Landmark report and new funding tackles ‘unbearable’ grief
In 2018, Annabel Bower delivered her stillborn child at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital on the same ward as live births. She hopes an announcement today following a major stillbirth inquiry will help others facing an “unbearable addition to grief”.
In 2018, Annabel Bower delivered her stillborn child at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital on the same ward as live births.
“As I walked down the hall leaving the hospital, there were families in the hallway with flowers and balloons and celebrations, I could hear other babies crying,” she told InDaily.
“It’s such a juxtaposition of joy and absolute sorrow and devastation, and to have it right in your face is rubbing acidic salt into the wound.
“It’s an unbearable addition to the grief.”
Health Minister Chris Picton today announced the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital on North Terrace would have a stillborn delivery suite and the government supported all recommendations from SA’s Parliamentary Select Committee into Stillbirth.
Bower said this would make a huge difference and hoped it would incorporate things like cuddle cots – a cooling cot to allow grieving parents more time with the child – as a permanent fixture in the room.
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“In recovery I sat next to women who’d just come out of caesareans, I delivered naturally and then had to have an emergency surgery to remove my placenta.
“It’s pretty confronting when you’ve just lost a baby, to be put beside someone with a living baby.
“I feel that the new model, which hopefully will have a separate entrance, and perhaps that noise can then be cut off.
“It sounds like a small thing, just a door that separates, but it’s huge…I think that will really, really help.”
Darren Halsey agreed that the birthing suite recommendation was “really important” to alleviate “anxiety or pressure for parents” who have delivered a stillborn child.
The state government has accepted all 22 recommendations in principle today and announced $850,000 in funding over four years to the Red Tree Foundation – an initiative of SIDS and Kids SA.
Red Tree Foundation offer specialist bereavement counselling for families affected by loss, and its General Manager Kari Langdon said the organisation was “immensely grateful” for the funding.
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Darren and his wife Kathleen were supported by the charity after their daughter Mia was stillborn in 2018 and Darren said “they were wonderful”.
“We received in-home visits at the time, we didn’t really feel like going out after Mia passed and initially just three home visits made it so much easier and then we moved on to going in and seeing a counsellor,” he said.
“It’s definitely a service that’s totally invaluable, like a bright light in the middle of the darkest days of your life.”
The couple now have a five-year-old son, Archie, with whom they would continue to honour Mia’s memory.
One of the other key recommendations from the parliamentary committee was to introduce a discreet ‘purple butterfly program’ – a symbol of pregnancy loss – in hospital records.
Bower, who has worked with Women’s and Children’s Hospital for the past four years to develop training and communications resources, said “little things like that go a long way”.
“Parents who are completely petrified during the next pregnancy don’t have to explain ‘oh, in our last pregnancy, we lost our baby because of x, y, z’,” she said.
She said it’s “really great to see so much forward movement in this space” and hopes to see more training in healthcare sectors, including obstetricians and other professionals along with midwives and nurses.
Member for Newland Olivia Savvas chaired the parliamentary committee which received 79 written submissions from 49 witnesses and said she was “grateful to each and every parent who has shared stories”.
“It has been one of the great privileges of my career to establish the Select Committee into Stillbirth, in memory of my baby brother Benjamin,” she said.
“I have been forever shaped by the loss of my brother, and I know firsthand that the impact of infant loss is long-lasting.
“It has been 25 years since my mum first sought better outcomes from the state government after the loss of her little boy. I am incredibly proud that our government is taking steps to increase those supports for families like my own.”
Health Minister Chris Picton said the government will begin the work recommended in the report, which included data collection and reporting, expanding training and distributing information to parents, including some specifically designed for Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and culturally and linguistically diverse families.
“This report gives voice to those families and sets out a path for how we can do better, by improving awareness, care and support across our health system,” Picton said.
