Of all the little moments of joy and strife that fill the top-nominated Oscar film 'Roma,' the most gut-wrenching takes place in a Mexico City hospital room, where a doctor coolly tells a frightened young woman, 'Your baby was born dead.'
The haunting scene, set in 1971, graphically introduces a subject that today is still poorly understood and often avoided. While global rates have declined since then, stillbirths remain surprisingly common with nearly 3 million each year, most in developing countries.
The U.S. rate, 6 in 1,000 births, hasn't budged in a decade and the cause is unknown in at least one-third of cases. Most U.S. insurers don't cover autopsies and many parents don't want them, often leaving circumstances and potential causes a mystery.
'This is a really seriously understudied area of research,' said Jennita Reefhuis of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 'It's such a devastating event to happen to a couple. This is something that deserves more attention.'
Lindsey Schmitz looks out the window of her home in Chicago. Schmitz gave birth in 2016 to a stillborn son, Sawyer, after a 'textbook' pregnancy
Rebekah Shirey and her partner, Steve Martin, with their stillborn chid, Elijah, in an Ottawa, Canada hospital. Shirey had learned days earlier that Elijah's heart had stopped beating.
Stillbirth features in Roma, the Oscar-nominated movie. Doctors do not allow housekeeper Cleo, played by Yalitza Aparicio, any time with the baby before it is whisked away
EXPERTS SAY PARENTS SHOULD SPEND HOURS OR EVEN DAYS WITH THEIR STILLBORN CHILDREN TO REDUCE RISK OF PTSD LATER ON
The young mother in Roma is given just a few seconds to hold her lifeless child before a doctor tells her he must take and 'prepare' the body. From her hospital bed a few feet away, she watches silently as the infant is wrapped up in a white shroud.
The coldness of that lingering scene is partly dramatic flourish, but it also reflects thinking at the time that stillbirths were almost to be dismissed. Dr. Francisco Ruiloba, an obstetrician from Mexico City, said many hospitals in Mexico, and elsewhere, have since adopted a more humanistic approach. In his practice, Ruiloba said, mothers are given as much time as they need and the body is prepared 'with respect and out of the room.'
In 2009 guidance reaffirmed last month, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says emotional support should be offered to parents of stillborns, including referrals to grief counselors, support groups or therapists. Parents should have the chance to hold and to name their infants, and to say goodbye, the group advises.
Studies have found that allowing parents to spend time with stillborn infants may reduce mothers' chances for developing anxiety and depression afterward. Many U.S. hospitals let parents spend hours or even days with them. Some hospitals take memento photographs, footprints and handprints for families; some provide cooling cots to preserve the body while the family grieves.
We stress 'how important it is to the patient for us to get comfortable being with them and talking about it and reassuring them that this is a terrible thing but they will get through it,' said Dr. Alan Peaceman, who heads Northwestern Medicine's maternal-fetal medicine department in Chicago.
Pediatric nurse Lindsey Wimmer, whose son Garrett was stillborn in 2004, says parents 'used to be told not to see or name their baby, just to move on and have another one. Now we know that's not a very practical way to deal with it.
'Their grief just waits for them and they will never forget about these babies,' said Wimmer, executive director of the Star Legacy Foundation, a Minnesota-based group that promotes stillbirth research and education.
Schmitz holds a framed photo of her stillborn son, Sawyer, being cuddled by her and her husband, Andrew, in their home in Chicago. 'He was warm. He was beautiful and had that baby smell. He just looked like he was asleep,' Lindsey recalls
Nursery decorations displayed in the Chicago home of Lindsey Schmitz are
