Demand for stillbirth-baby services grows

Bill Bowder
Church Times

A HOSPITAL chaplain conducted his second burial service for the same stillborn child last week, after Leeds General Infirmary admitted that it had left the 20-week eight-ounce baby out of the coffin on the first occasion.

The hospital, which said it was was “extremely sorry”, said that “exceptional circumstances combined with human error” had resulted in the coffin’s containing the placenta, but not the baby’s body.

The Revd Ben Turner, the chaplain who took the service both on 12 August and again last Friday, said that it had been a “profoundly distressing experience for all concerned, but especially for the parents and other family members”.

Almost one British woman in three suffers a loss during a pregnancy, according to a leaflet, Information Following an Early or Mid-term Pregnancy Loss, produced by the chaplain of East Kent Hospitals Senior Trust, the Revd Dr Paul Kirby.

The Revd Chris Swift, who is head of the chaplaincy department at Leeds General Infirmary, said this week that, since the revelations of tissue-retention at Alder Hay and other hospitals, and the rows that followed, the public had become more aware of the possibilities of having a service for babies that were stillborn, or which had miscarried or been terminated.


100 services a year
At South Tees Hospital, the Revd Philip Carrington, a chaplain, last week estimated that his chaplaincy team conducted about 100 blessing and naming services a year for parents who had lost babies in mid-to late-term. Mr Carrington, who had taken two such services the previous week, said: “It seems right to recognise that potential life.”

Some parents did not want the acknowledgement that the service offered, he said. But, for others, it was a moment when they could acknowledge that the baby was a real person. “All the chaplains, including the Roman Catholic chaplain, will use the service, and commend the baby’s soul to God.”

Not against canon law
The Revd Bruce Pierce, formerly Chaplain of Dublin’s Adelaide & Meath Hospital, Tallaght, which incorporates the National Children’s Hospital, and now a hospital chaplain in Canada, says that some clergy go further, and will baptise a stillborn child. This, he says, is not against Anglican canon law.

Writing in his recently published book, Miscarriage and Stillbirth, Mr Pierce says: “While baptism, in most traditions, is not deemed appropriate in the case of a stillborn baby, there seems to be a trend, from individual interviews conducted, of baptism being administered when requested.” In one hospital survey quoted in his book, 14 chaplains were willing to take such a baptism if the parents explicitly asked for it.

Never been acknowledged
Mr Pierce, whose older brother died when he was two days old, said that his research had convinced him that people needed to work through their grief. “In the past, [this] has never been acknowledged as real loss. The advice was to forget it, move on.”

Dr Mauris Houston, the medical correspondent of The Irish Times, who reviewed Mr Pierce’s book, said that nearly half of women who had miscarried said they doubted whether they would ever get over their grief; and that many of them (both men and women) said the reaction of health professionals and clergy left “a lot to be desired”.

The Revd Karen MacKinnon, who is on the chaplaincy team in Southampton General Hospital, said that those mothers who wanted it were given photographs and handprints of their children, as well as a certificate of naming and blessing. In addition, such services helped the ward staff, who could also be distressed by the deaths.

Miscarriage and Stillbirth: The changing response, by Bruce Pierce, is published by APCK/Veritas (£10.95; 1-85390-810-X).


 

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