How about this for a shocking statistic? A baby is 10 times more likely to be stillborn than suffer a cot death.
The horribly sad news that Amanda Holden has lost her unborn baby has highlighted a topic that is very rarely discussed. Cot death, for whatever reason, has a far higher profile than Stillbirth. It's almost as if nobody wants to consider the idea of healthy babies dying in the last few weeks of pregnancy. Yet every day ten babies are stillborn in the UK - that's almost 4,000 babies a year or one in every 200 born. If you include the babies who die just after birth too, this figure rises to 17 babies a day!
Amanda Holden was seven months pregnant when she noticed her baby wasn't moving. By the time she got to hospital, there was nothing that the medical staff could do. As with many stillbirths, doctors are said to have no idea why it happened. TLike Amanda Holden, thousands of parents every year are left trying to cope with the misery of losing a child.
'Many people never go back to the way they were before the tragedy,' says Janet Scott, from SANDS, the Stillbirth and Neonatal death charity.
So why has there been so little change in stillbirth rates in the last 20 years? Yes, there has been serious under-funding in research, but there are also an increasing number of women with major riskfactors, such as being obese, having a twin or multiple pregnancy, being over 40, smoking and having diabetes. Repeated miscarriages have also been linked with stillbirths.
Sands says: 'We don't want to frighten women, but they should be given information about stillbirth, so they are aware of the risk Âfactors. So many mothers tell us they thought it was something that stopped 50 years ago.'
One of the most well-known risk factors for stillbirth is obesity. Last year, one in four mothers who had a stillbirth or whose baby died in their first 28 days were clinically obese. Although women can take steps to address some of these risk factors, it's a fact that at least half of all stillbirths do not fall into these categories. And in one in four stillbirths, the cause remains unexplained. These babies are born perfectly formed like Amanda Holden's baby, with no clear reason why they died.
Janet Scott says: 'We need to invest in stillbirth research, like we did with cot death. ..... Massive amounts of money were poured into researching cot deaths and there has been a ten-fold drop in cot deaths in ten years. Somehow because these babies do not draw breath outside the womb, they are not treated the same. But it makes no difference if the baby dies before or after birth — the loss is just as greatly felt.'
Stillbirth is the term given when a baby dies 24 weeks or more into a pregnancy. Before 24 weeks, it's called a miscarriage and babies who die within 28 days of birth are described as neonatal deaths.
Women should eat well and be aware of their baby's movements. Sands says that from 24 to 28 weeks of pregnancy a baby will sually have ten movements of some kind or other in 15 minutes. If your baby takes longer than usual to do ten kicks, or if it takes longer than two hours, call your midwife.
Screening tests are being developed at the moment which could identify babies at risk of stillbirth by looking at babies' growth and blood flow from the mother. At risk babies could then be delivered before they die. These tests are unlikely to be available within the next five years however.
Ellis Downes, a consultant obstetrician at the Portland Hospital, said: 'After every stillbirth, there is a full investigation to identify possible reasons and to allow us to plan for the care of the mother in her next pregnancy. If the cause of the stillbirth cannot be explained, women are at higher risk of another stillbirth — however, having a stillborn baby does not mean that future pregnancies will all end the same way. The majority of women will have a much better outcome with their next pregnancy thanks to addressing any Ârelevant risk factors, but they will need intense supervision.'
Our Stillbirth Section
Information About SANDS
February 8 2011 |
SANDS - Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Charity
