baby – Michmutters
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Australia

Parents who have experienced stillbirth want other Australians to know they’re not alone this Red Nose Day

Dimity Blundell was 35 weeks pregnant with her son, Finley, when she was suddenly woken up in the middle of the night by her cat.

Warning: This story discusses stillbirths and contains photos and other content that may be distressing to some people.

“I used the bathroom and started bleeding, a lot,” she said.

Dimity, and her husband Michael, rushed to hospital, where doctors told them the news no parents want to hear: “we can’t find a heartbeat.”

Dimity had had a placental abruption, a rare but serious pregnancy complication where the placenta partly or completely separates from the uterus before delivery.

She was taken into an operating theater at 12:16am on February 22 this year.

“I was prepped by 12:17am, knocked out at 12:18am, the surgery started at 12:19am, and Finley was born at 12:20am,” Dimity said.

Finley was declared dead at 1:24am.

‘Is this the worst day of my life?’

A closeup of a baby's feet.
Michael and Dimity are taking it “day by day” since their son’s death.(Supplied)

Later that morning, a midwife asked if the grieving couple wanted to meet their son.

Dimity recalled the midwife telling her: “he’s very cute, he really does just look like he’s sleeping.”

Finley spent four days in the loving arms of his parents, and a handful of other family members and friends.

Dimity said she always asks herself, “is the worst day of my life the day he was born, or the day I had to leave him? I think it was the day we had to leave him.”

“Then we came home, and we had a nursery and we had baby things, and then we became the people whose baby died,” she said.

“Everyone else gets to bring their baby home, so why didn’t we?”

Dimity in a hospital bed, holds baby Finley while Michael looks over them.
Dimity and Michael with baby Finley, who was stillborn in February 2022.(Supplied)

Five-and-a half months on, Dimity and Michael said they were taking each day as it came.

But Dimity said Finley’s death “affects every single aspect” of their lives.

“Everything that you do, it’s just woven into the fabric of who you are,” she said.

Michael said it was hard to describe the pain, that still had not gone away, but said it had “certainly gotten a little easier to deal with, with all the counseling and work we’ve put in.”

“It definitely burns less; I’d say it would be a campfire now rather than a bonfire,” Dimity said.

“Moving forward is weird though, because the further forward you move, the further away you get from your baby.”

‘We are the strength of other people, we are the strength of the Red Nose families’

Bonnie looks seriously into the camera, standing outside.
Bonnie Carter is the ACT representative for the Red Nose Community Advisory Committee.(ABC News: Dave Scasci)

Shortly after Finley’s death, the couple reached out to the charity Red Nose — best known for its annual major fundraiser Red Nose Day, which is today.

Each year, the national charity raises hundreds of thousands of dollars to continue vital research into the causes of stillbirth and sudden infant death and support families impacted by the death of a baby or child.

Through Red Nose’s Canberra branch, Dimity and Michael were able to participate in counselling, and said they discovered a whole community of people who had gone through the same experience as them.

“Once you step into the community, you realize how big it is, and we’re all here for one another,” Michael said.

“The mums and the dads and the siblings of the little people who are with Finley, those people are phenomenal, and they will get you through this,” Dimity said.

“People often tell Michael and I, ‘you’re so strong, you’re so brave’. And I say, ‘No. We are the strength of other people, we are the strength of the Red Nose families.'”

name tag
Bonnie Carter and her husband Steve had these tags made for their two little girls, who were stillborn.(ABC News: Adam Kennedy)

Another member of the Red Nose community in Canberra, is bereaved parent Bonnie Carter, who lost her two daughters, Grace and Matilda, in the span of 18 months.

“It was a very raw, unique pain that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy,” she said.

“There’s some sort of pain you cannot describe in words when a baby dies in the comfort of your belly.”

Bonnie is the ACT representative for the Red Nose Community Advisory Committee and said it was important to talk about stillbirth, as the latest statistics showed 3,000 Australian babies died suddenly and unexpectedly each year.

“By the time you roll into bed tonight, nine Australian families will have lost a baby,” she said.

Dimity and Michael said they found “talking about stillbirth took away the stigma.”

“You’re pregnant and you’re carrying a baby and then it dies, and there’s a lot of stigma around, ‘what did you do?'” Dimity said.

“By talking to Red Nose and hearing the different stories, people have a lot more understanding that it does just happen.”

Funds raised to assist research into stillbirth

Current research from Red Nose shows more than 50 per cent of stillbirths, that occur in the last weeks of an otherwise healthy pregnancy, have no known cause.

But Bonnie said she hoped that ongoing research undertaken at Red Nose could ensure “zero babies pass away, and zero little lives are lost.”

She said, until that time came, counseling and community support allowed bereaved parents and families to open up about their experience.

Bonnie Carter with baby Evie
Bonnie has since welcomed baby daughter Evie, but continues to advocate for parents who have lost a baby through stillbirth or miscarriage.(Supplied)

“You need those other parents to lean on, to talk to, to vent to, to cry to, to laugh with,” she said.

“There is a whole community of families, especially in the Canberra region, who get it, who feel your pain, who understand it, and we’re your backbone. You can lean on us whenever you need to.”

Dimity and Michael said, one day, when they were “further down the path” they wanted to join Bonnie and become involved in the Red Nose charity.

“So that other people don’t have to sit in their hospital beds holding their baby and thinking ‘this doesn’t happen to other people,'” Dimity said.

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Categories
Australia

Ovarian tissue freezing offering hope of a chance at motherhood to women battling cancer

When 38-year-old Melbourne woman Sarah looks at her one-year-old baby, Etta, she sees a precious gift that she and her husband might never have been granted.

“Sometimes I look at her and I think it’s just sort of incredible that it actually happened,” Sarah told ABC’s 7.30.

In 2009, Sarah was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and was told she had to start treatment straight away.

From that moment, her focus was solely on her own survival and not on bigger questions about how treatments such as chemotherapy might affect her body and her future chances of falling pregnant.

“At the time, the main things I was worried about were, ‘Am I going to die?’ And things like, ‘Is my hair going to fall out?'” she said.

“Secondary issues — [such as] ‘What’s the long-term impacts on my fertility and my other health?’—were sort of really in the back of my mind.”

Luckily, her mother thought to ask those questions before Sarah started chemotherapy and she was put in touch with Dr Kate Stern, who runs an innovative fertility program at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne that, a decade later, helped change the course of Sarah’s life .

“Without my mum making that phone call, and all these pieces falling together, [Etta] just might not have ever existed,” Sarah said.

Science behind innovative procedure

Woman with her baby sitting on the floor playing.
Sarah says it’s “incredible” she was able to have baby Etta.(ABC News: Nadia Daly)

When ABC’s 7.30 met Sarah, baby Etta was waddling around happily on the floor. She had taken her first steps that morning and turned one the day before.

Those are special milestones for any family, but even more so for Sarah and her husband, Gabriel, who had been through a long and difficult journey over a period of 10 years to get there.

As Sarah underwent treatment for cancer immediately after her diagnosis, there was no time for conventional procedures such as egg freezing. So she and Dr Stern decided to use another innovative method to give Sarah the chance to fall pregnant when she concluded her cancer treatment.

It’s known as ovarian tissue freezing, and Dr Stern was one of the doctors who helped pioneer the procedure at the Royal Women’s Hospital.

A woman wearing a mask stands next to a computer screen.
Dr Kate Stern describes the process as “absolutely miraculous”.(ABC News: Nadia Daly)

“Fertility preservation with ovarian tissue is innovative and it’s exciting but, because of the technical difficulties, it’s not widely available around the world,” Dr Stern said.

The procedure involves removing part of a woman’s ovary tissue via keyhole surgery, slicing it thinly and then freezing it in special containers in a lab.

When the woman completes her cancer treatment, the tissue can be defrosted and inserted back into her abdomen if she decides she wants to try to start a family.

“Over four or five months, that tissue gets a life of its own, it gets new blood vessels, the follicles and eggs start to develop. And it makes hormones — it is absolutely miraculous, we think,” Dr Stern said.

‘For these patients, it’s this versus nothing’

Two women in masks and gloves stand among tanks in a lab.
Dr Kate Stern says the treatment does not guarantee a patient will fall pregnant.(ABC News: Nadia Daly)

Dr Stern helped set up the program at the hospital and played a key role in developing the procedure 26 years ago.

While the treatment is no longer considered experimental, it is highly specialized and cannot be performed at all hospitals, and Dr Stern cautions that it does not guarantee a patient can fall pregnant.

“Getting good eggs is still hard work,” she said.

“But the treatment is quite successful. It depends what your benchmark is but, for these patients, it’s this versus nothing.”

Dr Stern said that, around the world, about 170 women have fallen pregnant after using their frozen ovarian tissue.

In Sarah’s case, her cancer treatment stretched out from a few months to a decade of on-and-off treatment that took a heavy toll on her body.

“Sarah’s extensive treatment for her cancer damaged her ovaries so that she was in a state of what we call premature menopause — her ovaries did not have any good eggs in them,” she said.

“So Sarah needed to have this ovarian tissue grafted to be able to have any opportunity [of having] to baby.”

When Sarah was two years in remission, she was advised it was safe to reinsert the ovarian tissue and to try to fall pregnant.

A few years later, in July 2021, Etta was born.

‘We had no idea about these options’

Young girl next to a tree smiling.
“I knew I dad to do it”: Zahli Habel underwent ovarian tissue freezing after being diagnosed with cancer.(ABC News: Carl Saville)

Over in the remote town of Streaky Bay in South Australia, 11-year-old Zahli Habel is at a very different stage in her life.

She finished her chemotherapy a year ago but, before she began, she had part of an ovary removed and flown to the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne to be frozen and preserved if she decides to have children in the future.

“Zahli was diagnosed with a cancer that required intensive chemotherapy. This chemotherapy has a high chance of damaging future ovarian function,” Dr Stern explained.

The diagnosis was shocking enough for Zahli and her family, and fertility was not something they had considered.

“I guess when we got the diagnosis, we were dealing with that — that was the biggest issue,” Zahli’s mum, Steph, said.

Mother and teenage daughter sitting on a sofa smiling.
Steph Habel was grateful the issue of fertility was raised when daughter Zahli was diagnosed with cancer.(ABC News: Carl Saville)

“And then, suddenly for them to come out and talk about fertility… we had no idea about these options.

“And it was amazing that it was offered to us and that we could take it up.”

Zahli decided that it was a good option for her to give her choices in her future.

“I knew I had to do it,” she said.

“Because, if I wanted to have kids in the future and chemo killed off all my eggs, I knew that it was really my only thing to rely on.”

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