I had a stillborn

[Mo819]

This thread is intended to encourage people to talk about the unthinkable. I won't mention names as it's outing but after years of therapy I am finally able to talk about this and hopefully provide advise and support anybody who has been through simaler and who is earlier in their journey . As well as answer questions .My stillbirth was in 2008 . Ask away and I will try to answer as honestly as I can. Ps forgive my spelling in dyslexic

I’m so sorry for your loss. Were you at full term?

So sorry for your loss. It truly is the unthinkable.

How did you cope in the days, weeks after it happened? I don’t know if I could make it through.

I'm so sorry for the loss of your precious baby, the pain is truly unimaginable unless you've experienced it. Is there anything you want everyone to know about your son or daughter? I would love to hear about them.

My first baby was stillborn at full term. I'm glad that you've been able to access therapy to support you, it has made the biggest difference to me.

I'm so sorry for you loss OP.

What would be the preferred way to support someone going through this? What do you wish people had done or said to you to be supportive.

Thank you for you replies ladies and sorry for my delay in responding I haven't been recieveing notifications.

@SeenAndNot I was 37 weeks pregnant.

@Username721i cant honestly say that I did cope .according to my family I just sat didn't eat ,speak and barely slept for a week and the morning of the funeral didn't say a word untill the car arrived at wich point I had to be carried out of my house and into the crematorium. After that I went back to work pretty quickly I couldn't stand to be alone even for a minuet and sL
tarted university 6 months later. This all resulted in delayed grief and a marriage breakdown.

@sunshine423 I am so sorry For the loss of you baby. Like you my son was my first child. I am remarried now with 3 more children but I will never forget my forever baby boy. He was perfect. I found out only last year that I have an auto immune disease that causes blood clots and was likely what caused his death (placental abrupption) and short umbilical cord.

I did access therapy but not untill some years later when I was pregnant with my daughter and ended up with ptsd because she was having similar problems and I was terrified I was going to loose her too.

@zeddybrek This would not be for every one but I was quite overwhelmed by people .I am a naturally private person and I didn't enjoy having lots of people in my home with and there words or wisdom . For me I wanted to be left in peace with family instead of neighbours and people I hadn't seen for years calling round I found that alot of the time I was comforting them. So I would say follow the person lead ask if they want something don't presume. I can't tell you what I wish people would have said to me but I can tell you what I really hated hearing 'it's gods will'
There must have been some thing wrong
And my personal favorite and this one was from a female doctor 2 minuets after I had been told my sons heart has stopped and whilst I was hemerageing over the floor
Oh well you can have another one.
You just have to remember that people feel awkward and they generally mean well .

I'm so, so sorry for your loss op. I had a still birth too, it was horrific and traumatic and even all these years later the memories are sharp and painful. No one ever asked after that day about the baby, no one ever brought it up ever again.

My sonographer also said something similar when she silently was doing the scan ("....well, you're still young, you can just try again"). Like....looking at the dead little body on the screen, and that's all she can say?

I'm glad for you you have been able to have that therapy x

Thanks for this important thread op. No questions as sadly I have been there myself, but just wanted to say thank you.

Hello, firstly so sorry for your loss. thank you for taking the time to talk about such a difficult subject. Can I ask you what can midwives do to support you better, both through labour and pre/post. What could they say or even not say to help. I recognise everyone is very different and manages things very differently so what might help one family may have the opposite affect on another. I’m so sorry for the awful comments you and other posters received from HCPs, it disgusts me at how utterly thoughtless some can be.
Thank you xx

Hi OP. Like you I had a placental abruption. A massive concealed one. Mine was in 2009 and I was lucky to survive it. My dd didn't. I was 39 and the consultant thought it was helpful to tell me that Cherie Blair had pushed one out at over 40.

I had a stillbirth (beautiful baby boy) last November at 32 weeks due to placenta insufficiencythen this November on the exact same day I gave birth to a healthy baby boy! The pain dosent go away but I guess I have learnt to cope and manage. Love to everyone in the same situation x

I’m so sorry OP. Did you and your ex husband consider trying for more children or was that too difficult to contemplate?

I’m so very sorry for the loss of your baby boy OP and to everyone who has been through this indescribable and traumatic loss too. OP would it be OK if I send you a private message to ask for your advice?

@YouJustDoYou I'm sorry for the loss of you little one. I know what you mean about sharp painful memories it's like you can close your eyes and step back in time. That was a really cruel thing of the sonographer to say .Did you ever get any councilling it's never to late. Can I ask when your stillbirth was as when I had my son it was encouraged to talk about your baby but when a close family lost her son 40 years ago it was pretty much go home try again and don't speak of it again .it only came to light when she was trying to support me.

@RogersOrganismicProcess sorry for your loss . And thank you.

@Senmum2013 To be honest to only issue I found were the setup of the hospital .I had to give birth on a normal labour ward and the bereavement suite is strait opposite the room were the babys heart beats are monitored and it was torture. Aside from that I had a bereavement midwife for the birth who was amazing and supportive. The aftercare was poor and did not extend past the 6 week check. I feel they could of ensured support was in place before the withdrew services.

@LunaticFringe sorry for your loss and sorry you had to hear such a thoughtless comment.

@Mummanorman sorry for your loss and congratulations on your new baby

@OnlyFoolsnMothers we did but the cut was far to deep.

I’m really sorry for your loss and I know this is a few months old but I am pregnant and had questions about this the whole pregnancy and been shon and made to feel like a bad/horrible person for asking so I just shut up and kept my worries internal!

I have always wondered if when you have a stillborn it is something you are made aware of or given warnings of before actual birth or if you go into labour like normal and the baby ends up stillborn?

Do you experience any kind of symptoms prior to the baby dying? Like do you get external bleeding, cramping, pain.. anything?

can it ever be preventable? I know you said at the time you didn’t know but later found out you have placental abruption.. Is this something that can be picked up beforehand (maybe at a scan) and the baby stand a chance or will it ALWAYS end with a stillborn?

I am in a SS relationship and conceived via IUI which took 2 attempts to work, it’s obviously very costly (we paid out of pocket) and the worry of early/ late stillbirth has plagued my mind the whole time! I’m 24 weeks and don’t want to buy baby stuff because I always think, but what if! Having a 2nd would be all our IUI package would cover if a miscarriage happened but I don’t know if I could do this whole thing again (have horrible PGP and possibly HG) and the thought of death is non stop! I’m not sure how normal it is to worry about these things but I also don’t know how one would recover afterwards especially having the nursery already set up.. But I never once thought about therapy as it’s never been helpful to me before 🤦🏽‍♀️ so that kind of makes sense.

Tropicaliyes I get the sense you are asking in order to relieve your fears, but whatever if the answers you are given make them feel worse? I could answer the above, for you, as I have personal experience (41 weeks) but I don’t think doing so would be in your best interests.

Have you spoken to your midwife about your anxiety? A certain amount of worry is normal but if it is interfering with your day to day wellbeing they may be able to refer you on to some support.

@RogersOrganismicProcess no it won’t make any difference in how I feel, I think my biggest issue is the unknown.

Yes I have spoken to my midwife about it who said it was completely normal to feel the way I do, especially on your first pregnancy and that regardless of anything “women always have to remember it is not our fault and nothing that could have been done to change it”.

Im asking out of curiosity since it is something I have noticed many mothers would start a TTC vlog, journal or whatever and either upload later than their current time “just in case” or will do it in real time and the moment something does happen, disappear even though they would start out with saying they are there to document “the highs and lows no matter what”.

Then there are the other mothers that say that and mean that and document everything, even when they are not ready to speak about it just yet, will mention just that and say they will when they feel the time is right (like this OP has done).

one of my friends had a baby die of SIDS many years ago and she was open about it all, any questions asked she tried her best to answer then on the other side of it my gf’s friends’s sister had a stillborn that was completely healthy apparently and alive just before birth then was dead when it came out, everything seemed very suspicious but you couldn’t ask them anything as they didn’t know and refused to get an autopsy and buried the baby in a matter of days as per their religion (all we knew is they said they didn’t care to know what happened).

This subject doesn’t plague my mind 24/7 but when it comes up and people say they will speak about it and you can ask anything you want, that’s when I ask and usually that’s when I get told I’m upsetting people, I’m out of line, I need to seek therapy or similar even when they said people can ask them about it (the most I get to ask is if they knew the reason the baby was stillborn, but that’s out of line apparently).

I see Tropicaliyes

Well I can see how bereaved parents would feel upset, if you say things like “… had a stillborn that was completely healthy apparently and alive just before birth then was dead when it came out, everything seemed very suspicious but you couldn’t ask them anything as they didn’t know and refused…” as your choice of words (in bold) feel loaded with judgement and the italicised words are insensitive and dehumanising for their precious and much loved child that died.

Are you asking out of compassion for them and genuine concern for your own unborn child, or asking as some sort of ‘rubber necking response? If it is the former, please reflect on what I said above for your sake, but mostly that sakes of those who are grieving. The grief of others is not for your entertainment or your right to gain information from.

A huge number of deaths in babies, both born and unborn, have no found cause. SIDS itself is not a cause of death, but rather an absence of a known cause. In both pregnancy and infancy there are things that parents can do to reduce the risk factors, but many, many parents do everything ‘right’ and still suffer the loss of a much wanted child. Labelling such deaths as ‘very suspicious’ does nothing but stigmatise those parents more, and make them less likely to talk about their experience.

In my case, I was low risk, had had other children whose pregnancies and births were textbook, but at some point during labour she died, and no cause of death was ever found. No abnormalities in my daughter or the placenta, no infection, no bleed, nothing to distinguish her birth from any other, other than we were heartbroken. We had done all the right things, and more.

And yes going home to her nursery and all of the things we had lovingly chosen was beyond heartbreaking. I grieved for her, and I grieved for the people we were when we innocently prepared for her arrival.

All you can do is follow the advice you are given and hope for the best. The statistics are in your favour. If the worst happens surround yourself with empathic people who know how to sit with and respond to your pain, rather than making it worse with insensitive comments.

www.sands.org.uk/about-sands/baby-death-current-picture

This link has the stats for still birth. (Currently one baby is stillborn every two hours in the UK).

This has the stats for SIDS (168 babies per year) www.lullabytrust.org.uk/professionals/statistics-on-sids/

This has the stats for SUDC (currently 40 children per year). sudc.org.uk/facts-statistics/

Non of the SIDS or SUDC deaths cover known causes of death such as illness/infection/accidental/or harm being dove to them at someone’s hands.

All the things you put in italics and bold was all what I had said about my gf’s friends sister and that was the friends words.. I didn’t say anything as I wasn’t there, didn’t know them at the time and it came up when the sister had another baby many years later. The friend said his sisters baby was apparently healthy as far as they were aware and that even though it was very suspicious (and he hinted to the hospital being to blame, not the sister due to many deaths happening there in similar circumstances) his sister didn’t do an autopsy and didn’t care to know the reason why it happened.

I was just paraphrasing what I was told about the situation as I never even knew the sister they were speaking about so I just stayed out of it. Like I said the most I ever got to ask when I was told it was okay to ask questions is if they knew the reason for the baby’s death.

It was never the person I was asking that had a issue with what I was asking, it was other people around that had wounds that were still to raw so I was told to censor what I put (so I did) and take it to another channel(which I did) and then another parent messaged me to tell me their story and I was put on timeout for that because it was in the channel I was told to move from and I responded to them.. that was all.

I am sorry to hear about your experience. I didn’t realise they can pass away in labour without warning! I know you sometimes hear them say they have to deliver asap as baby is distressed but that’s the most I knew but in your case it sounded like that wasn’t even the case!

did you have other children after that so the nursery items could be used still or did you have to give them away or similar?

I don’t have a support system around me besides my partner so I would no doubt be in a very bad state for a long time and not sure if I could try again but know it wouldn’t be a issue I would just shrug off like my gf’s friend (he didn’t seem to care imo).

I heard for SIDS they think it is linked to heart issues and the failure to wake from sleep or being suffocated from not being able to move their heads into a different position when asleep and suddenly being unable to breath.

I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve by posting, but perhaps you need to start your own thread for your concerns.

@SuperSange ?? Huh?

You're on a bit of a me-rail on the OP's thread. It's a very sensitive topic and you're behaving insensitively. A bit of a read the room situation.

I've often wondered, how do you answer when people ask you how many children you have? Particularly if your stillborn baby was your first or only?

Because the question is asked as normal getting-to-know-you stuff, and it might not be the time or place to say something which stirs up emotions, but surely it's hard to omit that child?

I can only tell you what happened to me and that statistically you are alot less likely to not have a stillborn than to have one. It will not to you any good to worry about things you can't change just look after yourself .
And as for your friends what happened to them wasn't suspicious they were grieving and in shock. I'll explain why I know I had a placental abruption downpost but like them I refused to let them do a post mortem I could not stand the thought of them cutting my baby open. And some reliogions insist on aburial within a time frame . For example I have a friend who suffered a stillbirth who could not attend her sons funeral because her religion dictates a certain time frame and as she was still bleeding from the birth she was seen as unclean.
So please try to understand not everyone is open and able to speak about these matters.
In my case there were warning signs my son wasn't growing I kept reporting that I wasn't putting on weight and they didn't take me seriously untill 35 week at a measuring appointment. I was told I had to wait a week fora scan and a consultants appointment. At the appointment I was told he had iugr and reduced blood flow through the placenter. I begged that consultant that day to get him out and he told me he wouldn't act untill the next scan. His last words to me as I left were if that baby stops moving come straight back .
That was Wednesday. The next scan was the following Wednesday. The Monday morning I woke up went for a brew went back upstairs to get dressed had a wee and when I stood up the blood wouldn't stop coming . I hemoraged that that and I am lucky to have survived myself.
So I'm case there sighns but they were subtle and and at the time wouldn't have shows up on scans I don't know if it would now.
I have known people with no signs and people with signs so the truth is there is no honest way to answer your question.
Please remember you are lucky right now you have a happy baby in your belly and try and focus on that .