There’s an elephant in the room, and it is more than the fact that stillbirth exists. It’s the fact that pregnant patients, even today, aren’t being given the proper prenatal education to understand and make the most informed choices in their care. This needs to change.
Risk factors, symptoms, diagnostic criteria, and potential impacts of one of the most common ailments in pregnancy is critical information. It’s information that could have prevented the death of my child. It’s information that prepares a preeclampsia survivor like me for potential impacts yet to come. It’s necessary information we all have a right to know.
What do you do when you disagree with someone about a subject that’s important to you? It’s important to me that parents have all information to make informed decisions in their pregnancy. People deserve information, and once they have it, their decisions should be respected.
I chose to go overdue in my first pregnancy, believing labor was best when it happened naturally. These printable brochures talk about my experience.
When I was pregnant for the first time, I heard that babies come when they’re ready, and so I allowed my pregnancy to go overdue. I wish I had known this wasn’t always true.
Dear Prenatal Provider—Please educate your patients about stillbirth. We deserve to know the facts in order to be best prepared during our pregnancies.
In recent years, home dopplers have become a popular way both of connecting with your baby and of providing “reassurance” that everything is okay. Unfortunately, any reassurance provided by home dopplers is false—a fetus may have a perfectly normal heart beat, and still be in danger of dying.
There has been some confusion over the terms “stillbirth,” “stillborn,” and other terms like “intrauterine fetal demise.” This post explains the differences.
We hear a lot about the power of nature and avoiding things that are heavily processed to keep ourselves safe. I think it is important to remember: What is safe is not always natural & What is natural is not always safe/
The experience of pregnancy after loss can be complex and terrifying. Getting pregnant quickly or secondary infertility; worry over potential signs of danger; thoughts on when and how to share news about subsequent children; confusion surrounding simultaneous feelings of both grief and joy. If you are pregnant or attempting pregnancy after loss, my heart is with you. I have included resources here that were useful to me in my process. Please take what you find useful, and discard the rest.
At current rates of 1 in 160 pregnancies, stillbirth is NOT rare. The fact is, you already personally know at least one person in your life who has experienced stillbirth. You likely know many.
The choice to be induced at the end of pregnancy or to use expectant management and wait for labor to start on its own is a complicated one. These are eight factors that should be considered in order to make an informed decision.
Now imagine I took this example of reckless behavior and used it to justify drinking and driving? Imagine I said that because I did it and I was fine, then of course it must be okay for others to try. This is called survivor’s bias.
There is a subconscious, and in some places, even overt “war” going on between midwives and physicians, and it really needs to stop. I truly believe if either set of my providers had swallowed their pride and explained that sometimes, neither nature nor medicine are completely perfect, then my son would be alive today.
Since I first starting researching safe pregnancy practices following Adrian’s death, I have wanted to put together a road show to share this information with the world. Today I ran my first booth at the Monterey Birth and Baby Fair.
A collection of five recommendations for safest pregnancy from the top organizations in prenatal care and stillbirth prevention: ACOG, CDC, Star Legacy Foundation, Stillbirth CRE, and more.
The shock wears off, and we keep talking. You ask for details, or maybe you don’t. You start thinking. And now you are afraid for your child.
I think the problem with using words like “rare” in place of actual numbers is that it’s a description that renders those numbers abstract. Our brains are so unused to thinking about statistical concepts that we classify these things as either likely, e.g. I’m likely to have a flat tire at some point in my life; or practically impossible, e.g. I will never win the lottery. But we do a really poor job of thinking about all of the possibilities that lie in between.
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