies are born dead.
Stillbirth cannot be anticipated in most cases, and even an autopsy may not always provide the answers. But, all efforts must be made to learn the cause. Parents need the information to rid themselves of guilt that often accompanies this loss. They need to be reassured that the problem will not repeat itself in future pregnancies.
Some causes for stillbirth are: *genetic or chromosomal abnormalities of the baby,  *complications from preeclamsia (toxemia),  *placental abruption or when the placenta seperates from the baby,  *complications of umbilical cord compression,  *diabetes in the mother (a less frequent cause today than in earlier times),  *other medical disorders of the mother.
The majority of women who have a stillbirth become pregnant again and give birth to live children. Even though the risk of a second stillbirth is very small, the shock of a stillbirth runs deep and continues through later pregnancies.
(From the book "When a baby dies- A handbook for Healing and Helping" By: Rana K. Limbo & Sara Rich Wheeler)



~Surprising Facts About Stillbirth~
Medically speaking, stillbirth is the death of a baby in it's mother's womb, after 20 weeks gestational age up to the moment of delivery.
Stillbirth is unpredictable and random, and often strikes like lightening in a thunderstorm. There is no way to know if or when or where it will strike next. The reason it is unpredictable is because half to two-thirds of all stillbirths occur for indeterminable reasons, and cannot be attributed to a specific identifiable medical cause.

Because of it's randomness, and the lack of any warning, stillbirth is said to be "an equal opportunity destroyer of dreams". It cuts across socio-economic classes, races, religions, body types and maternal age groups. No woman is immune from this "last great mystery of obstetrics." Even women who have had several successful prior births can experience a subsequent stillbirth.

That so many stillbirths occur at or near late term- when the developing baby is well beyond the point of viability and could survive outside the womb- is especially devastating, leading mothers and their doctors to speculate what might have been had their baby been delivered earlier.

Autopsies, when performed, rarely uncover any cause of stillbirth not already apparent from physical examination of the baby and placenta. There is no uniform stillbirth post-mortem (autopsy) protocol in use today anywhere in America. Every autopsy is done according to local practice. Because of that there is no uniform data available for analysis. When a post-mortem procedure is performed, it is rare for the mother to be interviewed, in spite of the fact she may have vital clues to her baby's cause of death. A uniform protocol would address this shortcoming.

Mothers who suffer a stillbirth do not recieve recognition in 44 of 50 states. Only Arizona, Utah, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and Massachusetts give these mothers a Certificate of Birth Resulting in Stillbirth. Birth is a process, live or dead is a result. Why would any state issue a "Certificate of Live Birth" to one mother, and not a "Certificate of Stillbirth" to the other? Both mothers did the same work, only the outcomes differed.
                        A mother of identical twins, who delivers one "still" is given a Certificate of Live Birth for the surviving twin, but nothing for the stillborn twin, rendering the birth of that child all but "invisable", and a non-event!
(From The National Stillbirth Society Website: http://www.stillnomore.org)





~Why Grieve For Someone You Didn't Know?~

Does the following sound familiar? Has something like this happened to you?
                                                                              

        The grace period lasted about a month. During this time our friends accepted or at least tolerated our grief. After a month, they began to send us subtle messages: "It's time to move on with life," or "you should be over your sadness by now." Whenever we would mention our dead baby by name, or speak of the child in normal conversation, our well-meaning friends would scramble for an excuse to change the subject. These friends seemed to deny our need to grieve over the loss of this child by making statements like these: "You're young. You can always have another baby," or "It won't happen again."
We were made to feel uncomfortable because we continued to have this strong feeling of love for a person who, in the eyes of our friends, no longer existed. We were sometimes embarrassed by the intensity of our emotions when we remembered this child who was but a phantom to others. We found it harder to justify our feelings about this child than if, at the time of death, he had been old enough to be known and remembered by others.

As a society we seem to be sending a double message to you who are bereaved parents. Before the death, we talked about how important this child was- a part of our hope for the future of the race, a gift be cared for and loved. Now we expect you to quickly dismiss and forget this same child as no longer important. But something prevents you from abandoning the memory of this little one.  We sometimes forget that this child was an integral part of your personal future and therefore not a person to be casually discarded.   During the past few years, much attention has been given to the attatchment process that takes place between parent and child at birth, and to the importance of those first few moments together for cementing that relationship. Though bonding has been emphasized as a dynamic in the birth process we also know that you were busy during the prenatal period establishing an important parent-child relationship.  If there had been no bonding taking place between you and your child prenatally, then there would be no grief for you to endure post-partum. The death of your child could then be experienced as a minor disappointment and a very temporary disruption in your lives. But because of the bonding process, your unborn child was a part of your lives in a very real way, even though you never "met" in the usual sense. Therefore, the loss of your child is profound, the grief deep and the adjustment process difficult. Grief over the loss of your baby is a beautiful statement to your child that "I loved you all your life.
(From the book "Still to be Born" By: Pat Schwiebert, R.N. and Paul Kirk, M.D.)
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