# Baby has died, now what?



## mackenziesmama (May 24, 2005)

I am about 22 weeks pregnant, a friend checked for heart tones on ultrasound this morning as I was worried after not feeling movement for a week. U/S confirmed my worries that in fact, the baby is not alive.

My midwife is out of the country. The backup midwife says I should go into labor within two weeks of the baby not making it, so for me, I only have a few days left before it starts. My friend the u/s tech estimates the baby died about 1.5 weeks ago. Do labors start within two weeks?

Please, if you have any advice of what to expect, would you please let me know? I've never been through this, I've never read this subforum, I don't know anyone who's had pregnancy loss after about 12 weeks.

Are there herbs I can take to speed up the baby coming? Just typical end of pregnancy herbs (i.e. Earth Mama's labor ease, red raspberry leaf, etc)

I just don't know what to do. Do I need special supplies for the baby? I haven't even ordered the birth kit yet. What happens once it is born?

Oh, that's another question. The backup midwife wants me to have blood work to make sure my clotting factors are there to make a home delivery safe for this pregnancy. Is that typical?

I just don't know what to do. I can't understand why it happened. I want a live baby, not one that is dead. I just don't get it. I'm so sad.

I'm probably not making much sense right now, so I'll log off. I hope some of the kind mamas here will be able to hellp me. I don't have anyone in real life that understands, besides my husband. But we're in the same boat, he doesn't know what to expect either.

Thank you.


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## mytwogirls (Jan 3, 2008)

Oh mama, I am so sorry to hear about your tremendous loss. My heart just breaks for you! I really don't have any advice hon, but I want you to know I am thinking of you. There are a lot of mamas here who, unfortunately have been through something similar and will give you great advice. Please take gentle care of yourself. Again, I am so sorry to hear of this news. HUGS!


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## birthangeldoula (Feb 1, 2008)

I'm so sorry you have to go through this.







Hugs mama


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## HybridVigor (Jan 14, 2008)

I can't know what you're feeling right now. Please know that you are loved and needed, and *nothing you did caused this*. Your little baby is going to come out within a few weeks so that you can say hello and goodbye, and if you're uncertain about why you need blood work . . . ask the back-up MW to give you an explanation.

You are not alone.
http://www.unassistedhomebirth.com/miscarriage.html

Here are some suggestions for induction:
http://www.lifepassages.net/NaturalInduction.html

Here is a story of another mama:
http://www.homebirth.org.uk/nickykim.htm

I've had two miscarriages, and they were, for me, more painful than the worst period cramps. Both times(after doing research), I passed the baby unassisted at home. Now I'm the proud mom of my 10.5 month old son, and we're doing fine. I still think about the other babies because they were a part of me, but I stopped blaming myself and questioning everything I did . . . I managed to let go of that irrational guilt.


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## Ruthla (Jun 2, 2004)

I'm so sorry for your loss.


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## Dalene (Apr 14, 2008)

Oh no, I am so sorry for you and your baby.

This is a wild guess about the blood work, but maybe the MW is thinking about placental abruption (which can be caused by blood clotting problems, right?) as a possibility for a baby's death. Maybe she wants to rule out clotting problems and make sure that you'll be OK giving birth.

When your baby is born, please spend time with the baby and your family and consider taking pictures together. Take the time to mother your child by bathing, dressing, cradling him/her...whatever feels right. It felt so weird to take pictures of my son who died in labor in April, but I am so thankful we have them. Had I known what I know now, I would have taken a hundred pictures. They are proof that he existed, that he lived inside of me.


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## mackenziesmama (May 24, 2005)

Thank you for your replies. It has been a rough afternoon. The back up midwife said she wanted blood work to make sure the clotting factors are there to make it safe to deliver at home. Honestly, if my actual m/w is not back, we will consider delivering unassisted at home. My midwife will be back really late Saturday, so thats only a few days away.

Thank you again. If anyone has anything to add, please do.


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## mackenziesmama (May 24, 2005)

Oh, Dalene. I'm sorry about your son. I never thought about bathing, dressing, etc. but I think it would help. This baby is REAL, whether it will be born alive or dead. Someone today suggested to bury the baby under a tree. That wouldn't work for us. I want to acknowledge this baby.


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## avivaelona (Jun 24, 2005)

Are you planning to do this UC? Or will the midwife be present for the birth?

Except that the pushing part will be a little reduced birthing a 22 week baby will be pretty much the same as a full term birth with a full labor. The post partum period will also be the same pretty much as with a full term birth, and your milk will likely come in.

In most states a 22 week baby is considered a stillbirth and a certificate of still birth is filled out. Before the baby is born you should decide on funeral or other plans.

I agree about taking tons of pictures, and saving some mementos, if you can't bear to see them now, let someone else hold them for you.

Mama, I'm so sorry this is happening, saying goodbye just when you want to be saying hello hurts so much. My thoughts are with you.








and a







for your LO


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## ladybug732 (Apr 29, 2008)

I'm so sorry you're dealing with this, mama.







I wish you had a live baby too...I know that's what all of us here want.

As for the labor and time aspect, I can't give you specific advice. After we found out Audrey had died, I was induced about a day and a half later. I chose that because I did not feel up to waiting. I had been planning on delivering naturally in a birth center, but because of wanting the induction, I found an OB and a hospital. I also chose not to wait because the OB said her appearance would change (decay) the longer I waited. I mention that because you do need to be prepared that the baby will not look "normal". I'm sorry for the phrasing - there's no easy way to say all this.

I don't think you need any special supplies for the baby exactly, although you need to think of what you plan on doing regarding burial, cremation, etc. I'm not sure how this all works with home birth, and I would imagine there are some laws regarding it as well. In my situation, the hospital transported the baby to the funeral home. You might want to have someone contact some funeral homes for you to ask about it. Be sure they ask whether they offer discounted/free services for stillbirth. Our funeral home only charged $100 to the cremation, which is about 1/10 what it normally costs.

I would definitely get the bloodwork done. After my midwife couldn't find a heartbeat, she sent me to a nearby hospital for the ultrasound. When they discovered that Audrey had passed away, they took blood and made me wait a few hours until the results came back before they let me leave. They explained that they needed to make sure there wasn't anything seriously wrong with me that would make it unsafe for me to go home and have time to think about what to do. I would also ask about ordering other blood tests that would help determine a possible cause. I know right now this is probably too much for you to think about, but it has helped my peace of mind to know that I had just about every test possible. Also, in my case, we discovered a clotting issue (elevated homocysteine levels and two mutated MTHFR genes), so I am already on supplements and baby aspirin. The clotting problems can affect your heart in general, so it is important information to know. Let me know if you want me to tell you the names of all the tests I got.

I second Dalene's suggestion of taking lots of pictures and spending time with the baby. If that is too hard for you, please ask someone else to take the pictures...you will glad that you did. There is a wonderful non-profit organization that will take and professionally retouch pictures, all for free. I'm not sure about a home birth, but definitely look into it. www.nilmdts.org They took beautiful pictures of my Audrey. The retouching was so important to me because it helps me to remember her as she should have been, how she looked in my heart. PM me if you would like to see some pictures.

I would also have supplies ready to take hand and footprints, maybe even castings. You will want to have things to help remember your baby by.

In general, try to delegate these responsibilites to others as much as possible. If you have any family/friends in the area who can help, it will make it so much easier on you not to have to deal with all the details.

I hope you weren't hurt/offended by my answers. I was trying to think of as much as possible that would be helpful, but unfortunately, some of this stuff is just plain hard to deal with. Please PM if you have more questions. Our situations aren't exactly the same, but I have experienced a stillbirth recently, and I know how hard it is.







Please continue to post and let us know how you are doing.

Kathleen


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## AngelBee (Sep 8, 2004)




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## Eliseatthebeach (Sep 20, 2007)

Oh mama, I am so so very sorry.








I am suprised you mw is OK with you still birthing at home, only b/c of the risk of hemorrhaging. I bled quite a bit at the hospital after passing the baby, there was also alot of large clots....sorry tmi. You will also need to make sure all the placenta comes out as that will cause severe bleeding too. I was induced with cytotec inserted vaginally. It was about 20 hours after the first dose that I delivered my baby. For me there was no pain, I was expecting the worst. My baby had also died a week or so before.
I also don't know if a backyard burial is legal considering you are 22 weeks. At 20 weeks your baby is considered stillborn and needs to be handled differently. You could have her/him cremated and keep the ashes if you wish. That's what we did. If you decided to do this, ask the funeral home if they "donate their services" for this situation, some will with some nominal fees.
As a pp said, spend time with your baby. Take pictures too. Maybe get footprints. Wrap her/him in a blanket and hat and mother her as long as you want to. Name the baby if you want to, and have whatever kind of memorial service you want if you choose to.
I am so sorry you are going through this. I wish you peace and healing. PM me if you have anything you want to ask.


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## dismalgrrrl (Apr 14, 2008)

I am so sorry you are having to go through this.

I wrote a long post already, but I timed out and it all got deleted. I hope i can remember what all I put in.

First, the bloodwork is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. When a baby dies before it is born, and it takes a while to be delivered, something called disseminated intravascular coagulopathy can develop. This is life threatening. The longer that it takes for the baby to be delivered the more likely this is to occur. Please keep in mind that you really should deliver in NO MORE than 2 weeks (some might say 3). Not all women go into labor without intervention within 2 weeks, only about 75%. So your midwife may insist on induction if you do not go into labor soon. If she doesn't, you really need to. This condition is fatal. The bloodwork is not to diagnose what may have caused your baby to die, but rather whether you are at imminent risk of death yourself. Many of the blood tests involved in finding a cause need to be done both at the time of birth and weeks later to confirm a diagnosis.

Second, I would highly recommend getting the services of a bereavement doula. I wish I had known there was such a thing when I lost my son. I am not sure where you are located, so you might try contacting DONA international (dona.org) or googling bereavement doula and the area you live in.

I can relate my experience, but it may be slightly different than what you might go through. For one, I was induced the day I found out Alex had died. I was 24 weeks and went to the midwife when he suddenly stopped moving. After not finding a heartbeat using doppler she drove me to the hospital for an ultrasound where we confirmed he had died.

Keep in mind that what you will be going through is largely the same as a "normal" labor. Like all women with a normal labor it may vary from person to person. Nobody told me this, what to expect at all, so if I give too much graphic information, please forgive me. I wish I had too much instead of too little.

As far as supplies, treat it largely as if it were a live birth. If you are delivering in a hospital, they may have more on hand, so I am not sure what all you need for a home delivery. We were planning on using a birth center, so as far as supplies they had it all. I would recommend the following list:
* camera
* cell phone to call friends, family
* a baby blanket and layette of some sort. If you know someone who sews, here is a link to patterns with micro-preemie sizes http://www.bevscountrycottage.com/preemies.html
I actually would have two sets. One to dress you little one in while you spend some time together, which you can take home. The other for them to wear when they go to the funeral home to be buried in or cremated.
* an ace bandage
* a very cold head of cabbage
* a package of the largest maxi pads you can find, preferably post-partum pads
* the number of a funeral home. In virtually all states you will be required past 20 weeks to have the remains handled by a funeral home.
* if the midwife/hospital does not supply it a kit to take casts and prints of their hands and feet.

As far as the experience itself, again, I can only relate what I went through. I was in labor for 15 hours from when regular contractions started to delivery. I was in the hospital for a little over 24 hours - i was admitted early afternoon on a saturday and delivered sunday morning. I was induced first with cytotec to dilate my cervix and later pitocin. I did have narcotic pain relief during the night, but never had an epidural. The pain was honestly bad but tolerable until the last hour, when it was quite painful. The worst part was during the time when he had entered the birth canal, which honestly I think was as much the sudddennes of it happening and my not being prepared as anything else. I went from only a few centimeters dilated to the membranes visibly bulging out and a searing burning pain in a matter of minutes. The burning is from the tendon that holds your pelvis together, which nobody had warned me about. During the first 2 stages of labor, again, the pain was manageable. THe only truly painful part is when they would check my cervix, but that may have been because the cytotec made it very sensitive.

What happens immediately after can vary, but I can tell you what happenned with me and what I wish I had known or done. Immediately after he was completely out they told me i had an angel, and that it was a boy. They cut the cord and did the normal (hospital normal) rudimentary clean up and then wrapped him in a baby blanket and asked I if wanted to hold him. I was holding him within 3 minutes of his birth. The placenta was taking its time, so it was manually extracted. I really wasn't aware of what was going on as I was focused on my son.

We were told we could hold him for as long as we wanted to. I highly recommend taking (or better having someone close to you) take as many pictures as you can. You may feel awkward doing it, but it is unlikely you will regret it. I wish was had taken far more. Unfortunately, many of the bereavement photography services will probably be unwilling/able to help you with this given both the gestational age and the length of time since your baby died. Now I lay Me Down To Sleep has a policy of 25 weeks or later, or at the discretion of the delivery staff. There is no guarantee how your baby will look, but it will not be "normal". however, it is probably not going to be as bad as you may imagine it. A lot to remember through this process is that frequently the anticipation of anything is worse than the actual happenig. The retouching services tend to be far more forgiving as far as time since death and gestational age, so this may still be an option. Even if you think you won't want them, take them anyway. You can change your mind later but you can't go back to take more.

You might want to ask if you can dress/bathe your baby as well. I didn't know I might have the right to do this, and wish I had. On the other hand, given the length of time your baby's skin might be extremely delicate and you may want to defer this to someone more experienced with handling babies who have died. Also, feel free to examine your baby just as you would had they been born alive. I felt like I was doing something wrong, unwrapping him so I could count his fingers and toes. I wish someone had told me it was okay.

After a few hours, the nurse said that they could bathe him and dress him for me and to do an intial examination. The nurse took him away and came back with an information sheet about autopsy, a list of local funeral homes, and three different gowns i could choose from to have him dressed in. Be advised that autopsies are very expensive. I am not sure whether our insurance would have reimbursed us or not had we chosen to have one. We were told that we would need to have a cashiers check for $2000 ready when the pathologist came for him if we wanted an autopsy. This is not why we said no, but in retrospect that seemed so strange. You may get answers about what happened, but then again you may not. Don't let anyone sway you one way or another, this is a decision entirely up to you and your family.

We lived an hour away in another town, so we did not use any of the funeral homes on the list. We called the chaplain at the college I teach at to get advice, and called the one who had handled his mother in law's funeral the week before. They said they would come to get him within a few hours and took some information from us for the obituary for the newspaper. They told us they would come by the next day to discuss the details of a funeral or service and other options. Since you have a little more time, you may want to consider this now. If you can't handle it just yet, don't force it. See if there are close friends or family you trust to help.

While the doctor examined him, I asked to be disconnected from the iv so i could take a shower (it had been 2 days).

After the doctor examined him and he was dressed they brought him back in . By this time he had gotten very cold. My husband and I spent some more time holding him, and then some friends and family came in to meet him and say goodbye. After a while longer, we told the nurse that we were ready. She came in and carried him away. She returned and asked if I wanted to keep his hat and blanket and gown. This is why I suggest bringing two sets. I desperately wanted to keep those, but ccouldn't bear the thought of my Alex's little body lying naked for at least a day. So I said no. They took him to the nursery and placed him in a bassinett until the funeral home came. We decided to have the nurses be the go between, as I couldn't bear the thought of handing him directly to the funeral director, but you should do whatever feels comfortable to you.

When they returned they brought me a memory box, which had some fairly irrelevany brochures about miscarriage (very little of the "what to expect" will apply to you), a list of bereavement groups in the area, a knit baby blanket and a more standard baby blanket. At the bottom was a little envelope with 4 snapshots of Alex dressed in his gown and his little preemie cap. I was discharged with a prescription for pain medication and some ambien to help me sleep.

The ace bandage and cabbage is for the milk coming in, which will happen anywhere from later the same day to a few days later. It will come in just as if you had a live, full-term birth. By wrapping your chest down tightly with cold cabbage leaves between your breasts and the ace bandage it will help the milk dry up sooner and will not hurt as much. Just be sure to cut the spine off the cabbage leaves to avoid touching the nipple (or if you can, cut a whole to avoid contact with the nipple) as nipple stimulation triggers milk production. Also, when you shower for the next few weeks, try to always face back and avoid letting warm water hit your breasts. You may spurt milk as well anytime a baby cries, whether it is in front of you, on tv, or a block away. Even wrapping and with the cabbage it can take weeks to completely go away.

I know there is more, but I can't think of it right now. If you need more, come back here or to the ivillage stillborn board. If I don't know I will try to find out for you.

If you are ever at such a low point that you feel completely overwhelmed and want to escape, First Candle has a 24 hour crisis hotline. 1-800-221-7437 .

Please be gentle with yourself in the weeks and months ahead.
-melanie


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## Dalene (Apr 14, 2008)

I thought of more things to tell you on the way home from work, but it looks like others covered most of them. I wanted to tell you that it is generally customary for funeral homes to waive the expenses for a stillborn baby or infant who dies. We paid nothing for the cremation. If we had decided to embalm and bury, we would have had to pay for the casket. We buried our baby in a cemetary, so we paid $1200 for a 4-person plot. Some women prefer to keep the baby's urn with them in a place of honor in their home. Other posters are correct that there may be laws about transporting and burying your baby--that's a question that a funeral home should be able to answer.

Something else to think about is whether to let your other DC see your baby. I don't have other kids, so I'm not sure, but it may help your kids to see the baby to help them with the grieving process...for them to know the baby is real. This is entirely something for you and DH to decide, but I wanted to mention it.

I'm so sorry for you. I wish I could teleport from MA to help you out.


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## avivaelona (Jun 24, 2005)

Melanie thank you for taking the time and effort to type that all out.

one think I wanted to add...the baby may not look completely "normal" as the skin is likely to be discolored and such, but he or she still will look like a baby. Don't be afraid to see and hold and touch your baby. That time that we spent with our son is precious to me.


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## NullSet (Dec 19, 2004)

I'm so sorry.









No advice on speeding things up for you, sorry.

However, some things that added comfort for me later on: I'll add my vote for pictures, as many that you can take. It was also a HUGE comfort for me dressing my dd in clothes that I had made especially for her. So if you knit, crochet, sew, anything that might be something to do while you wait. This is going to sound strange but I also had this indescribable urge to make sure that when I cried, my tears covered her. I knew I wasn't going to be able to hold her forever and knowing that something from me (salt from tears) was going with her helped. These are a few things that I never would have known could bring me comfort in the days following.


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## Tellera (Oct 28, 2005)




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## Cuddlebaby (Jan 14, 2003)

I'm of the mindset that your body knows what to do. it does. I don't know about any blood work. I never had any done.

please take bunches of pictures as pictures will be all you'll have in the end. you will find yourself clinging to them.

I wish you much love and tenderness.

Rebecca


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## Mamax3 (Nov 21, 2001)

I'm sorry you are on this journey with us. I have no advice but wanted to say that I am thinking of you and your sweet baby.


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## ~Mamaterra~ (Jul 5, 2006)

*


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## DreamWeaver (May 28, 2002)

I am so terribly sorry, mama.









All wise words of advice have been given, I just wanted to let you know you are in my thoughts.


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