Healing Hearts: How Hospitals Can Better Support Parents After Stillbirth
"Navigating Grief and Finding Comfort: Key Strategies for Improving Care in the Shadow of Loss."
The journey of parenthood is often painted with vibrant hues of joy and anticipation, but for some, it tragically takes a turn into the shadows of loss. Stillbirth, the death of a baby before or during delivery, is an experience marked by profound grief and trauma. While the medical aspects of stillbirth are often addressed, the emotional and psychological support for parents is frequently overlooked. This article explores the critical need for improved care and support for parents navigating this heartbreaking experience.
Recent research highlights the significant impact of stillbirth on parents, including its effects on relationships, subsequent pregnancies, and overall well-being. Acknowledging this, healthcare professionals are increasingly recognizing the need for comprehensive, compassionate care that extends beyond medical intervention. This involves creating a supportive environment where parents feel heard, understood, and guided through their grief.
This article aims to shed light on how hospitals and healthcare providers can enhance their approach to caring for parents after stillbirth. It will examine the key components of compassionate care, emphasizing the importance of emotional support, guidance in creating memories, and creating a supportive, understanding environment. The insights and recommendations provided are aimed at helping families find solace and healing during an incredibly difficult time.
A Changing Understanding of Stillbirth
Definitions of stillbirth vary in the literature, with gestational cutoffs ranging from 20 to 28 weeks. The CDC notes that families grieve differently and that healthcare providers can help them find local support resources. A 2023 federal working group report recommended improving stillbirth vital statistics, surveillance, and epidemiologic data, and using better data and further research to help address stillbirth. The Stillbirth Research Consortium, created in September 2025, says its mission includes advancing stillbirth research and knowledge.
Understanding the Pain: The Emotional Impact of Stillbirth
The emotional turmoil that follows a stillbirth is immense. Parents often experience a wide range of intense emotions, including profound sadness, anger, guilt, and disbelief. The depth of this grief can be overwhelming, impacting every aspect of their lives. The hospital environment, often filled with reminders of life and birth, can intensify these emotions, making it even more crucial for healthcare providers to approach each interaction with sensitivity and empathy.
- Acknowledge the Loss: Explicitly recognizing the baby's life and death, using the baby's name, and offering condolences.
- Provide Time: Allowing parents ample time to hold, cuddle, and say goodbye to their baby.
- Offer Memory-Making Opportunities: Providing resources and support for creating memories, such as photographs, handprints, and footprints.
- Respectful Communication: Using gentle, compassionate language and avoiding minimizing comments.
- Information and Guidance: Providing clear, sensitive information about the grieving process and available support services.
A Broad and Evolving Evidence Base
A systematic review to inform a core outcome set reported 58 different interventions in stillbirth-care research. The studies covered labour and birth care (52 studies), hospital bereavement care (28), clinical investigations (116), care in a multiple pregnancy (2), psychosocial support (28), and care in a subsequent pregnancy (14). A rapid scoping review of bereavement supports and programs in Australia and New Zealand retrieved 2,383 articles and included findings from 88. The CASaND guideline's latest edition adds focus on culturally responsive and safe care, organisational roles, perinatal palliative care, and care in subsequent pregnancies.
Limits in the Evidence and Its Reach
A systematic review of support interventions in high-income countries could not synthesise its results because interventions and outcome measures differed. It assessed risk of bias as high in all four studies and rated certainty for all outcomes as very low. A separate qualitative synthesis called for research that includes parents from more varied socioeconomic and demographic groups, noting that existing understanding is homogeneous. In Kenya and Uganda, one qualitative study purposively sampled 75 women and 59 men who had experienced stillbirth within the previous year and received care at the included facilities.
Support and Experience Across Studies
In a study of parents' hospital experiences following stillbirth, 67.7% reported not having support at the hospital from someone who had also experienced stillbirth. An international online survey of parents from high- and middle-income countries received responses from 3,041 people in 40 countries who reported a stillbirth in the preceding five years. Another online questionnaire examined continuing-bond expressions, parents' relationships with their stillborn babies and experiences of sharing those relationships, social support, and meaning-making among 170 parents. These sources examine different aspects of experience and do not establish that the same support patterns apply across all settings.
A Path Towards Healing and Support
Caring for parents after a stillbirth is an act of profound compassion. By implementing the strategies outlined in this article, hospitals can transform the experience of loss into one of support, understanding, and healing. As healthcare providers and society as a whole become more sensitive and responsive to the needs of grieving families, we move closer to creating a world where those who have experienced stillbirth can find solace, support, and a path toward healing.
Community Understanding as a Support Challenge
Findings from the Parent Voices study identify lack of understanding of grief after stillbirth among families, communities, and healthcare workers as a major challenge to supporting parents. The report also points to normalising the death of a baby or accepting grief as unnecessary trauma as concerns raised by point persons and organisational leads. Separately, an umbrella review sets out to appraise evidence from existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses on interventions to prevent stillbirth and reduce perinatal mortality across preconception, antenatal, intrapartum, and immediate newborn periods.
Data, Training, and Prevention Priorities
A NICHD working group report dated March 15, 2023, recommends improving stillbirth recordkeeping, data collection, and analysis; addressing disparities in risk; better supporting families; and pursuing research and prevention to reduce the U.S. stillbirth rate. The CDC reports that maternity-care improvements since the 1940s reduced stillbirth occurrence and that medical advances helped reduce late and term stillbirths over the past 30 years, while the overall rate of decline has recently slowed. CDC also says it has begun new stillbirth initiatives and is working with clinical partners on additional provider training opportunities related to stillbirth care. A 2024 UNIGME report identifies high-quality maternity care, improved data, stronger policies, and greater awareness and support for affected families as essential ingredients for prevention and reducing harm.
Making Parents' Experiences Visible
A 2025 international core outcome set for stillbirth-care studies includes parents' experience of respectful and supportive care, grief, mental health and emotional wellbeing, isolation, stigma, and effects on work and immediate-family relationships. The South Australian Stillbirth Autopsy and Investigation Project (SAIP) recorded and edited women's lived experiences for an online education programme focused on stillbirth, shared decision making, and bereavement follow-on care. AlignMNH's action-focused guide brings together resources and practical guidance for planning programs to end preventable stillbirths and improve care for women and families, with case studies from a range of contexts.