Thousands of pregnancies end every year in stillbirth - a baby dead in the womb sometime after the twenty-week mark or dead sometime during the birthing process.
It's heartbreaking for parents, but perhaps even harder for parents to take is the mystery. Of more than twenty-five thousand stillbirths each year, a full third are for unexplainable causes.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is calling for doctors to perform more autopsies on stillborn babies to unravel the mystery of stillbirth.
The goal is to reduce future stillbirths - or determine whether they can be prevented. The March of Dimes estimates stillbirth rates have dipped fifty percent in the last twenty years alone thanks to better technologies and healthcare practitioners' vigilance. They now know who has an increased risk of stillbirth - women thirty-five and older, women who suffer malnutrition and/or inadequate prenatal care, pregnant women who smoke and drink. They also have a host of causes for the two-thirds of stillbirths that are explainable - everything from placental defects to bacterial infection.
With the autopsies, they hope to rid the world of the other third. The question is how parents will take the suggestion from their doctor. Stillbirth is a traumatizing experience for parents, and the last thing a lot of parents want to do is turn their baby over to a scientist to cut, poke and prod.
Will parents be able to look past that and see the greater good? To see that they can make a difference for other parents in the long run?
Image: American Pregnancy Association
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