Stillbirthday’s primary purpose continues to be to provide support to families experiencing or facing pregnancy loss of any kind, including miscarriage, stillbirth, and fatal fetal diagnosis. While you are here, I’d love for you to take a look around at the website to see the enormous amount of support resources and information we offer.
One aspect of care is to provide birth plans for every kind of loss, including planned homebirth. I am a doula and a loss mom, and both roles serve to support as natural and as personal an experience during birth, including miscarriage and stillbirth, as possible, given all circumstances. If you have experience in providing planned homebirth support in known stillbirth experiences, and would like your name listed at stillbirthday for families to contact you, please leave a reply below with your name, website and any contact information you would like shared, and it will be published on our home stillbirth article.
Additionally, I would like your input on another area regarding stillbirth: planned homebirths which result in unintended stillbirths. Because this demographic remains so very small, support and information for mothers and midwives after these outcomes is extremely limited, and an understanding of the complex grief that both midwives and mothers endure after these experiences is also extremely limited and misunderstood.
Stillbirthday serves as a safe place for mothers to express their feelings and share their stories, and it is our hope to prevent escalated situations of blame or denial throughout the internet by having one designated place where these situations can be shared safely, without having to feel defensive, without having to resort to sharing half truths or false information, and without having to feel condemned for publicly working through different aspects of grief (our virtual grief article explains this a little further). Please read our submission information article to learn about a few of the ways stillbirthday provides a safe place to work through feelings and share experiences.
If you ever do experience an unintended stillbirth in your professional career, please consider referring your client to stillbirthday, not only for the vast amount of resources and information we provide, but for a safe place where stories are shared, heard, and the important but sometimes negative aspects of grief are not compounded or magnified as they can be by sharing stories most anywhere else on the internet.
With planned homebirth on the rise, it is best that all homebirth midwives have a plan for all outcomes and situations, for themselves but also for their clients.
Information for planned homebirth for known stillbirth, and unexpected stillbirths at home, can be found here, in our home stillbirth article.
Additionally, if you have any other ideas and ways to improve grief outcomes in the unique situation of planned homebirths which result in stillbirth, please leave a reply in the comment section below. There are many factors that are involved in these unique situations, that are only just now being looked at by psychological professionals, but in the meantime, any ideas we all have that can serve for good should be considered. Please offer your ideas and thoughts regarding these matters.
Consider this study by SANDS.
