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.

To be pedantic, it’s a damehood and not a knighthood, so no women cannot be knighted.

They still mix up a lot. Our hospital have separate scanning areas but during a loss in 2011 I was put on ward with women having abortions. Now you do you. But losing a wanted baby hearing women on the phone to people talking happily about their abortions at the time was horrible.

Happened to me 3 years ago. It was heartbreaking seeing pregnant women with scan photos of their babies.

I had a miscarriage and was put on a ward with women having abortions. I was heartbroken at losing a baby and they were discussing how inconvenient it would have been to have another one.

I can’t get worked up about this. It was appalling as were many things in the past but we’ve moved on.

My mum had 2 babies that only lived for a couple of minutes. This was 2 different pregnancies. She only saw them once when they were first born. She had no idea what happened to them. She was told to go home and try again. She never got over it. They were two of the last things she spoke about when she died.

My brother was still born (I think at 28 weeks), Mum never saw him. I don't know where he is, I think in an unmarked shared grave. He was given a name though.

Richard 💙

My mother had a full-term stillbirth who died during labour in the late 1950s. I know that they did nothing to try and resuscitate the baby in case it survived with brain damage. She was told to go home and try again - no support or counselling, or even empathy. Unsuprisingly it haunted her for the rest of her life, but I think she always felt it was wrong to feel sad about it as she went on to have two healthy children - like she was "making a fuss about nothing". So incredibly sad.

Our local hospital got a new maternity a few years ago. There is a dedicated Bereavement Suite and garden away from the other mums and babies. Even a separate entrance and exit so they don't have to walk through the maternity unit. Mum's partner can stay over with her and spend time with their baby.

Well lucky you... Some people never get over it!!! 😡 😡 😡 😡

While a lot has moved on, there are still lots of issues in supporting bereaved women and their families following still birth. It is only recently that the NHS have brought in baby loss certificates for example. Bereaved parents have had to push for years to get to a point where their babies are recognised as human beings. I think your comment while probably not intended to be, it quite flippant. I’m not posting to have a go at you, but I want to point out that despite progress, there is still a long way to go and not all the issues are in the past

While it might seem inhumane, many of those babies would probably have been Terminated for Medical Reasons if they were in the current era of scans
Scan weren't available until the mid 80s and the 20 week scan didn't come about until much later.

You can totally see why it was being cruel to be kind. The support just isn't there for seriously disabled children and families of seriously disabled children. Parents are left to get on with it, regardless of the circumstances or other children in the family.

Coupled with the belief that seeing the baby would add to the trauma of a still birth. I can totally see why it happened.

Terribly sad, but like many things in the past,it just wasn't talked about.
Same with illnesses , I had an aunt who died when I was a teenager. She died in the 1970s. I knew she was ill for some time but her actual illness was never discussed. Not even after her death. She was in her late 50s.
I assume it was cancer but nobody ever spoke about it.
It's good that things are discussed more openly these days x

I'm glad it worked out for your family but its horrifying to think they would leave a baby to die if they could have saved them
I watched a film on you tube a couplec.of years ago it was an American fictional film made in the 80,s and a baby was born with Down syndrome, he needed a hernia operation but the father refused to allow it which would lead to an almost certain death ,it all worked our and the baby was saved
I appreciate it was fictional but there must have been the attitudes amongst some that these children were not worth saving

This happened to two of my aunts,although they both said they didn't want to see their babies.

That doesn't mean parents of disabled children don't want them.or love them though!
My child is severely disabled, he has as much right to.life as anyone!

My DM had several late miscarriages some which would now be stillbirths. Apparently I was also a twin.

She took it very matter of fact that these babies were never meant to be, didn't give them names, doesn't regret not having a grave for them and struggles to relate to current culture on baby loss. And honestly as the surviving child I'm glad I was never in their shadow growing up.

They are different attitudes for different times- when my DM was born you didn't expect every baby to survive, she had rickets due to malnutrition and has a lasting disability from measles.

So to her mind having one healthy baby who wouldn't face any of those challenges was enough.

I'm sure that in 40 years time there will be things from today's culture that we feel are normal that the people of the future think are horrendous.

I'm in my 60s. For years, women were just ignored.

Mum had me and then lost three. She lost one at home - typical: miscarried in the loo, collapsed on the living room floor. Found by Dad when he got home from work. (No house phone in those days.)

GP came. Looked. Flushed. (3 months.)

At the hospital, gynae turned to my then 38 yr old mother: " What did you DO?"

Mum had to defend herself. "Nothing! I wanted this baby!"

I have no children. Miscarried early. When I was in hospital for an investigation - laparoscopy, 2000 - I had to go to the local maternity hospital. That hurt.

I've heard umpteen stories of women who'd lost babies being in the same ward as crying babies.

I have an older friend who's a retired nurse. She talks of being sent in to take babies away from young girls whose children were being adopted. It could be cruel in those days.

Things began to change in the '90s - that's when they started taking photos of stillborn babies for the parents round my way.

I worked in a hospital around 25 years ago.

Every baby born past 13 weeks had a photo taken that was placed in an envelope and stapled securely to the inside of the mother's main medical notes, just in case they ever changed their minds and asked, perhaps because they'd been scared or the fathers had rejected the idea automatically. The Polaroids were funded by the amount asked for in respect of ultrasound prints.

I did a few shifts in the mortuary and when they were collected by the undertaker (this again, included all preterms, babies had a special section), instead of the practical but respectful transferring of adults, each one was gently wrapped in a blanket/square of blanket and carried by hand as you would carry any other baby and laid in a wicker basket to be taken to the transport vehicle. Even the tiny, tiny babies who could not be swaddled but had to be transported in a different way had a soft cellular blanket to cover and the mortuary staff and undertakers were absolutely gentle and peaceful.

There was special bedding in a cradle for any parents who wished to see their child after they had left the ward/theatre and were awaiting collection and a tiny nightlight on the windowsill for gentle light, along with a rocking chair. It wasn't something that the Mortuary Manager thought was ideal, as it was a very old Victorian building and the usual process was to try to facilitate this in another part of the hospital, but they'd done everything they could with zero budget.

One of the things that they were incredibly grateful for were the donations of tiny handknitted hats, bootees and blankets from an army of older ladies who never stopped knitting. Many had lost their own babies decades before and the love that went into every stitch and was carefully, gently placed upon those tiny hands, feet and bodies was palpable.

DP's Auntie was one of those women in her hometown who had never said she'd had a stillbirth. Whilst the official line was that the knitted items were all donated for preemies and for sale in the Friends shop, just as many went to the preemies who would never come home as did those in SCBU and NICU.

Because of where I'd worked, she asked me (by then in her 70s) what actually happened afterwards and said it was a comfort to her to know that even the tiniest were given love, respect and, for her, a prayer said for them in the funerals if the parents didn't make arrangements themselves.

My MIL had a baby boy with anencephaly in the early 60’s. She was very overdue so was xrayed (no scans then). FIL was told the baby would not survive but not to tell MIL so he had to listen to her talking about when the baby is born etc. MIL had a very long, arduous labour and was told he was born dead only he wasn’t, she heard him cry and when they got the death certificate it transpired that he had lived for 8 hours🙁. She has no idea where he is buried either.

In 1984 I had my first baby.
the lady in the room oppymy bay had sadly suffered a stillborn and just wandered up and down the corridor crying.
I felt so sad but didn’t know how to help her.
I went to her room and sat down. I asked her about her baby and she told me he was called Benjamin.
I asked her if she’d like to meet my baby girl and she said she would.
I went to get my baby and let her hold her for almost an hour.
we both cried. We laughed too.
She thanked me and I never forgot her and Benjamin x x

❤️🌺

This happened to my mum, back in the 1960s. She had slipped and fallen at 8 months pregnant, and the baby's heart stopped beating. There were no scans or ultrasounds and she had to just carry the baby to full term; a perfect little girl, dead. The baby was taken away from her, she wasn't allowed to hold her or to say goodbye. Mum and dad never even knew what happened to her body. What is just as barbaric, mum was sent home from hospital in an ambulance with the other mothers, each of whom had a baby in her arms. Mum just had a bag.
In the 2000s (with the aid of a local society who were cataloguing burial records), I helped them find her - she'd been put in an unmarked communal grave in the children's plot of the local cemetery. Her resting place now has a marker, and I take flowers.

First: your comment on “easier” to have babies. Bit of aside, but does my head in when people say you choose to have children. You don’t, you choose NOT to have children. Becoming pregnant is a natural and inevitable process of sex unless, sadly, there are infertility issues. No contraception is 100%. The myth that you can “choose to have children” is used against women who accidentally get pregnant and places burden of contraception on women as a “choice” to come of it. Women have accepted this mantra and in doing so many take hormones drugs for YEARS and allow their men to get off Scot free form vasectomy etc and taking their role in stopping a baby being born if they don’t want children.

Sorry , rant over

so, context is everything. The rate of even infant death was around 15% in 1900. More if you go back further. Thst doesn’t include still birth and miscarriage . Almost all women would loose a pregnancy, have still born child or infant death. The sheer overwhelming grief of that would be unbearable as a society if society didn’t normalise it by accepting death as inevitable, sad, but something to move on from quickly. Antibiotics were a major breakthrough in reducing infant mortality but not introduced until as late as 1940s. Yes, there were a lack of female doctors and doctors treated women and their looses appallingly in some cases, but there was very much a realities view, that those same women would get or gent again (no reliable contraception until 1960s) and they needed to move through a grieving stage as soon as possible
That culture extended longer than necessary. But I do dispute it was male doctors ignoring women’s suffering, there are many hugely poignant writings in 19th and early 20th century of the sheer heartache of repeatedly loss of babies. Life had to go on and the taboo in not talking extended to women as well…sometimes it was just ok hard to hear about others suffering when you’d gone through same thing . And that would have included some of those very same doctors

we can look back with our views formed in todays world where infant mortality is dropped to 0.4% and criticise a harsher attitude. But the truth was the process of life, death and birth was harsher and thst drove peoples ways of dealing with it as a common event.

Not UK but another European country.
Three years ago my friend had PROM at 16 weeks, went to hospital in main city.
She was put on induction without any painkillers. Delivered baby several hours later, obviously in a lot of pain.
Staff treated her horribly and shouted at her for every question she had.
They whisked the baby straight away and she never saw him but asked about notes few months later.
She found out he was still alive when born and it was a baby boy.
Only thing she remembers that it looked like a small doll but she was not alowed to hold or even touch him.
She never got over it or was able to have another child. It was her first.
I still don't know how to help her.