Stillbirth is over 10 times more common than SIDS in Kentucky. Congress can help
I was at a routine 32-week check-up, when I found out that my son had no heartbeat.
After an agonizing 30 minutes of waiting on multiple ultrasound machines to confirm my greatest fear, it was official: My baby boy was dead with no answers as to why.
I could not begin to wrap my head around our tragic new reality. How could this happen? I was already a mother to a three-year-old, how did I not know that something like this could happen?
I had done everything “right” during my pregnancy. I had taken my prenatal vitamins religiously, exercised often, ate healthy and made every single prenatal appointment on time. I was even an experienced doula and yoga teacher. I thought my dedication to being healthy would result in a live baby, and yet despite my best efforts, our innocent baby still became a statistic. Our baby boy became one of approximately 330 babies who are stillborn in Kentucky each year.
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Stillbirths are not rare.
Every year in America, approximately 23,000 babies are stillborn. In the United States, stillbirth is defined as the loss of a baby at 20 weeks or more during pregnancy. To put these numbers in perspective, this is approximately 65 babies dying every day, or approximately the loss of three classes of kindergarteners each day. In the U.S., the annual number of stillbirths far exceeds the number of deaths among children aged 0-14 years from preterm birth (3,679), SIDS (1,334), accidents (1,208), drownings (689), guns (305), fire (291), and flu (142) combined. The staggering statistics should speak volumes, and yet stillbirth remains a silent epidemic, a tragically ignored public health crisis.
On Thanksgiving Day, Thursday Nov. 25, 2021, after 12 exhausting hours of labor, our son officially came into the world completely silent. My husband and I named him Fox. I had to birth our baby and say goodbye to our baby in one fell swoop.
I never knew that stillbirth could happen in a low-risk healthy pregnancy. I didn’t know that I lived in a state with the 14th highest stillbirth rate in the nation. I didn’t know that every year hundreds of babies were dying in Kentucky, and no one was talking about it. I was unaware that in Kentucky stillbirth was over 10 times more common than SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). But after Fox died, the blinders were ripped off. I learned stillbirths occur in all races, ethnicities, income levels, political leanings, religions and to people of all ages– leaving no pregnancy immune. Turning a blind eye and neglecting this public health crisis cannot continue. We owe all Kentuckians and Americans better.
It’s important for Congress to recognize that with minimal investment we can do something about stillbirth right now. With increased awareness and education for pregnant individuals and their families, better data collection and dedicated resources, we can begin to save more babies lives, thanks to the bipartisan Stillbirth Health Improvement and Education (SHINE) for Autumn Act, S. 3972.
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Understanding stillbirth
On March 31st, Senators Booker (D-NJ) and Rubio (R-FL) introduced this vital piece of maternal health legislation that would make critical steps to invest in research and data collection to better understand stillbirth. It would focus on preventing stillbirth through improved data collection, education, awareness, reporting and research. Companion legislation, H.R. 5487, passed in the House of Representatives on December 8, 2021 with overwhelming majority, 408/18. It is the beginning of a longer-term solution towards the prevention and reduction of incidences of stillbirth in the United States. To date there are 12 bipartisan cosponsors, and the list is growing!
Since this bill was introduced into the Senate, over 16,000 babies have been stillborn in the United States. We can no longer ignore this issue. After much testing, we learned that our son, Fox, died due to a small placenta– a cause of death that is entirely preventable. He could’ve been saved were it for the SHINE for Autumn Act. And so today, I call on Congress to join us in our efforts to bring stillbirth out of the shadows and pass the SHINE for Autumn Act before the end of the 117th Congress.
I strongly urge anyone who is reading this, to join our efforts to protect vulnerable babies from stillbirth! Please click here to learn more about the easy and fast ways that you can make a difference for all future families.
Rae Hoffman Jager is a writer, yoga teacher, birth doula, and constituent of Kentucky. She writes articles, essays, and poems that can be found in a variety of print and online mags. Rae is the author of American Bitch, a collection of poems.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Why stillbirth is over 10 times more common than SIDS in Kentucky
