Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Child Loss – An Oral History Project
My son’s name is Keanu. He was stillborn on his due date in March 2022. We found out he didn’t have a heartbeat two days earlier at a routine checkup. I labored for two days, then was sent to the OR for a c-section. He weighed 10 lbs 10 oz. I introduce myself in this way— as Keanu’s mother— because this experience influences my work as a scholar. Keanu is the heart behind this project. It is difficult to put into words how his existence and loss and my love for him have changed me. But talking about him is how I know how to live with this indescribable grief. I want to talk about my baby. I want to share him with the world. And I want to hear about your baby, and sit in our experiences together.
After Keanu died, I developed this oral history project, Tell Me about Your Baby: Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Child Loss. In it, I conduct interviews to collect oral histories from persons who have experienced the loss of their child or children, whether in utero or post-delivery. I ask questions about pregnancy, infertility, birthing, medical experiences, postpartum, and grief. Most importantly, I ask you to tell me about your baby. These interviews are recorded, then housed in a digital archive in Special Collections at the Swem Library at William & Mary. You, as a narrator, will receive a copy.
The goal of this project is twofold. First, I want to create a space in which we can openly talk about our children, the ones that have died. It has been my recent experience that to talk about Keanu’s death makes people uncomfortable. They don’t know how to respond to my grief over him, or to my joy at remembering how magical he was to me. To speak about him, and my experiences in the hospital, feels taboo. According to the Star Legacy Foundation, an organization that works toward reducing pregnancy loss and neonatal death, 22,827 babies were stillborn in 2017. One in four people experience miscarriage. Even with these statistics, expectant parents and their families are not well informed about nor educated on the risks of stillbirth and miscarriage, and the language used to talk about our babies can become very clinical. Many parents do not feel supported after the loss of a child or the loss of children, and subsequent pregnancies can be both a time of great happiness and great anxiety. It is my hope that by opening this space to sit together and talk about our children, we can find support. To talk about our babies is not taboo. The goal is to establish a platform to tell our stories, and in telling our stories and naming our children, we can honor them. We can preserve the memory of them.
Second, the goal of this project is to spread awareness about a surprisingly common experience that is silently suffered. Keanu’s death was a shock to me. I did not know my baby could die. And because I was not prepared for his death, I made (or did not make) decisions that I regret. I did not know so many others were experiencing the same thing all around me. It is my hope that by sharing our stories, we can create better support networks within medical environments, the workplace, and within legislation. It is my hope that pregnancy can be more rigorously managed in order to identify any potential risks for stillbirth or neonatal death. It is my hope that we can normalize these discussions and that in speaking out, we can encourage and contribute to research efforts involving miscarriage, stillbirth, child loss, and infertility.