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Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.

Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.

for one and all > Results from our Perinatologist

We just had our first meeting with our Perinatologist since losing our baby girl at 22 weeks this past October. The autopsy results showed a fetal inflammatory reaction, caused by Fusobacterium nucleatum. I guess this is usually found in people with periodontal problems, which I don’t have. Has anyone else ever had this come up as a cause for preterm labor? My Perinatologist is very optimistic that this was one time problem and it shouldn’t occur again with another pregnancy. We are so happy (and surprised) to have found out the cause, and we want to try again soon, but I’m of course scared of infection again. It’s very unlikely and we were just unlucky that it got to the baby. Anyone else been in this type of situation??
December 23, 2017 | Unregistered CommenterJessica S.
Hi Jessica S

What a rollercoaster few days you must have had. Our son was lost at 20 weeks after a bacterial infection caused pre-term labor. Our doctors have also given us confidence that it should not happen again. Doesn’t remotely take the fear away, but at least we have a reason when so many people never get one. It took us some time to process, that in this day and age, an infection can happen like that and ruin everything. Did we cause this? Could I have done something to prevent it? What if [test/scan/observation] had been done earlier? But, as we all know, those questions can never change what happened.

One thing we did do was swap obstetricians and hospitals. In part, because it was so hard to go back to where the most horrible moments of our lives happened. But also because our obstetrician offered far too passive a response: “Even if you could have told us that this was going to happen, there was nothing we could have done.” I needed more proactivity, and confidence that we were controlling all the controllables. We have since found a new obstetrician at a different hospital that we’ve worked up a game plan for next time, should we be lucky enough for there to be a next time, involving regular swabs and blood tests, potentially preventative antibiotics, and regular monitoring.

I hope this is of some help to you.

Thinking of you x
December 23, 2017 | Unregistered CommenterS