“Talking about stillbirth doesn’t make it happen”.
What talking about stillbirth WILL do is reduce the isolation that parents and siblings so often painfully feel, compounding their grief. It WILL enable further research to be undertaken and preventative strategies and education to be effectively put in place and followed to reduce the staggering numbers. It will remove the stigma that so often stops this from happening. It WILL raise awareness and therefore empower and educate our society on the impacts and realities of stillbirth to ensure families who do suffer this unimaginable tragedy be supported in the way they should and need to be by both the health care system and by the community as a whole.
For too long stillbirth, along with all other stages of pregnancy loss and infant loss, has been shrouded in silence. For so many it is just too sad to talk about. For others they worry knowing about it will make it happen to them, as if it’s contagious. Then there’s some that just don’t understand the enormity of such a devastating loss and how it will live with the families everyday for the rest of their lives.
Yesterday the senate tabled their report from the senate inquiry into stillbirth. Yesterday senators stood up and broke that silence in the most remarkable and touching way. Yesterday marked a historical event that provided a massive and hopeful step towards a future with less families who give birth to their babies but come home with empty arms and broken hearts. A future where those who do are given the support and services they deserve as they embark on the toughest road. A future where appropriate education and sensitivity about loss is instilled in all medical practitioners and the broader community. A future where there is less silence and more understanding, less judgement and more love, less isolation and more freedom to love and grieve in whatever manner you want and need to.
** Read the report – HERE **
To every person who made a submission thank you for doing so, your voices (and the voice of your babies) were heard and they mattered. A special mention to close friends and their babies Maxwell and Leilani and the voice that they had ❤️
To every member of the senate committee I thank you for your dedication, hard and ‘heart’ work throughout and for making such an important issue be truly heard and looked at and now tabled with recommendations to create real change. A personal special mention to Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, Senator Jim molan, Senator Catryna Bilyk and Senator Kristina Keneally for your compassion and care during the hearing my husband and I attended as a witness.
This morning I was brought to tears both with sadness and being so touched and moved by your addresses you made yesterday. Hearing our babies names out loud was such a gift and gave them life.
View their addresses here-
Senator Keneally, Senator Bilyk and Senator Molan, thank you for being so kind to share about your babies Caroline and Timothy and grand baby Emily with the country. Please know their names are ones I will always remember.
To Senator Keneally, thank you for making this a priority and for bringing this very important issue into public light and loudly telling the country how much our babies matter. Without your call for an inquiry a future with 2000 babies still born in Australia every year would have stayed stagnant but now, in time, there WILL be change and for that I will forever be grateful.
I am thrilled to see the initial commitment of $7.2 mil towards stillbirth research and education and also for the fact the media release so very importantly stated and recognised in its first line “stillbirth is one of the greatest tragedies to happen to a family”. Public recognition for the magnitude of such a tragedy goes a long way to change the culture of silence and increase education.
In my statement at the hearing I said “as a country we should do better, we need to do better and we can to better”, and now I truly believe that is on the verge of happening.
To our baby boy Elliott, thank you for giving me the strength and guiding me through the darkest of times. I am so honoured to have the chance to have given you a voice that you never got to have yourself. I will fight for you and will hold you every moment of every day. Your memory and your life will always be cherished and treasured. We love and miss you so very much.
Elliott's Stardust 