Many stillborn deaths are preventable. We can make sure they don’t ‘just happen’ | Opinion
On March 5, 2020, I walked into the hospital 39 weeks pregnant. I hadn’t felt my baby move since the day before. Being a first-time mom, I had no idea what to expect. Was my baby OK? Was he sleeping? Had he run out of room?
No. The answer to all the above questions was no.
Sitting in the triage bay with my mom expecting positive news about her first grandchild, we were informed by an emotionless hospital staff obstetrician that my baby had died. And I still had to give birth to him.
But first, I had to call my husband at work and then my doula (who told me that I was the second client of hers this had happened to in two months).
My body was not in labor, so I was given the choice of being induced immediately or returning later and risk seeing my son in an “unrecognizable” state. This was the first of many impossible choices my husband and I would be forced to make.
Several hours of labor and pushing later, I gave birth to my perfect 7-pound, 6-ounce baby boy, Rhoan Osborne Bailey. I was shocked that his lifeless body came out warm. The fear of seeing my dead son was quickly replaced with intense, unconditional love and the most painful, heartbreaking grief and utter despair from realizing I would never see him alive. I would never hear him cry, see him open his eyes or take a single breath. His entire future was taken from us. How could this happen?
I was discouraged from requesting a fetal autopsy because of the likelihood of no answers and the out-of-pocket expense, so I left the hospital the next day with a cardboard box of funeral home pamphlets and overwhelming feelings of guilt and shame. Without any answers, I blamed myself.
After months of being told, “These things just happen,” I sent my son’s pathology records to a specialist at Yale. They quickly determined my son’s death was caused by an undetected small placenta and multiple cord compressions. Had I been educated on stillbirth prevention (a fetus with a small placenta is a risk factor and changes in fetal movements can be a warning sign of distress), I have no doubt my son would be alive today.
Every year in Missouri and Kansas, 568 stillbirths occur. There are more than 21,000 annually nationwide. Chances are someone you know has been affected by stillbirth. This month in Washington, D.C., I met a Missouri legislator whose daughter was stillborn almost 40 years ago.
At least 1 in 4 stillbirths are preventable. But we can’t prevent something we don’t know about. Everyone knows not to eat deli meat during a pregnancy, but stillbirth is 1,000 times more likely than listeriosis, and no one is talking about it.
The Stillbirth Health Improvement and Education or SHINE for Autumn Act, H.R. 5012/S. 2647, aims to reduce the U.S. stillbirth rate by providing critical resources to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and state health departments to improve data collection and increase education, research and awareness around stillbirth.
The Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act, H.R. 4581/S. 2231, clarifies that stillbirth prevention activities are an allowable use of funds under Title V of the Social Security Act to further support stillbirth prevention research and programming. This bill passed by unanimous consent in the Senate on Sept. 30.
Please urge your members of Congress to support both bills, which are a critical step in stillbirth prevention. Many of these deaths are preventable, and are happening in healthy, low-risk pregnancies like mine.
We can do better, and now is our chance.
This story was originally published October 17, 2023 at 6:32 AM with the headline "Many stillborn deaths are preventable. We can make sure they don’t ‘just happen’ | Opinion."