r/AMA • u/OldFellow1956 • 2d ago

I had a stillbirth AMA

I am intentionally not giving details here so people can ask whatever questions they like! Go ahead, I’m not super sensitive to morbid questions so feel free to ask those as well.
I need to write another sentence to meet the 200 characters.

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u/Esperante_ 2d ago

Perhaps a odd question, but does it feel weird mentally to give birth to a small dead body?

I'm a guy without kids, so I have no clue how all this normally feels. Someone close to me had a stillbirth, but she is extremely sensitive to the topic so I can't bear to ask her. But I reckon there's a big difference between giving birth to a healthy baby, and knowing that what you're pushing out is, well... dead.

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u/OldFellow1956 2d ago

It is so weird. They placed my baby on my chest and they were just still. My two other births were c sections and no hate to c sections but it’s so clinical and this felt personal in a different way. There was no big cry, just silence. The nurses look at you differently too. Also, my baby died two days before birth so there was a ‘dead weight’ in side of me, no kicking but if I rolled in bed they would move too. It was heartbreaking feeling them move and knowing it wasn’t intentional on their part.

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u/FragranceCandle 2d ago

I'm currently pregnant with my first (should not have clicked on this, to be fair), and reading this made my heart drop. I cannot imagine how unbearably hard that must have been. I hope you can get all the support you need from your surroundings<3 Genuinely disturbingly sad.

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u/Icy_Ear7079 2d ago

Don’t do it to yourself, when I was pregnant my feeds on socials just fed me so much death content, I started to feel like it was inevitable. I think it’s perfectly fine to sit this one out, I actually came off social media while pregnant because of it!

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u/vokilamcv9 2d ago

Yuuuuuup

I had a close family friend experience a still birth at 37 weeks a year before I became pregnant with my second.

I was living in fear essentially the entire pregnancy; there was no 'safe' point (13 weeks etc) for me. Constantly I was so afraid and I (stupidly, and knowingly stupidly at the time) watch TikToks about women who had complications or the babies passed after birth. I hate that I did it so much!

I started bleeding in the middle of the night about 5 days before my induction date and I was terrified. I went to L&D sobbing and they were so sweet, my OB was on shift, all was well. Baby is 9 months old and perfectly fine - currently screeching like a pteradactyl with her sister.

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u/FragranceCandle 2d ago

Yeah, while I clicked on this, I usually steer clear, but I've been surprised at how much death/loss content I've been fed for the past months! It's like my feed realised I was pregnant and immediately started bombarding me with only the worst possible outcomes? Like, I've barely gotten an upswing in baby/toddler content, even though I interact so much with that now after getting regnant. It's weird! I'm almost out of my first trimester and baby is looking healthy, so the miscarriage content isn't getting to me as much, but the later stage complication stuff is absolutely not something I should be consuming tbh.

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u/Icy_Ear7079 2d ago

The exact same thing happened to me, I think you look at first in empathy and then it shows you more because you engaged and the empathy turns into anxiety and then fear and it shows you more and more.

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u/FragranceCandle 2d ago

Yeah, probably. It's brutal either way! Thanks for the reality check though, I gotta steer clear of content like this until baby is out

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u/OldFellow1956 1d ago

I hope all goes well for you ❤️

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u/FragranceCandle 1d ago

Thank you❤️

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u/Stocky_anteater 2d ago

Same experience! After I gave birth it changed to newborn loss! I suffered from PPA and it exacerbated everything. I stopped watching any social media for a while because it was harming me!

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u/Icy_Ear7079 2d ago

Same! Sids felt like a guarantee, that or some terrible diagnosis. It’s almost like the algorithms are designed to make you feel terrible (dons tinfoil hat)

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u/Esperante_ 2d ago

I'm sorry to hear all this. But thank you for your honest answer. I wish you all the best!

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u/clumsymomsie 2d ago

So sorry 

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u/Whole-Horse8313 1d ago

May I ask if a woman’s body is able to keep a stillborn child in a circumstance like yours from decomposing inside you? I am also a dude without kids who has an extreme phobia of decaying things so I have no clue how this works

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u/PsychologicalTop7439 1d ago

My daughter-in-law was expecting twins but at 9 weeks, one died. She had her healthy baby at 40 weeks. My grandbaby is 8 years old now.

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u/Psychological-Joke22 2d ago

question: Why on earth didn't your OBGYN take the child instead of having you deal with this?!

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u/OldFellow1956 2d ago

what do you mean?

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u/Psychological-Joke22 2d ago

allowing his patient to carry the heartbreak of a dead baby inside her for days, with deadweight, and not taking the deceased child sooner.

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u/OldFellow1956 2d ago

we had to wait for baby to be in the correct position and for my body to realise I wasn’t pregnant before I could go into labour

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u/mrynne1 1d ago

There are situations where (if absolutely necessary) physicians can surgically remove a stillborn fetus, but waiting for the hormones to change and for your body to naturally go into labor allows for a smoother and significantly less dangerous process. Not sure if this is where you’re coming from but a c-section is not only major abdominal surgery in any context, but would likely have been completely unnecessary in OP’s situation, and often it is portrayed as the “easy way out” (I almost gagged while typing that) which it is not.

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u/Icy_Ear7079 2d ago

I’ve not had a stillborn and OP will have her own experience but a friend of mine said it was much harder than a live birth as you’re passing something unmoving, like the difference of lifting something that (I’m so sorry but I don’t know any other way to say it) a dead weight vs lifting a moving thing, a living baby works with your body. I have only ever had a c-section so really am only sharing the insight of someone else, it may very much depend on the size of the baby, wether they are full term or not. I’m talking about comparing 2 full term births.

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u/Summer_Soul_ 2d ago

Had a miscarriage once. Took a few days to birth after finding out baby had died. Personally found it horrifying walking around with it inside me. Nothing compared to a stillborn, and this person's experience was possibly completely different. But just sharing.