Emma and Aaron VandenBrink lost their son to a miscarriage a day before he was due to be delivered.Jill Colpitts
The pain of losing her unborn son just one day before her scheduled due date is still fresh, but Emma VandenBrink is glad she decided to share her story publicly in a blog post that has prompted a rush of support from across the country.
Ms. VandenBrink, daughter of Canadian paralympian and philanthropist Rick Hansen, said she put the story of her stillbirth online to help with her own healing process and to support families who have been in similar situations.
"Our family is so grateful and touched for all your support," Mr. Hansen said in a posting on Facebook that included a link to his daughter's story. By late afternoon Thursday, his post has been shared almost 2,000 times.
In the piece, Ms. VandenBrink describes the end of an otherwise normal pregnancy. On April 3, she woke and began her day as usual, but by mid-morning, she began to worry because she had not felt her baby kicking. Using a Doppler home fetal monitor, she and her husband, Aaron, tried unsuccessfully to hear the baby's heartbeat.
"Those moments on our bed as we tried to pick up his heartbeat were the first of what would be a string of painfully slow pockets of time over the next days," she wrote.
The VandenBrinks rushed to B.C. Women's Hospital and Health Centre, where, after more tests, it was determined that her baby had died.
"All I remember next was collapsing into Aaron's arms as we both sobbed over my belly. Our son was dead," she wrote. "He lived for 39 weeks and six days in my womb, and it didn't seem possible for him to just stop living one day before his due date. One day."
Doctors often cannot determine why some unborn children die.
"How could any woman get through birthing her lifeless child? But it was my new reality that this was something I had to do," she wrote.
At 2:24 a.m. on April 4, Ms. VandenBrink gave birth to a son they named Reid. Doctors said Reid died because of a knot in his umbilical cord.
Canada has nine to 10 stillbirths for every 1,000 children born, a sharp increase from the seven out of every 1,000 births in 2009. That number should not be interpreted to indicate that stillbirths are on the rise, said K.S. Joseph, a researcher in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of British Columbia.
Over the past 20 years, advances in prenatal testing technology have led to increased detection of serious or fatal medical problems in fetuses, and more women are terminating pregnancies for health and safety reasons.
Because Statistics Canada considers a stillbirth to be the delivery of a dead fetus after 20 weeks, these abortions are counted among stillbirths.
"If you exclude the pregnancy terminations for reasons like congenital malformations, then our stillbirth rate is actually coming down," Dr. Joseph said.
Cases like Ms. VandenBrink's, which is considered a "spontaneous stillbirth," could not have been prevented, he said.
"This [Doppler home device] is a more sophisticated way of looking in and trying to see what's going on, but the utility of this, the actual value in preventing anything serious from happening – none of that has ever been established," he said. "It's like a toy."
In a prepared statement on Thursday, the VandenBrinks expressed their gratitude for the supportive messages they received after the posting of Reid's story.
"We wanted people to know him and for his impact to continue beyond his short time with us. This is a very important topic to discuss and one that has affected many people."
B.C. Women's Hospital and Health Centre, where Ms. VandenBrink received her care, offers a range of services for women experiencing pregnancy loss, including follow-ups, grief counseling, support groups, and even professional photographs of the stillborn child.
Resources vary from hospital to hospital, and Dr. Joseph said more could be done for families who experience stillbirth.
"Our medical system does not adequately cater to grieving or grieved mothers," he said. "It is a tragedy that is increasingly being recognized as any other loss in the family."