Tracing stillborn babies - feeling stunned

[Nubnut]

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.

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

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

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's just beyond belief isn't it? 😭

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.

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.

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.

Good she can trace them. Have you read about the scandal in Georgia, where many women were told their babies had died, but they were actually sold on the black market? Same attitutde like pp mentioned, that you simply didn't question doctors..
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/thousands-children-georgia-stolen-sold-adoption-black-market/

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.

Yes, I read about that happening in Chile and other countries in South American as recently as the early 1990s. And then the adoptive parents in turn being told that the mother had died in labour, not knowing that their baby had been stolen. Horrifying.

It just makes you think, what are we doing today that will be a scandal in twenty years time? That we are thinking is just necessity or kindness?

Because social culture meant that the patriarchal attitudes were ingrained in most male or female, so those wards were staffed by women yes, but women who often held their own misogynistic views because they'd been raised that way and women's concerns were dismissable, their emotional experiences laughable and inconsequential.

So decisions were made for you cos you didn't know any better... from ordering for you from the menu in the restaurant, to deciding whether it was a wise idea to see the body of your infant having just given birth...

Hysterical requests should be shut down cos it'll only make it worse, of course (that flood of distress you would experience was evidence of that, rather than the essential first step on the road of grief)... and what do you know as you're just a young woman with baseless notions of what is best, you can't argue with we the qualified and wise (social convention meant that medical staff were deferred to automatically)... and the women and men taking these decisions on the behalf of the poor bereaved mum felt if the upset was brushed under the carpet and not in view in an undignified way, then it was dealt with - well done everyone.

About 20 years ago an older nurse told me that sometimes when a baby was disfigured they would tell the parents that the baby had died when they were in fact still alive. The baby would be left to die. The thought at the time was that they were sparing the mothers from pain.

So terribly sad.
Do you think it had something to do with how fewer people used contraception and it was "easier" to have a baby, they weren't all chosen and planned, and people had babies younger so you had this idea of how you could "just" have plenty more? And maybe with more women staying in the home, so women's time "off" being pregnant and having babies was less valued, because they were not in the workplace?
I'm really clutching at straws, just trying to understand more.

I see. This is interesting. Thank you.

Agree with this. My grandmother's first husband was killed in the mines during WW2 and his colleagues literally dragged his body home and left it on the doorstep for her to find.

Not the same but 8 years ago women who were miscarrying were routinely put in the antenatal waiting room while awaiting scans.

I think people forget how quickly things have changed re attitudes to pregnancy and birth. The don’t count on it until you were home safely with a healthy baby.
Not having pram or cot in house was a thing until relatively recently. Bad luck to do so.
My mum had to miss two periods before Dr would send off a test to a hospital for confirmation. Women also wore clothes to conceal, if you look at movie stars etc they wore coats and press may make coy references to a happy event.
It was Dr knows best, stiff upper lip and thought to be kinder. Same with way mums with babies with a disability were persuaded to leave them in hospital to go in an institution and try again.

I agree it seems brutally inhumane by the norms of 2024, but surely it’s not so difficult to grasp that this reflected a very different attitude to stillbirths in the past? They were seen as medical events, not parental bereavements, and as a pp said, the bodies were treated as medical waste rather than human remains. There were no cold cots etc to enable parents to have more time with their dead child. It’s not that long ago that unbaptised babies couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground, either.

You think a woman can be knighted?

When my second was stillborn, my mum discovered that several of her elderly neighbours had had babies who were either stillborn or died soon after birth. They had been looking for to meeting my baby and the news brought back alot of buried emotions about babies they had never been allowed to see. One didn't even know if she'd had a boy or a girl.
My son was placed on my chest immediately after he was born exactly the same as my other children. DH said that was one thing that really helped him through the birth - seeing DS being treated as no less than our precious son right from the start. We treat him as part of our family now. Death is neither here nor there. He's our boy and that's that.
I cannot imagine where I would have found the strength to keep going if my baby and I had been treated the way these poor women were in the past and it breaks my heart to think of it.

It was in the 1980s

It was the way they thought was best to deal with it at the time. We have thankfully now moved on from that thinking way.

In my experience it doesn't. When my daughter was stillborn we were given a side room for as long as we wanted it, DH could stay as well and DD was put in a special cold cot so that she could stay with us until we were ready for her to be taken away.

My hospital had a team of bereavement midwives who supported us from when we found out about DDs medical issues during the scan, through the funeral and for as long as we needed afterwards. I don't know if that's the same at all hospitals or if we were particularly lucky. I think the cots were fundraised for.

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?

Because based on what they believed at the time, this seemed the kindest/best course of action. There are things we do now that will seem equally incomprehensible to future generations.

My parents had long-standing friends who got married shotgun style (Catholic) in the 1960s. The baby was subsequently stillborn. My parents never mentioned it to them, never passed on condolences, etc. My mum was not an unkind person, quite the opposite. I remember expressing incredulity as a teenager and my mum, who had by this time lost a child herself and now had many years distance to reflect on her response to her friend's loss, simply said that how what attitudes were like at the time and how things were done.

In 1990 I had my eldest son. He was born preterm and smaller than shop clothes so I ended up making clothes for him. This caught the attention of one of the midwife’s. Her name was Elaine Thorpe and she was one of the very first bereavement officers in the UK to provide any level of compassion and care for parents facing the death of a baby around their birth. She asked if I could help her to help parents by making even smaller clothes for babies stillborn under 3lb. At the time no one made anything. My heart sank when she described how she did the best she could with dark green paper towels and surgical steel . At that time it was rare for parents to even have one Polaroid photo of their baby to keep. The film was expensive and finance boards did not see the point of spending money on stillborns. Most parents refused to see their babies worried about what they imagined they would look like.Staff rarely thought to describe them and did not have the resources to ‘dress’ a baby to show to their parents. I joined with SANDs BLISS and the shared campaign to get stillbirth recognised before 28 weeks. I still remember the very first memorial service for such babies held by the hospital chaplains and SANDS. So many long ago beareaved parents came it was clear there was a real need to acknowledge brief lives. I campaigned with others at hospital board level to bring change. I made tiny Moses baskets from 30cm woven baskets, endless hats, wrap round gowns, designed clothes, teeny bears and anything that I had the skill and time to do that might help. The thirty years I raised my assorted tribe I continued to work for change so that babies born still under 24 weeks and even before 12 weeks would be given some dignity in death.

In my lifetime I have seen great improvements in care for bearded parents but tbh most of what we have and do now is still down to the various charities and parental fundraising efforts. It is they who pay for the bereavement rooms and suites, it is they who pay for the memory boxes and keepsakes, it is they who fought for help with funeral costs and bereavement leave. I have now stepped aside in the hope that those who come after me will continue what was started by the founders of SANDs and work to bring compassionate and positive changes for those who will have no choice but to face the death of their baby in the future.