Lisa Plouffe wanted to take a copy of the ultrasound image with her, knowing the baby inside her wouldn?t be coming home. She was three months pregnant and had just found out she was having a miscarriage. That little grainy photo would be the only picture she?d ever have of Maci, the daughter she would never know.
But the ultrasound techs told her that print-outs were only for women with appointments, and Plouffe was there as an emergency. Their answer" No.
Jeannie van den Enden was already in her second trimester when she found out her unborn daughter had died. She sat with her obstetrician and made the difficult decision to deliver her stillborn baby at home. When they were done talking, the doctor stood to leave, squeezed her shoulder and said jovially, ?Have a good one!? For both women, the trauma of their miscarriages was exacerbated by a distinct lack of compassion and support on the part of the doctors, midwives and nurses who cared for them. What?s worse is that their shared experience tends to be the norm, rather than the exception.
We know this, with a degree of certainty, anyway, thanks to a research survey recently completed by the Pregnancy and Infant Loss (PAIL) Network and Toronto?s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. More than 600 Ontario families shared their experiences with pregnancy loss in one of the first comprehensive Canadian studies to analyze, from the perspective of families, the quality of care offered during and after miscarriage.
The resul...