Tracing stillborn babies - feeling stunned

I'm so sorry 😔 @Pixiedust1234 and all the others who have been through these times.

My firstborn son was stillborn at just under 24 weeks in 2005. My DP was clearly traumatised from the birth and I had him taken to be cleaned up and etc. My DP went home and I was stuck waiting for him for hours to return because midwives were too busy to dress him etc. I was very poorly myself so bed bound. They brought him back and had taken 3 Polaroids (kind of blurry) and put him in a little Moses basket. He'd been dressed in a little romper that was handmade and I will always be grateful to those who make clothes for our babies.
I was on the labour ward which was also HDU so I heard mothers giving birth constantly. They reassured me that I could go to the bereavement suite to be with bereavement midwives and my baby once I was better, but that was a Saturday and bereavement suite didn't open on Saturdays. So I went to a side room in a maternity ward (with its own loo outside just for me) and was still kept awake by crying babies and an inconsiderate woman who was using my loo repeatedly and making all sorts of snorting sounds in there. The next day I begged to go home. That was all the bereavement support I had. Because I was a day off 24 weeks I got the leaflet about miscarriages too which was completely inappropriate for the situation. Many medical staff came into my room in HDU with my baby there in the little basket and didn't realise he'd died - one asked me if he'd slept well for me!
So in 2005 it was a little better but still nowhere near ok.

Mum had a stillborn baby boy in the 50s .He was whisked away and she was told to go home and try again.No counselling or anything .She had me later and had bad poet natal depression ,due largely to the trauma

I could have written this, exactly the same thing happened to me and I’ll never forget it. I’m so sorry you experienced the same @Unrefridgerated .

My mam always said they just took my older brother and threw him in a biological medical waste bin.

There's a memorial garden at the hospital now where they put plaques for lost babies if parents request one. Its only been around since 1999 but there are plaques with birth dates from back in the 1950s in there and the annual memorial ceremony where messages are read of from mothers to the lost babies is mostly attended by old ladies (60+).

Although part of the age of attendies maybe that younger women like myself who have gone on to have more small children can't attend as easily with young kids (a small few bring babies but other don't want to risk hurting other women its kind of a minefield).

My mother had a still birth in the early 1940s, having lost her three year old daughter from TB, several months earlier. It was a home birth and my father took the baby in a shoe box to the lodge at the cemetary, as was the custom in Ireland at that time so that the child could be buried with an adult scheduled to be buried at that time.

I trained in the late 1970s, and the attitude was still, amongst some staff of stiff upper lip but as an earlier poster has said, this was very much a remnant of post WWII attitudes and although it may been seen now as quite cruel, those were the women you would want with you in an emergency.

I had a miscarriage at 16 weeks actually I didn’t miscarry but bed a d and c et. and after my operation was put on the delivery ward so I woke up surrounded by women who had babies - this was 2003 ish. It made a horrific process much worse

@IfYoureHappyAndYouKnowItHaveAGin I am so so sorry that you and your daughter had to go through that.

To all the bereaved mums, sisters, aunts and family members on this thread - I am sorry for your losses.

@triballeader I’ve rarely read anything that has made me tear up so much. What a woman you are. Your username is perfect!

@triballeader My son was stillborn in 1999, with very short arms, and a huge fontanelle, basically no skull on top. I was able to pick a lovely outfit for him from a selection of hand-made clothes. I chose a white gown with green smocking across the chest and little puff sleeves, plus a white hand-knitted bonnet.

A lot of love and work had gone into that gown and bonnet. The person, or people, who made those two items will never know just how perfect they were and how much I appreciated them.

Thank you.

My husband's aunt had a stillborn baby in the late 60's. She didn't see her baby and doesn't know whether it was a boy or a girl. The baby was just taken away and she was told they were sure it would be different next time.

My daughter died in 2007 (she wasn't stillborn, she was in NICU for 2 weeks).

I was put onto a ward with other women and their babies.

Every time I pumped milk the midwife put the curtain around me for the comfort of the other women.

I was shouted at for buzzing to get back into the ward after visiting my little girl in the night because I was disturbing other mums.

When she was getting her ventilator removed, my options were to have a 10 minute window with no other parents in the NICU and a curtain around us, other parents would be let in after 10 minutes, or to make a space in a storage cupboard so I could spend more time with her, that's where my precious daughter died, in a cupboard.

I asked for something to stop my milk supply and was basically told to get on with it.

When I went to pick up the paperwork one of the nurses who looked after her then decided to cry on me, to the point I was apologising, because my daughters death brought back trauma from her child's death.

It was absolutely brutal, and I really hope things have improved.

I had a very late mc in 1980 at 20 weeks. I was put in the antenatal ward and afterwards transferred to the postnatal ward.
It was brutal.
The registrar obstetrician asked me what had I done to get rid of my baby, he was so nasty.
I wish I had made a complaint but I was too traumatised.

recently was having a miscarriage and put into a room just off another scanning room. Could literally hear the heartbeat of the next persons baby through the wall.

and the waiting area for recurrent miscarriage clinic? Shared with gestational diabetes clinic. Ffs.

I haven’t had a still birth but several miscarriages, and when my youngest was born and seriously ill in NICU they still put me in a ward with mothers who had their babies with them. It was awful. I can’t imaging how much worse it must have been for these families not even being able to see your baby and not knowing when/where/how to mark the loss.

I am so so heartbroken reading this. I had a little cry. BUT I am so happy they have been able to trace these babies finally. Paula Jackson is an incredible person, doing some really admirable work.

My mum had a stillbirth in the 70s. She was taken from my mum without so much as a glance. No funeral either it wasn't an option. 40 odd years later we know where she is buried, another baby was buried in her plot a few years later and that baby has a headstone, we are not allowed a headstone for our sister apparently.

Not just 8 years ago... today... happened to me personally and I know for a fact I'm not the only one.

I know it’s not the same, but after I had complications from a tfmr for a very wanted baby, I was put on a ward with pregnant women. It was awful. The woman opposite me had hyperemesis, obviously awful for her, but watching a pregnant woman being sick was the last thing I needed. This wasn’t that long ago either.

This was not my experience in the early 1980s when my son was stillborn, having died during the delivery due to placental insufficiency.
DH and I were able to hold him and look at him and in fact he was left with us for a while.
We were also told we could could arrange his burial if we wanted (we did) and we had a small service for him at the graveside. It wasn't a funeral as such and he was buried in a communal plot which held other stillborn babies. The funeral directors provided a small white coffin and made no charge for their services.
People were very kind, the only thing I wish we could have had is a photo of our baby. That certainly wasn't 'done' at the time but I think it is now. I still have an image of him in my head.

I did my nurse training in the 80's. I can remember clearly how women were treated after a still birth and can recall three individual cases.
All the women were given a side room and their baby stayed with them for as long as they wanted. They were treated with respect and compassion and I can remember being asked by the sister in charge to sit in with a newly bereaved mother through the night for as long as she wanted.

Yeah, really inappropriate. That poster does it all the time.

@triballeader I think I might know who you are and just to say thank you for all the good you have done. Your efforts, and the efforts of hundreds of other fundraisers and campaigners, has brought compassion, care and healing to more people than you can know.
Thank you.

@VestibuleVirgin You think a woman can be knighted

THIS is the comment you wanted to make on such an emotional thread?

I'm a total pedant but even I wouldn't do this. Jeez. Read the room.

That happened to me about 5 years ago!

Still the case in 2020 - most hospitals do not have the room to have separate facilities. Ours has a separate birth room and postnatal room for parents birthing a deceased child/who's baby died during delivery but do not have any separate scan facilities.

My Mum was born mid 1940s and there was still a lot of stigma around aspects of life such as getting divorced, stillbirths. I think I was a teenager when I discovered some old paperwork of my Mum's in a cupboard. It had a marriage certificate, divorce papers and a little card from the hospital which said 'baby Jones stillborn' (my Mum's apparent surname from her first husband) along with a DOB. My Mum has never spoken of being married before she met my Dad or of having had a stillborn baby.