STAT October 21, 2024
‘Stillbirth.’ ‘Miscarriage.’ ‘Spontaneous abortion.’ ‘Habitual aborters.’ It’s all inadequate
I have lost babies. Well, I didn’t lose them per se. They haven’t been misplaced, like keys or something. To forgo the polite euphemisms, they died after 20 weeks.
I felt isolated, devastated, and like there wasn’t a vocabulary for what happened — clinically, emotionally, or legally.
When my writing partner and friend Colleen’s baby died around 24 weeks, she didn’t know what word to use for it. In the United States, any loss after 20 weeks is considered a stillborn. But she didn’t have to labor and deliver, she had a procedure called a “dilation and evacuation.” So was it a miscarriage? A stillbirth seemed uniquely painful and...
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Topics: Patient / Consumer