Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Tracing stillborn babies - feeling stunned

134 replies

Nubnut · 28/05/2024 09:12

I just read an article about how until the 1990s stillborn babies were often taken away from their parents without them seeing them: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/may/28/you-dont-forget-as-a-mother-the-british-parents-finally-reunited-with-their-stillborn-babies

I knew this already having listened once to an interview with an elderly woman who was just sent home with some drugs to stop the milk and told to move on. I remember listening to the interview and having to sit down on the floor because of the idea of it. I have not experienced it myself but it is something everyone can partly understand, and I think it is an issue that concerns us all.

I find it really hard to understand how and why this could have happened. Especially because it is not a classic case of it being a men's world and not thinking through the experiences of women, because in this case, we're talking about maternity wards staffed by a majority of women. How could this be allowed to happen?

My heart is breaking for these parents.

Does anyone who has any experience of the sector have any more thoughts about why this happened? I feel so stunned and I would like to understand more.

‘You don’t forget as a mother’: the British parents finally reunited with their stillborn babies

Thousands of parents never got to say goodbye to their lost children. We hear from four of them

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/may/28/you-dont-forget-as-a-mother-the-british-parents-finally-reunited-with-their-stillborn-babies

OP posts:
HereWeGoRoundAgain · 28/05/2024 09:25

Possible TW

And until the 80's at least, most of the bodies were incinerated in the hospitals as medical waste. My nana was a nurse and managed to secure an unmarked mass burial plot for my mum's first daughter in the early 1970s, but that was highly unusual.

Blacknailer · 28/05/2024 09:23

They also put mother's on the post natal wards with other women. My mum told me that just after I was born she asked the woman. In the next bed where her baby was and the woman said her baby died. I hope they doesn't happen any more.

BrioLover · 28/05/2024 09:21

Nubnut · 28/05/2024 09:18

But you can think it is cruel and remove the baby, but then when the mother asks to see it, to not comply with their request? When the poor thing was only just part of their own body? It seems just such a violation of personal freedom and integrity of the body. Just so arrogant and an abuse of power at a most vulnerable time.

It was very much a 'doctor knows best' and 'stiff upper lip' culture then - learning more about the blood scandal has made me realise more and more how much we have moved on as a society.

I completely agree this situation was completely barbaric, and it is so good to read that some families will have closure.

Leafalotta · 28/05/2024 09:20

My nan had a traumatic miscarriage in the 60s and she always said that in those days the shadow of the wars still hung over everything and influenced society's thinking. So many people had died in such cruel circumstances during both wars that there was nothing for it but to put it behind you and plough on and try not to dwell on it too much. Naturally this way of thinking spilled over into maternity care too. And many women as well as men accepted this was how it had to be.

I believe they genuinely thought it was the only sensible approach, it didn't (usually anyway) come from a place of cruelty. I suppose there's an element of paternalism in the sense that there was no asking women what they wanted, but user participation was an alien concept in those days.

Bigearringsbigsmile · 28/05/2024 09:19

It's just beyond belief isn't it? 😭

Original poster
Nubnut · 28/05/2024 09:18

But you can think it is cruel and remove the baby, but then when the mother asks to see it, to not comply with their request? When the poor thing was only just part of their own body? It seems just such a violation of personal freedom and integrity of the body. Just so arrogant and an abuse of power at a most vulnerable time.

OP posts:
Soubriquet · 28/05/2024 09:15

Because it was seen as cruel to the mothers to be given their stillborn babies. Luckily we have moved on

Original poster
Nubnut · 28/05/2024 09:15

Also, the work that this woman Paula Jackson does is heroic and she should be knighted.

OP posts: