Losing a Baby Together

Bonnet and Rattle in a Frame
Originally uploaded by Pictures by Ann

How do caregivers console a husband and wife when their baby’s death precedes his birth? What role should caregivers play in helping a family heal? How do caregivers themselves heal after such an event?
These were some of the challenging questions posed at a recent Schwartz Center Rounds session held at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA.

The case involved a young woman, Nadia, and her husband Kevin. They discovered during a routine ultrasound that their baby’s heart was no longer beating. Devastatingly, Nadia had to go through labor knowing the denouement.

Nadia’s OB/GYN said during the Rounds that when it first happened, he knew what he had to do. “I left my physician mantle outside of the room. I decided to just be a human being,” he said.” [The case] also reminded me of how much we doctors are students as well as teachers. This family taught me so much professionally and personally. “

Beth Lown, MD, the physician who leads Rounds at Mt. Auburn and the soon-to-be medical director of the Schwartz Center, agreed that sometimes the best thing for caregivers to do is to focus solely on the human-to-human connection. “Something special happens when technology isn’t there,” she said. "Time stands still. Your only focus is you and the people in the room.”

Maria Smyth, an RN who cared for Nadia, said that small gestures can have an incredible impact on a grieving family. The staff always lovingly bathes and swaddles the deceased baby and takes photos,” she said.

Maria said the staff also creates a “memory box” for the family, stocking it with photographs, locks of hair, the baby’s footprints, clothes and blankets. “We try to give them little mementos because these are their only connection to the baby,” she said.

Families are often uncomfortable at first with looking at or touching their baby, said the nurse at Nadia’s delivery. “Our job is to help them take that moment to parent their baby because this is the only time they’ll have to do it,” she said. She also said that the labor and delivery staff encourage parents to give their deceased child a name.

Beth asked participants how they take care of themselves when patients die. Maria said labor and delivery staff support each other after tragic events by talking through the experience, holding each other and crying.

Other caregivers said their units bring food to the family and sit with them, grieving together.

A very nice postscript to the case: Nadia went on to deliver four healthy babies at Mt. Auburn and offers herself as a sympathetic ear to any Mt. Auburn patient who has experienced the loss of a baby.