‘The worst thing in the world’
MUMS TALK ABOUT STILLBIRTHS WHILE SURROUNDED BY HEALTHY BABIES IN HOSPITAL
TWO mums who had to give birth to stillborn babies surrounded by healthy ones say it is the “worst thing in the world”.
According to the NHS, one in every 200 late stage pregnancies ends in a stillbirth.
In most hospitals, mothers still give birth to stillborn babies on busy labour wards surrounded by celebration, crying newborns and happy families.
The impact of this is immense and can be highly damaging psychologically.
Priya Vara, 40, experienced a stillbirth at Hillingdon Hospital in 2017. Ever since, she has been speaking up about baby loss to remember her son and raise vital awareness.
Priya was overdue with her second baby when she went into labour at home. At this stage, she could still feel the baby kicking and moving before she headed into the hospital.
When Priya and husband Kevin arrived at the hospital, they were taken in for the usual checks.
She said: “[The doctor] started to look for a heartbeat. There were about five midwives in the room at that time, and their faces just started to drop.
“He told me, ‘Your baby doesn’t have a heartbeat, it’s gone.’ You’re so much in disbelief, just because your body is telling you everything the opposite of that. You’re still in labour, so I didn’t believe it. Being wheeled through a whole corridor of pregnant women after hearing something like that – it’s just the worst thing in the world.”
Baby Shayen was born on August 30 2017. Priya said her little boy “looked like he was just asleep” and that she urged him to open his eyes and wake up.
She said: “You think you can will them to make a sound and that they’re faking.”
Thanks to a huge fundraising effort, Hillingdon Hospital is creating a bespoke maternity bereavement suite, with services and considerations to make stillbirths and miscarriages less traumatic for families.
The suite has been designed after extensive interviews with women who experienced stillbirths at Hillingdon Hospital and is based on their experiences.
Work on the new suite began on August 30 and it is set to be complete on Christmas Eve. The room will be found down a corridor, slightly removed from the maternity ward.
The suite will have separate entrances, soundproofing, a garden and sofa bed to give parents space to grieve in a safe and private environment.
Priya believes a bereavement suite, like the one under way at Hillingdon Hospital, would have allowed her to enjoy the short time she had with Shayen a lot more.
“This is the one time only you get to make memories with your baby – you don’t get anything else. I don’t feel like that time was as special as it could have been.
“I was very scared to leave my room, out of fear of bumping into somebody with their new baby. Emotionally and mentally you’re not in the right space to even be around that.”
Priya and Kevin went on to have another child, so they now have two daughters – Niva, seven, and Kiera, two. The family lives in Harrow.
“We made the decision to integrate Shayen into our family. If someone asks, we’re a family of five. It’s hard, but it’s the way that we’ve chosen to live with what happened,” Priya said.
Priya says she is hugely grateful for the ‘amazing’ care she received at Hillingdon Hospital, but she believes a bereavement space would have made the world of difference to her, and has fundraised a staggering £50,000 to help create this new suite and help other mothers.
Another mother Fiona O’Flynn, 51, is still dealing with the effects of a stillbirth she had 27 years ago.
On September 14 1994, Fiona was 36 weeks pregnant with her third child. After noticing the baby was not moving, Fiona went into Hillingdon Hospital where she was told her baby had stopped breathing.
Still reeling from the news that her unborn baby had passed away, Fiona had to deal with the reality of going through labour without a healthy baby at the end of it.
“They said it would be quite intense because if the baby had died, it’s harder to push the baby through. During the night I could hear someone giving birth as well and hear the baby crying,” Fiona said.
Fiona believes she was not given adequate attention by the staff on the maternity ward when she was in labour: “We were pressing the buzzer because I was in so much discomfort and I wanted to push.
“No one was coming [...] the level of care on the labour ward was really, really poor.”
No doctors or midwives arrived in time and Fiona gave birth to her baby daughter with only her husband to help her. They named her Shireen.
“My first instinct was that my baby was going to come out and she was going to cry. I just had that in my head that they’d got it wrong,” she said.
Fiona and her husband had some time to cuddle Shireen and their other two children came in to meet her. Before long, Shireen had been taken away and Fiona was put into recovery.
“I was put in a ward with three other beds,” she said.
“The other women all had their babies next to them, and I had my bed and an empty cot.
“Everyone was saying, ‘Where’s your baby?’ I could hear their babies crying, and they had visitors
coming in and there were balloons everywhere. In the end I just put the curtains around me, because that’s all I could do.”
Fiona believes if there had been a bereavement suite where she was not forced to encounter healthy mothers and babies, her experience would have been less traumatic.
“It affected my marriage and everything – my husband couldn’t grieve and I just shut down completely and just slept,” Fiona said.
Shirley Clipp, project manager from Hillingdon Hospitals Charity, explained that these suites are not funded by the NHS as they are not a medical requirement.
Shirley explained that without a bereavement suite women feel as though they’re stuck in a ‘prison cell’ with a ‘dirty little secret’ and are traumatised by being surrounded by healthy mothers and babies.
“It’s not just about the suite, but also raising awareness that stillbirth does happen, and it happens a lot,” Shirley said.
A statement from Hillingdon Hospital said: “Our maternity services and national policies have changed considerably since 1994.
“In the past 30 years, we have introduced measures and trained our staff to ensure women in labour are cared for with compassion at all times.
“We now provide one to one care with a midwife for all women in labour. Giving birth to a stillborn child is a heart-breaking experience.
“We work hard to support mothers and families as they grieve for their loss.”