from the lending library

C. A. Reiser, M.S.

A common need voiced by parents who have had a stillborn baby is for someone to talk with, for someone to listen. And while family, friends and health care professionals can fill that void, at times they may not be enough. Sometimes speaking with someone who has actually ‘been there’ is what is most needed. For this reason, many parents will attend local bereavement support groups or seek comfort through contact with another bereaved parent(s). There are also autobiographical written accounts by parents struggling with pregnancy loss, infant death and infertility, that may help meet this need. Several of these are reviewed here.

Mitchard, Jacquelyn, Mother Less Child — The Love Story of a Family. W.W. Norton Co., New York, 1985.

Jacquelyn Mitchard and Dan Aligretti, Wisconsin journalists, were ready to start a family together. After suffering an ectopic pregnancy, they move through a technology jungle to battle infertility, and the maze of adoption, in attempts to bring a child into their lives. Ms. Mitchard states in the Afterword that part of the reason she wrote this book was that the relentless feelings of pain, blame and rage she felt during her journey were felt by many of the men and women she met along the way as well. And "each of them believed at first that his or her reaction had been the most overblown, the most shameful."

Freeland, Alison, Journey to Motherhood. Prentice Hall Press, New York, 1990.

A DES daughter, Alison Freeland and her husband lost two baby boys during pregnancy, one in the sixth month, and then another at five months. Journey to Motherhood is her story of the sorrow of her loss, of the things that helped and hindered her grief, and of the "development of a transcendent belief that enabled her to go beyond grief and become, at last a mother." Ms. Freeland wrote this book because she knew there were many still waiting to experience the profound joy of having a child after the profound disappointment of the death of a baby. In the dedication she writes, "This book is for you, to help you believe."

Berg, Barbara, Nothing to Cry About. Seaview Books, New York, 1981.

Concentrating her energies on career and husband, Barbara Berg is like many women who delay childbearing until their thirties. Her dreams were shattered when her first pregnancy ended in the fifth month following premature rupture and delivery of a stillborn girl, and her second pregnancy, during which she was confined to bed for months, resulted in a stillbirth of a girl in the final month. Ms. Berg’s book is a painfully honest account of dealing with countless professionals, often oblivious and insensitive, planning an adoption, and a complicated but successful third pregnancy.

Barbara Berg writes, "During those years, in which I yearned for and tried to have a child, I felt very much alone. But I know now that other women...have shared bits and pieces of my experience and will identify with it."

Cohen, Marion Deutsche, An Ambitious Sort of Grief. Ide House, Mesquite, Texas, 1983.

An Ambitious Sort of Grief is a diary beginning in the eighth month of Ms. Deutsche-Cohen’s third pregnancy. Her first two pregnancies resulted in healthy babies while the third pregnancy ended with the delivery of Kerin, who died in the neonatal period. The diary continues through to the positive pregnancy test for a subsequent pregnancy. Because it is written as the events happen, it is a raw and painful telling of facing the death of a baby, followed by the hopes and fears of a new life to come.

COLLECTIONS: The two following resources include experiences of many parents following the death of a child; neither book solely addresses pregnancy, but covers child death under many circumstances. They both include parents of stillborn infants in the collective experience.

•Fischhoff, Joseph M.D. and Noreen O’Brien M.S.S.W., Before and After My Child Died — A Collection of Parents’ Experiences. Emmons-Fairfield Publishing Co., Detroit, Michigan, 1983.

•Dear Parents: Letters to Bereaved Parents. Centering Corporation, Omaha, Nebraska, 1989.