Stillbirth from a Mother’s Perspective
Whenever I Google the words stillborn, there are always a bunch of numbers and statistics that show up at the very top of my search.
The dreaded words no one dares to type until it happens to them, but once you do, you are instantly inundated with a significant amount of data making it clear just how often this does happen. Yet the world chooses to remain silent about it, or at least chooses to silent parents who talk about it. Silencing our experience and neglecting our parenthood. To put it simply this is not a story the world wants to hear.
To know of its existence means “you're jinxing your luck and bringing this experience closer to home”. But that’s not how it works. Our stories should be part of the narrative when families start planning a pregnancy and go on their pregnancy journey. Why? This is the perfect opportunity to learn of any possible signs or symptoms to look out for, particularly for those common conditions, though not everything is preventable and not all symptoms are visible, there is no harm in knowing this information. We should expect our healthcare providers who studied for this to give us this insight, in the same factual informative way we learn to avoid things like sushi.
For every baby that is stillborn, behind that baby are happy go lucky parents who would have never dreamed this could happen to them. It’s a real slap in the face when you find out that for every baby that is born still, 1 in 3 were from low risk healthy pregnancies. Many were preventable and plenty were due to medical negligence.
In the aftermath of losing a baby, knowing how many parents are out there does nothing to alleviate our agony, especially when these voices are nowhere to be seen in our search until we start really digging.
What a grieving parent should be met with in the very moments they type the words “my baby is stillborn” is not a bunch of medical jargon and statistics, they need a warm lived experience approach to connect to. There isn’t a “how to manual” on baby loss, because as we know living with this grief is an individual experience, but there definitely should be an easily accessible handy tool kit that can be passed down from one bereaved parent to another on “what “to do” when my baby dies”. I say “what to do” in quotation marks because there isn’t much we can really do when our babies aren’t here. However we still need real continued support.
It is important to note that in the early days of this unique type of grief there’s only so much googling we can do. It can all go in many directions really, while searching for help and answers, you may find that the real voices are buried deep within this intricate world wide web, making searching exhaustive and immediately putting a barrier to entry from getting valuable help. Or we can get lost in a rabbit hole, and still truly find what we are looking for. We may also not want to read about what we already know the answer to or won’t ever get an answer for. We don’t even know what we want to know, however a question many first time bereaved parents ask is “how will I keep going”.
In the early days of experiencing the loss of your child you need serious looking after, as from this moment on the world has lost its colour, everything feels so numb, and if you do manage to do anything you may simply be going through the motions in complete auto-pilot. Truthfully you will never be the same again.
What is Stillbirth?
What is stillbirth, to a bereaved parent. It’s more than just a baby who died before they were born, it’s more than just a baby who “wasn’t meant to be” the ugly words we often hear. They are more than just a statistic, they are a real human life, a human who moved, who yawned, sucked their thumb, held their toes, opened their eyes, hiccuped, kicked, punched, smiled, listened, played and had a heart beat. A stillborn baby is a baby who lived, was alive, existed, so let’s not beat around the bush about that. Let’s not make this reality soft and delicate for the outsider who has been lucky enough not to experience this and is lucky enough to bat it away with stories of perseverance and looking forward.
There’s no escaping this, though people say speaking about it is reliving the trauma they don’t realise just how much this is a film that will replay in our heads forever. It may not always be the same clips, but parts will reappear throughout the day, or it can crop up in your day when you least expect and maybe in years to come it might not be so consistent but it will definitely keep reappearing.
So how can we keep going?
Firstly it’s important to establish that there is no right or wrong way to grieve and live life after loss. There’s no doing too much or doing too little in grieving your baby.
Feel It
One thing is true, we must allow ourselves to feel whatever this feels to us, the honest truth is that suppressing will be harmful, we must ask ourselves for who’s sake would we suppress the feelings that come from a love we haven’t been allowed to give.
It is so important to give ourselves grace while we navigate this most difficult time in our lives. Taking up space for ourselves, which could look different for different people being alone or being with a partner or your closest people. Finding a space where we can just be, whether that’s a corner of the house, a corner of the world, in a garden or park. Take up your space and take your time.
Don’t place unrealistic restrictions on yourself, of expectations to what and where you should be in your grief. There is no length of time grief should last for, it lasts as long as your baby isn’t here.
Part of going through the motions is being set up with a therapist, here in the UK most hospitals set you up with 6 free sessions. For the most part when you are a newly bereaved parent, it may not feel like you are gaining anything from it. It may feel like an absolute waste of time, however later down the line you may value the ability to talk about what happened and how you are feeling to free yourself to speak about it in your future too. The only difficulty at the back of our mind can be that it may feel like the person we speak to doesn’t really know how it feels because we can assume they haven’t lived this. We may never know the answer to this question, however some hospitals and charities provide peer support from lived experience practitioners, those who know exactly what baby loss is, this is valuable because there is a closeness that comes to speaking to someone who understands.
Another great resource are helplines from charities like SANDS 0808 164 3332 Tommy’s 0800 0147 800 or even Samaritans 116 123. It is so helpful to call these numbers when our panic starts bubbling up and we don’t know who to turn to.
Find Your Tribe
We cannot underestimate just how important it is to find people with similar experiences, this could be one of the first things you do or may be last on your list, however when you do you’ll realise just how invaluable this can be for what you are going through.
Zoe Clark-Coates beautifully put that “It takes a village to raise a baby, but it also takes a village to support a person through the loss of a baby.”
This is true, who better to support you than people who have been through what you have. There are hundreds of Facebook groups dedicated to baby loss, there are also just as many Instagram accounts connecting different parents who have lived different experiences around baby loss.
There are a number of intersections to our experience, some people who have experienced baby loss have also had their relationships break down, have gone on to have more children, have gone on to experience the loss of multiple babies, have not wanted to have anymore children, have been unable to have more children. All of these things change who you are and what your experience is even further.
Sometimes you just want to connect with your people, people who have to an extent experienced exactly what you have, you won’t have to explain anything to them or shy away from hearing what they have to say for fear of them saying the wrong thing. This can happen even within the baby loss community, which is why you must also be so mindful of the friends you make because this is a delicate connection that exists because of your baby.
Be Active
When you feel ready, you can try being active. There are so many emotions and feelings bubbling inside us when our baby dies. We are extremely agitated, for all the energy and love we were preparing to pour onto our child has absolutely nowhere to go. It does feel good to release this by doing something active, it can be simple and it works best when it’s something intimate we can do with just ourselves. Like colouring in, reading, writing, walking, running, creating something, swimming or even just listening to podcasts.
Some of these things may feel like a lot and not right at all, they could feel triggering and allow our minds to wander, bringing in the panic again. However, you’ll find what’s right for you, doing these things is good for your general well being without putting an emphasis on needing to feel good or being positive while living in despair. In fact you can also take an approach where you bring your baby to mind when you are doing these things, maybe you are doing it for them or in your mind doing it with them.
Keep Your Baby Near
For many people, this new reality opens up a world they may have otherwise been sceptical about. We learn that when someone dies that is it, we are almost forced to park that person into the past. It’s harder to do when we are talking about an unexpected death of a baby who never got a chance at life.
Therefore, it’s completely natural to want to mark their brief existence in ways you wouldn’t have to for someone who lived a long earth side life.
Many parents have jewellery with their babies names or objects that remind them of their babies. A weighted stuffed toy, a blanket with clothes meant for their baby, an outfit with their babies names or personalised books.
Music is also an exceptional way to keep your baby near. Creating a playlist of songs that remind you of your child or of moments spent with them, goes a long way. Music is powerful, it's nostalgic and helps you travel to moments in time.
These are simple ways to keep your baby near and validate their life.
Validate Your Parenthood
That you are a mum, a dad, a parent. Is the utmost truth. Yet oftentimes this is the hardest thing to accept, and at times one of the last things to sink in if at all.
Just because we don’t get to feed, change or hold our baby does not mean we are not a parent. You are of course entitled to believe what is best for you.
Being a parent starts the moment your baby is conceived, your body knows that. This is why it spends all that time preparing. If a parent loses a child who is 14 years old, they are not stripped away from their title. Same applies to us parents of stillborn babies, we continue to be a parent. My baby came from me. There is nothing wrong with validating this by buying a mug or item that refers to you as a mum, dad and parent to your baby. Celebrating Motthers or Father’s Day could be too sensitive, however there are groups who meet up or honour their babies on bereaved Mother’s or Fathers Day.
You will always know best.
Setting Boundaries
Only you will know exactly what you’ve been and are going through. There may be many well meaning people who will try to tell you they understand and try to “fix” this for you. Others may completely pretend nothing has happened, sometimes you’ll find that those you expect the most from will give you the least or nothing at all.
You are not forced to keep up with and maintain relationships with those who do not value or truly see who and where you are now.
Taking breaks from friends or family and setting up boundaries, helps protect our already fragile peace of mind. It is not our job to make other people feel comfortable around our grief and pain.
Many times we can feel guilty and apologetic when we bring our baby up in conversation, this has a lot to do with how the other person responds. We should feel safe around the people we care the most. Safe enough to feel we can talk about our babies if we choose too, without feeling apprehensive and safe enough to be around people who respect our silence if we don’t want to talk about what happened. We need people who are willing to be present in our worst moments with a helping hand.
You’ll instantly know who you can turn to when you have a crisis, keep these people near they are your people.
It’s ok to let go of anyone who is no longer serving the new version of you.
Conclusion
So how do we prevent a stillbirth? For the most part we educate, it should be the duty of those who have spent 5+ years in academia preparing to bring life into this world.
Yes of course not every pregnancy ends in loss and not every loss can be prevented. However, we mustn’t act like 1 in 4 is a small number when it comes to baby loss of all gestational periods, of all the statistics thrown at us this should be the one to remember followed by why and how to prevent it where possible. According to tommy’s in the UK (the year Maila died) 2022, 1 in 250 pregnancies ended in stillbirth, that’s 8 babies a day who for the most part according to the numbers and statistics make up a large number of healthy pregnancies.
Who is at risk of a stillbirth any and everyone. Sadly a baby who is born still could happen to anyone, it can happen suddenly and unexpectedly. I say this not to scare or to wish ill on any person, I could never wish this on anyone. However if being scared equals getting informed it is way better to be scared than sorry.
I hope this has been insightful and helpful to you and has met you where you are.
With Love
Maila’s Mum x