I'm new to this site, so I apologize if what I write has already been discussed.
I am currently a nursing student, and I hope to work in L&D once I get my degree and get my license.
Anyway... I am a mom to three kids here on earth, and two in heaven.
I had a stillborn baby at 26 weeks (no known cause), and a second trimester miscarriage at 16 weeks (no known cause) where the baby passed lady partslly, and I had a d&c after b/c of the placenta which remained attached.
ANYWAY...I know in both of my experiences the nurses were pretty unsure as to how to treat me. I felt like I had the plague, and no one wanted to talk to me or get near me.
I have since been to many support group meetings for moms with prenatal/neonatal losses, and the bottom line is we all want everyone to acknowledge our babies, no matter what the circumstances were around their arrival.
Please remember your bedside manner, and please remember even with s/b babies, or babies w/ severe defects, they are still very loved and usually their families want memories of them.
I understand that it is an uncomfortable subject, and sometimes parents don't want to see their baby right away...but from what I've seen/learned over the years people who don't do anything to remember them have deep regrets. Often they choose not to see their baby at first, then later they want to, but are too afraid to ask.
With my first baby, I really wanted her handprints and footprints, a photo...something, but I felt like people would think I was morbid if I asked, so I didn't. I have nothing to remember her by and it kills me because I was afraid of what others would think.
With my second baby, I took a photo of his tiny hand on my finger. He was only a 16 weeker, so he was less than desirable to look at, but he was still my baby and I wanted something.
If you can do one thing for a mother, may it be a handprint, a photo...even just a card with her baby's name on it. SOMETHING she can take home from the hospital...it will be a great help. There is NOTHING worse for a mother than to walk into L&D pregnant, and walk out with nothing.
I know many hospitals have 'memory boxes' and such for babies who are stillborn at full or near full term. With my 26 weeker, I got nothing, w/ my 16 weeker, I got less than that, and I thank God I just happened to have my own camera in my purse that day.
Encourage your patients to give their baby a name... Let them know they have the right to bury/cremate their babies..and often funeral homes will do it free or at a reduced rate. Even if they'd rather have the hospital take care of the remains, they can still have a memorial service, plant a garden, buy a tree in the rainforest, adopt a star in the sky...they can do SOMETHING to memorialize their babies.
These are all things I had to find out on my own, and when you're grieving AND recovering from a birth, it stinks when you have to do all the research yourself.
Anyway, if you made it this far thanks for reading, and please remember this next time the unfortunate happens at your hospital.
At my hospital we do memory box for all losses over 12 weeks, to the best of our ability with the condition of the baby. We do hand and foot prints in plaster, pictures, and a memory certificate. The baby stays with mom for as long as she wants and after she's said goodbye, we give her a "peace bear" so she doesn't have to leave the hospital with empty arms
I think that's great, and I hope to see/hear about this in more hospitals.
I always have a hard time with the patients who have had any loss... but I still take the time to acknowledge how they are feeling as well as how they are feeling (emotionally). I remeber there was a firl who m/c at 19 weeks. The mementoe boxes were for 20 weeks or older, and the night shift nurse had already but the fetus in Formulin (long story). I got the baby band with all the information on it and the foots prints they did take (thankfully) and made two little cards (one for mom and one for dad) and decorated it with the baby band on each one (there were two-- one was to be for her and one for baby). She was so happy to get that....I couldn't do anything but hand it to her cause I was crying so hard. Gets me now even...
One of the hardest things I do at work...is I feel too much about my patients. I mean, most every nurse cares...but I have always been sensitive to sad stuff. (why I can't watch a LifeTime movie now...) Every time we will have a DNR patient on our unit that passes away...especially if they have been there for a while...it is SO hard for me to go back in there... and to see the family cause they have been up there with us soooo long.
This is a topic that touches me so much. Every time I read about anyone that looses a baby anywhere in a pregnancy I cry. I had personal experiance with this twice. Once at 14 1/2 weeks and 2 years later at 6 weeks. This was the worst times of my life. One thing that made it very hard was that the one at 14 1/2 weeks happened in the emergancy room. The nurse was in the room trying to find a heart beat on the baby before I was sent to ultrasound. When she was unsucessfull a new ob resident came in and stated "If I cant find a heart beat the baby is dead." After trying for a second he stated "Yeah the baby is dead" and walked out of the room like nothing happened. I remember his words exactly to this day and this happened about 8 years ago. To this day if I ever saw this man again I would probably choke him to death.
this is a touchy subject for me as well, and something i struggle with in trying to decide if i'll really end up in ob (where i've wanted to work for as long as i can remember). my first loss was at 16 weeks, found out at a routine exam in the dr. office. the dr. told me he couldn't find the hb and would be back with another dr. for a second opinion, second doc walked in, watched the u/s for a minute and walked away. on his way out he said "nope" and the first doc began discussing my 'options' after telling me "don't worry, you're young, you have plenty of time and most mom's feel much better about these things once they deliver a healthy baby".
i decided to wait for nature to take it's course, ended up in the ed due to bleeding from the placenta not detaching. that was a less than pleasant experience and the worst part was that not a single soul at the hospital acknowledged that i had lost a baby. i was "the emergency d&c in room 4".
this, along with my subsequent losses and high risk pg and delivery with my dd, are what have made me reconsider ob as a career choice. i feel that most of the people i dealt with had just become callused to the situation and didn't really want to treat me. i'd hate to become one of those people and i worry about how i'll be viewed by co-workers if i try to be one to 'make a difference'. *sigh* i have two years left to graduation, i guess i'll see how i'm feeling at that point.
rnin'08
~there is no key to happiness. the door is always open~
You bring up an interesting point about burials. I had a friend that miscarried at around 20 to 24 weeks (it was many years ago and my memory is a bit fuzzy) in Florida. I remember being very surprised that she was required by law to have a burial for the child. Do different states have different laws dictating what will happen to the baby and is there a certain number of weeks of development that determine this rule?
this is a touchy subject for me as well, and something i struggle with in trying to decide if i'll really end up in ob (where i've wanted to work for as long as i can remember). my first loss was at 16 weeks, found out at a routine exam in the dr. office. the dr. told me he couldn't find the hb and would be back with another dr. for a second opinion, second doc walked in, watched the u/s for a minute and walked away. on his way out he said "nope" and the first doc began discussing my 'options' after telling me "don't worry, you're young, you have plenty of time and most mom's feel much better about these things once they deliver a healthy baby".
i decided to wait for nature to take it's course, ended up in the ed due to bleeding from the placenta not detaching. that was a less than pleasant experience and the worst part was that not a single soul at the hospital acknowledged that i had lost a baby. i was "the emergency d&c in room 4".
this, along with my subsequent losses and high risk pg and delivery with my dd, are what have made me reconsider ob as a career choice. i feel that most of the people i dealt with had just become callused to the situation and didn't really want to treat me. i'd hate to become one of those people and i worry about how i'll be viewed by co-workers if i try to be one to 'make a difference'. *sigh* i have two years left to graduation, i guess i'll see how i'm feeling at that point.
rnin'08
~there is no key to happiness. the door is always open~
i'm so sorry for all that you have been through. like you, i wonder if it will be too difficult to see someone else in the situation, and i have also considered what people (rn's w/ much more experience) will think if i 'try to make a difference'.
but...if you do make a difference for just one mother/family...then maybe you won't feel like all your personal heartache was for nothing.
My dear friends I am so very sorry for your losses of your precious babies.
My sister gave up a baby for adoption at birth. Now 25+ years later she still wishes she had just something-anything to remember her baby.
She was moved to a med/surg floor, no one knew what to say so they said nothing. I have never worked OB, but you all have given us much information that will undoubtedly aid other mothers.
I am not an OB nurse, I actually work in the ED but stumbled onto this thread. I just want to say that this is sooo very important. I have 2 LC and last year had a SB on my due date 5/31/05. I was sooo very lucky to have had a nurse on L&D who has experienced loss 1st hand and so she was able to give me a part of her that some of the other nurses that I came into contact with that day couldn't. I will never forget her and what she did for me. I do have momentos of my little baby girl and I am so very thankful for that. At the time when you lose a baby you are in no mind to even think about how your going to feel days, weeks etc down the road. I was sooo very glad that I had those photos and in fact carried them with me for weeks as that was all that I had left of her. It is important that nurses do understand that all we want is someone to recognize that our baby was real. Thanks for listening.
I lost my sweet baby girl at 37 weeks. I presented to the OB floor with c/o no movement....FHT's were strong and in the 140's. TEN HOURS LATER....the OB shows up and immediately transfers us....my baby's heart stopped en route, in the ambulance.
Oh, the nurses were great and sweet...but I feel that we were let down in our care.
I am so sorry for all of your losses. This is a bad thread for me to be reading right now - 19 weeks into a high risk pregnancy - but I work in the NICU and a lot of this applies to me as well.
When we lose a baby, we fill a memory box with anything and everything we can. Things that we would just throw away - used EKG leads, extra diapers, digital thermometer, blood pressure cuffs, tape measures, etc. - we will put in the box so the parents can decide if they want to keep everything or not. We do footprints and cut a lock or two of hair and put it in a baggie. We used to just take some Polaroids, too, but now we have something even better. There is a stash of disposable cameras in our locked cabinet and we'll use them to take pictures of the baby with and without the family, and leave some exposures on the roll so they can take their own photos when they are in the quiet room alone with their baby. This way, they won't be holding onto faded Polaroids forever - instead they'll have better quality pictures that they can even get on CD-ROM so they can keep them safe. They can also decide when they're ready to develop the roll, in case it's too hard at first. This one little thing, a $5 camera, has seemed to make a nice difference in our post-mortum care of the baby and family.
Again, I'm so sorry for your losses, all of you. :icon_hug:
I currently work in an antepartum floor and do work with fetal demises and we treat our patients and family super well. we take photos of the baby, dress them, take footprints, have the family spend time with them etc. I wonder where this happened to you and if you actually got anything to remember your babies by......
NHmommy
27 Posts
I think that's great, and I hope to see/hear about this in more hospitals.
A person is a person no matter how small
~Dr. Seuss