More lives are lost to miscarriages under 20 weeks than deaths on the roads, yet services for affected wh\u0101nau are fragmented or even non-existent in many parts of the country.<\/p>\n
Support groups are calling on Te Whatu Ora and the new government to fast-track plans for a national framework to set basic standards of care and bereavement training for staff.<\/p>\n
Losing her first baby, Jacob, at 12 weeks gestation was made more traumatic for Steph Whitehouse by her experiences at hospital – having to tell her story to busy staff over and over again.<\/p>\n
When she and her husband finally saw a specialist, he recommended a D&C (dilation and curettage) as the fastest option – but did not explain they would not be able to see their baby afterwards.<\/p>\n
“What I later found out was they had thrown him away with all the medical waste for the day. I already felt like a failure for not being able to carry a pregnancy to term and then there was this added layer that I had failed him as a mother because I had allowed him to be thrown away like rubbish. And he wasn’t rubbish. He was my very loved, wanted child,” Whitehouse said.<\/p>\n
Nicole had two miscarriages last year, both confirmed at nine weeks.<\/p>\n
A nurse herself, she had to push to get the help she needed, both medical and mental, going between the GP and the emergency department seeking blood tests and scans – even trying the national abortion helpline for advice.<\/p>\n
“To go through two miscarriages in the space of two months was really hard and I felt really shat on by the health system that there were not enough resources, nobody knew what they were doing, no one could help me, and I was basically doing it on my own.”<\/p>\n
She eventually got help from the Early Pregnancy Unit in Rotorua, which had yet to officially open at that time. “I think they felt sorry for me.”<\/p>\n
These women’s experiences are far from unique.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Perinatal Bereavement Support Environmental Scan report<\/a>, released recently by Te Whatu Ora, found services were\u00a0patchy across the country<\/a>.<\/p>\n Parents described a sense of disconnect between themselves and hospital staff for whom it was “business as usual”.<\/p>\n Some families reported leaving the ED with their p\u0113pi in an envelope box and no follow-up care, while in another region, nurses were buying boxes to ensure wh\u0101nau could take their dead babies home.<\/p>\n Others described seeing their child taken for a post-mortem in a kidney tray or casually bundled up in a dirty surgical cloth.<\/p>\n The report’s recommendations included developing a national framework to set basic standards of care, and bereavement training for all staff involved in perinatal care.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More lives are lost to miscarriages under 20 weeks than deaths on the roads, yet services for affected wh\u0101nau are fragmented or even non-existent in many parts of the country. Support groups are calling on Te Whatu Ora and the new government to fast-track plans for a national framework to set basic standards of care […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8847,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845\/revisions\/8847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}