Renewed focus needed on stillbirth
In 1990 I was a mid-level junior doctor working on the Neonatal Unit at University College London. Part of my job was to run bereavement clinics for women who had suffered stillbirths or the loss of a premature baby. Despite the care offered by our wonderful nursing team, the chance for families to hold their baby and take photographs after death, the freely available religious pastors, and the solemnity of a proper funeral, many women suffered a severe bereavement reaction with feelings of despair and guilt many months after the event. Fathers were often silent or absent, perhaps unable to cope with their own grief as well as the sadness of their partner.
One Sunday I went to visit my mother for lunch. My mum is a tough lady, having left school at 14, brought up five children, run a junk stall, and had success as a local politician. She asked me how my job was going. I told her about the Unit, my colleagues and about the bereavement clinic for women who’d suffered the death of a baby. She was silent for a while and then I noticed her shoulders moving. It was the first time I’d seen my mother cry. After a while she told me her story.
None of us should doubt the pain of losing an infant whether as a miscarriage, a stillbirth or a newborn death.
Dr Anthony Costello, Director, WHO MCA
Twenty eight years before, in 1962, she’d suffered pregnancy complications whilst on holiday in south Wales. She’d been admitted for a month to Ronkswood hospital in Worcestershire. I remember spending that summer with my grandparents, playing with my younger brother. Mum's pregnancy ended suddenly, with the abrupt birth of a stillborn son. She didn’t get to hold him, he wasn’t named and the baby was removed as quickly as possible. No photo, no name, no number, no cuddle, no funeral. As far as mum knew he was taken to an incinerator.
Nearly three decades later the jolted memory moved her to tears. When, much later, my cousin also suffered a stillbirth, the care and bereavement services were far better, and helped to soften the grief. But in many countries across the world attitudes are unchanged and women still suffer the experience of my mother.
None of us should doubt the pain of losing an infant whether as a miscarriage, a stillbirth or a newborn death. The Lancet Series on stillbirths presents the scale of the problem, 2.6 million deaths per year at least, and the yawning gap in the policy agenda. We need to focus anew on a problem that affects millions of families in all countries, rich and poor.