Spike in stillbirths caused by lockdown

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www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02618-5

Birth data from a large hospital in London showed a similar trend. In July, Asma Khalil, an obstetrician at St George’s, University of London, and her colleagues reported a nearly fourfold increase in the incidence of stillbirths at St George’s Hospital, from 2.38 per 1,000 births between October 2019 and the end of January this year, to 9.31 per 1,000 births between February and mid-June.

Khalil calls this the collateral damage of the pandemic. She says that during lockdown, pregnant women might have developed complications that were not diagnosed, and might have hesitated about coming to hospital and therefore been seen by doctors only when a complication was advanced, when less could be done.

Add to the list of ways in which the pandemic and how it's been mismanaged has disproportionately affected women.

Add to the list of ways in which the pandemic and how it's been mismanaged has disproportionately affected women.

Because of our sex, I might add.

That's awful

This is horrifying, but I can well believe it. I truly think that my cancer has been allowed to spread due to the pandemic. It's been merrily dancing through my bones and organs for a vital four months, and it's only recently that they've spotted my treatment had stopped working.

In a still-birth, the dad-to-be also loses his baby, so it's not really true that this is a female issue. Is it? The parents both suffer the loss.

Totally not surprised at all

The woman is having the stillbirth. It's her body. It's fair enough to discuss this as a feminist issue.

In a still-birth, the dad-to-be also loses his baby, so it's not really true that this is a female issue. Is it? The parents both suffer the loss.

That's a really insensitive comment. The mother labours to give birth to the child which is stillborn, having carried it for nine months.
Both parents then suffer that loss.

Sorry to hear that BitofFun

BitOfFun I'm so sorry.

Wheresthebiffer2 The father hasn't had his body used as life support, felt the baby move, etc, only to then suffer that loss. The father didn't risk vaginal tearing, preeclampsia, damage to pelvic floor, change of shoe size as the ligaments soften, etc. The father didn't go through the agony of labour.

This is a female issue because of our sexed bodies. That the father may also mourn doesn't alter that.

It is absolutely the father's emotional loss too.

Physically however, the other thing that will fall entirely to the woman is that, if they wish for another child, she will have to go through another whole pregnancy to achieve that.

It’s absolutely an issue of unmet women’s healthcare need, and because of that it’s absolutely a feminist issue.

BitofFun wishing you all the very best.

BitofFun I too wish you all the best.

The rise is awful, the devastating costs of the lockdown, will very much outweigh the costs of the virus.

I wonder if this goes someway to explain the “lack of babies in NICU” which was discussed at points during the mid-part of lockdown. I think the research is still being done but at the time it was hypothesised that babies weren’t being born early possibly because of a reduction in maternal stress with workplaces being closed. But perhaps it’s a much, much sadder explanation :(

Its absolutely a womans issue FFS she is carrying the baby its HER LACK OF MEDICAL CARE that is contributing to this issue

BoF.

So sorry to read this new development. The lack of rigorous, up-to-date pandemic planning has had such a huge impact on the UK.

I would be interested in this being broken down into BAME groups because they have had more issues with covid. I hope they have looked at this one because ethnicity is a serious concern with this disease

This is awful news. I had definitely heard that mothers and babies were doing better due to less stress with fewer visitors and less rushing about. This is the exact opposite.

@GingerAndTheBiscuits

I wonder if this goes someway to explain the “lack of babies in NICU” which was discussed at points during the mid-part of lockdown. I think the research is still being done but at the time it was hypothesised that babies weren’t being born early possibly because of a reduction in maternal stress with workplaces being closed. But perhaps it’s a much, much sadder explanation :(

This is what i thought of. Would be really interesting to see if there is any relationship. I thought the massive drop in prem births was one of the only positives to this whole pandemic

I was so ill in my pregnancy I spent most of it in hospital. We've stopped trying because of this shitshow and my abject terror of the reduced services and treatment because well, pregnancy and the complications aren't 'covid' so significantly de-prioritised.
This is absolutely heart breaking to read.

Heart breaking, but not terribly surprising. I think in many ways Covid has set medical care back 20 years (or so)

This is truly awful. It is my understanding, though that women in their third trimester are at much higher risk from Coronavirus as well so there would also have been a potentially terrible cost to pregnant women of not locking down.

Years of underinvestment in our health services + a spectacularly incompetent government have magnified the natural disaster of the pandemic. Either more capacity in the health service or a more timely and thus shorter lockdown would have meant that more monitoring could have taken place.

Sadly, I don't find this surprising (although the numbers are). If you look at the pregnancy boards, women were putting off going to the hospital as they didn't want to leave their partner, scared of scans alone, only having telephone appointments. That's on top of fear over contracting the illness in hospitals. I'm not trying to blame midwives or patients here, there appeared to a general lack of support.

This is horrific. I am so angry that some thought and compassion couldn’t have been put into non-Covid healthcare, that it’s come to this. Some lateral thinking to ensure that vulnerable people were better cared for.

@BitOfFun

Sadly unsurprising.