The petition

In case you haven't already seen it here is a link to the SANDs / Grazia Stop the Stillbirth Scandal Petition.

According to SANDs "in the UK, 11 babies are stillborn every day. And... research, published last month in The Lancet, found Britain is ranked second from bottom: 33 out of 35 countries in the developed world for stillbirth rates. Countries like Australia – which have invested heavily in research – have managed to bring their rates down. In the UK, they have remained the same for the past 10 years."

SANDs and Grazia "... want the government to fund research to discover what is causing these babies to die, and to develop new ways of screening pregnancies to find out which babies are at risk of stillbirth… and save their lives before it is too late."

According to SANDs "Experts argue that a significant proportion of these deaths could be avoided if mothers received better care during pregnancy and labour. But current routine antenatal screening methods, measuring baby’s growth with a tape measure and scanning at 12 and 20 weeks, aren’t working when it comes to preventing many stillbirths."

If you haven't already please sign the petition by clicking here.

Sunshine, where are you?

Apart from all the worry, all the hospital visits, the visits from friends and family and my time on-line with a fantastic support group one of my clearest memories from this time last year - my pPROM weeks - was sunshine. It felt like every day we had fantastic weather and I couldn't go out in it. So this year I am determined to enjoy the sunshine.

I have the picnic kit ready, I have the Summary clothes for me and M and I have the sunscreen lotion but there is one big problem... I do not have the sunshine.

Maybe my memories if this time last year are incorrect. Or maybe May is just not as nice this year? But I am hoping we get some better weather soon, I am determined to make up for what I missed out on last year. So if we don't get some sunny weather soon I will have to take M on a picnic in the cold with our jackets on.

Come on sunshine, where are you?

M Update: Lego Star Wars

It is about time for an M update, so for a change here is a happy post:




Have you played Lego Star Wars on the Wii? We bought it because M loves games on my iPad and S's iPhone and is playing the sports games we have on the Wii. We thought this would be a fun game to play with him - we would get the references and he would have fun playing it...

Well all I can say is it really has demonstrated to me how much M has grown. I find the Starwars Wii game infuriating and difficult (I have never been good at these arcade games). M is actually far better at it than me. And he knows how bad I am. And tells me. He prefers to play with S. I have no idea how he does many of the things he does when playing the game, but if I ask him he explains in detail which buttons to press. And says things like "you can do it Mummy."

I knew a time would come when M would start to be better at things than me but I never thought it would be this early.

An invisible problem

Image:BBC News

Yesterday was Mother's Day in the United States. Faces of Loss asked Bloggers to blog about Mother's Day. I feel that women who have lost babies, especially if they have suffered a stillbirth often find days like Mother's Day very hard to bear. I would say it is worse if they have no other children. A small part of the problem is that other people (some not all) do not acknowledge how they feel on these days and it is this that I am going to focus on.

I found this article online recently - Stillbirths: the invisible public health problem. It quotes lots of statistics and facts I already knew, but I really like the title. I feel is true, stillbirth is invisible. Everyone has heard of cot death, every mother is at least a tiny bit scared of it yet more women have a stillbirth than lose a baby to cot death. Whilst I am not trying to say cot death doesn't deserve it's publicity, it does, but I think stillbirth deserves more publicity than it currently gets.

Okay so I am not suggesting that the media produces lots of sad articles about stillbirth on Mother's Day, obviously that isn't going to happen. But perhaps if stillbirth was mentioned more in the media during the year then the general public would be more aware of it. And if the general public are aware of stillbirth - of how common it is and how it changes those affected by it for life - then perhaps they would be able to help people who have had stillbirths feel a little better on days such as Mother's Day.

Sometimes the parents of stillborn babies don't want to commemorate Mother's Day but I believe even if they are doing nothing special that day a simple acknowledgement of the loss would be appreciated. A few words would help them feel as if their baby hasn't been forgotten and that other people recognise that they are still a mother even though their baby isn't with them any more.

And eventually you never know maybe stillbirth will no longer be an invisible problem.

Déjà vu

Do you ever get those fleeting flash back memories?

I had one today as I walked to work. Tomorrow we have an election, a referendum and local elections. That realisation brought back the memory of almost a year ago - the General Election. My waters had broken the previous week and I had been released from hospital. We asked my Foetal Medicine Consultant if I could go to our local Polling Station to vote and he agreed. So on the day of the election I walked the very short walk to the Polling Station and voted.

I do not recall actually voting or walking home, but I do remember walking there.... The strange feeling that came with doing something I had barely done in the past week or so - walking very slowly - outside. It was normal. Yet I didn't feel normal.

And M came with me, and S and S's mother... The weather was good, warm I think.... And there was a policeman outside the Polling Station on a horse...

These are my strange glimpses of memories that I honestly haven't thought about in almost a year. No doubt I am going to get more in the months to come.

International Babylost Mothers Day

Today is International Babylost Mothers Day. Read more about it on the following blog:
http://internationalbabylostmothersday.blogspot.com