I am also reminded of a significant passage from “Birth Without Fear” by Grantly Dick-Read where he says to the next generation of obstetricians (I’m paraphrasing): You are not taught to realize the great priviledge of attending women in childbirth.

I think there is great truth in this and great consequences to women and families as well. In a paper I read in the literature review
(mentioned above) the author speculated that the specialty of obstetrics is often chosen by individuals who want to avoid death in their professional work. Obstretrics, being about new life, makes it first apprear a refuge in that regard. That is, until there is a loss.

Thank you for your kind words! It was so helpful for me to be able to read your and Julia’s accounts of the funeral. The photo you took is amazing.

About the website, John felt I needed to “aggregate,” I wasn’t so sure. I kinda liked having my blog floating out there in la-la land. I love the design, he created, though, and I think i am warming up to it, now that I am slowly learning how to use wordpress.

Thank you for sharing this story with us. May Jeffrey’s memory be eternal! The details of your aunt’s story are devastating. I can not believe that doctors actually thought this approach would be better for the parents.

My feeling is that part of why midwives and doctors might still attempt to “protect” parents from the reality of what has happened is that they actually want to protect themselves. I think that people are only able to walk beside mourners when they are willing to engage the mystery of death in their own life.

My parents had a very similar experience after my brother Garrison was born. It breaks my heart whenever I think about it, and all the more when I consider that Jeffrey and Garrison were just two of the thousands of babies born into this kind of hostile hospital environment.

I was also disheartened to hear that the midwives responded in this way. But I was (and am) so proud of Paige’s courage and resolve.

Myriad decisions were made on my aunt’s behalf by people who never talked to her about her preferences — decisions based on assumption and aversion and a desire to mitigate intense emotion, both hers and those “taking care” of her.

After his birth, her son was set on a lone table at the far side of the delivery room, beyond the reach of her eyes. She has told me that she knew he was there, but since no one offered to show him to her, she took that to mean, she shouldn’t ask to see her son. No photographs were taken, no lock of hair trimmed from his little head, no footprints made.

She was moved to a private room on the maternity floor where her nurses focused all their attention on the clinical care my aunt needed. (She had been affected by the same infection that had claimed her son.) She became a mere medical patient, and not one nurse in four days mentioned her birthgiving or her dead child.

The written post-delivery instructions given to her as she left the hospital were marred by heavy black ink obscuring all references to the baby. “As if I wouldn’t be able to guess what words were underneath”, she told me years later.

So thorough was the conspiracy of denial by the hospital staff that our extended family followed suit and carried on the pattern begun by the “experts”. Family and friends decided to speak little of his birth and even less about his death.To this day, my aunt cannot recall which day in August he came into the world.

Besides being able to give birth, the one act not stolen from my aunt was to call her son Jeffrey. It is because he was named that I can talk about my cousin as a real person. Because he was named, I could and eventually did begin talking to my aunt about him, about her labor about Jeffrey’s birth. Somehow, even as a young teenager,I knew that though Jeffrey’s short season of living was hidden from us all, his longed-for arrival was no less important than if we’d seen him alive in our arms. He had been among us. He had suffered and died and he deserved to be remembered by name.

In college, many years later, I wrote a paper summarizing the new approaches to nursing care in situations of perinatal loss that were based on an understanding of what mothers want and need. This survey of the literature (done in the mid-1980′s) defied nearly every aspect of the hospital care my aunt had received some 9 years earlier.

To learn that any of this disempowering approach still happens breaks my heart. I am so glad that Paige had you, Jenny, to help her be strong. Strong enough to choose to give birth to her son Adrian.

How many funerals have we shared now? How many heartbreaks have we borne together? You have always been a reassuring presence in these moments, especially. I am so moved by what you said, about feeling like you were standing in for me. I love you.

I was so hoping you would write about this. Hearing others’ perspectives on this very significant experience only fortifies my faith and makes me marvel even more at God’s mysterious goodness. I love, love how you compare Paige’s delivery to a Holy Saturday morning “hint”:

“… the church is still dark, the horrible, horrible casket remains, but somebody has been sneaking bright white lilies into the church. You smell them before you see them. And you know in the deepest part of yourself that no matter what you do or do not do, Pascha is coming. It will find us.”

That’s beautiful, Jenny.

On another note, this website: WOW!!! It is fantastic. : )