I've always heard that photography could be therapeutic, and after losing both of my parents within 364 days of one another, I knew this to be true. I remembered this healing power when I was 13 months postpartum with my healthy baby son and deep in depression. His birth was traumatic; I was invisible, and my pain went ignored for days at the hospital. My heart weighed so heavy in my chest that it felt as if I was drowning. I needed to feel less alone, so I turned to Facebook and asked others to share their experiences of birth trauma. "Are you looking for stories about stillbirth?" one grandmother asked, and that is how The Loss Mother's Stone began.
A National Institutes of Health report titled "Working to Address the Tragedy of Stillbirth" that published in March 2023 mirrored findings of an investigation by ProPublica into the U.S. stillbirth crisis, which found that more than 20,000 pregnancies are lost at 20 weeks or more every year. In the report, the NIH decried stillbirths as a "major public health concern" in the U.S., which still occur in 1 out of every 175 pregnancies, according to the CDC. And unlike many of our international peers, like Finland, Norway or the U.K., where, according to UNICEF, stillbirth rates fell by more than 20% or 30% between 2000 and 2019, the U.S. has seen comparative stillbirth rates fall by less than 10%.
Despite this knowledge, I think there continues to be a reluctance in the U.S. to discuss the issue openly, with some people afraid that merely mentioning the words "still birth" might make it a reality.
I started this project while I was pregnant with my second son, which allowed me to experience first-hand how empowering it was to be informed about preventable stillbirth. Laura, the first woman I photographed, lost her soon-to-be daughter, Naomi, at 38 weeks gestation, 2 weeks to term.
Laura reflected on her experiences during one of our interviews:
"She was as perfect as a newborn can be, except for the tight knot in her umbilical cord, and that was the day I was introduced to two new concepts: stillbirth and grief. Grief has been called a journey, but a journey implies an endpoint. Grief is being thrashed around by the waves, trying to come up for air, trying to find land, trying to last one more day in a world where you are not a fish. It is a world that you never wanted to visit, where you shouldn't be, but where you must learn how to swim."
By drawing awareness to these stories and paths taken in the journey of healing after trauma, the main goals of the project are multifold: to raise awareness that this neglected tragedy of stillbirth is happening in the U.S., educate the greater population on measures that can be taken to prevent many stillbirths, and destigmatize the conversation between doctors and patients.
Laura Forer
Naomi had a knot in her umbilical cord, cutting her off from her lifeline, the placenta. It is not the standard of care to scan the full cord, so the knot wasn't caught in time to make a decision about inducing before term, which might have saved Naomi's life — despite the fact that Laura knew she had a single artery umbilical cord, which deviates from the normal umbilical cord with two arteries. Babies with only one umbilical artery are at risk of being born small, but Naomi, her daughter, weighed over 6 pounds, so she was assumed to be fine. And she was fine — it was the cord that wasn't.
Photographed in her backyard, Laura stands engulfed by the leaves of her Naomi tree, which was planted by friends and neighbors in her daughter's honor. The roots of the tree grow and are nourished by Naomi's ashes, which are buried deep beneath the soil. Laura also wears three rings to represent her two living children and one stillborn baby, whom the world will never know.
Marise Angibeau-Gray
Early on in her first pregnancy, Marise noticed some spotting, but after an ultrasound confirmed there was a strong heartbeat and that the spotting was likely due to a subchorionic hematoma, a condition in which blood forms between a baby's amniotic sac and the uterine wall and can cause some vaginal bleeding during a pregnancy, she felt relief. At 11 weeks, she started to feel some cramping, which soon turned into waves of overwhelming pain, and then it stopped. She knew her worst fears were coming true: She had miscarried.
Not long after her first loss, she found out she was pregnant again. A few short weeks later, she got married and, that evening, once again, she saw blood in her underwear. A few months later, Marise was 18 weeks pregnant with baby Stokely and feeling good, though one day, she noticed a sort of heaviness in her stomach, and again, there was blood. She raced to the ER, but because she wasn't yet 20 weeks pregnant, she couldn't go to Labor and Delivery and had to wait until an OB-GYN was available to see her. The OB-GYN was a Black woman, like Marise, so she felt reassured, but was taken aback when the doctor showed no compassion and told her there was nothing they could do to save her baby, despite the baby still being alive. That day, she lost Stokely. The cause, according to the doctor, was most likely her "incompetent cervix."
Marise was determined to birth a living child, despite the trauma she had already experienced, and soon she was pregnant again. There was bleeding from time to time, likely from another subchorionic hematoma, but the pregnancy progressed into her third trimester with minimal issues. At a 29-week appointment, her doctor did a scan and noted that the umbilical cord was hypocoiled, which meant that it was a bit more flat than usual, leaving the arteries and vein inside more vulnerable to injury or compression. But with no signs of growth restrictions to the baby and seeing it had a normal heartbeat, they didn't have cause to keep her or to induce early. Three days later, noticing the baby's movements had slowed, Marise went to Labor and Delivery, rushing past the ER, where she was laid onto a bed to be checked. There was no heartbeat. Ellison was gone.
Jen Loga
Jen had always dreamed of having a large family, having been raised as an only child by a single mother. When she discovered she was pregnant after six months of trying, her joy knew no bounds. However, her happiness was short-lived. During a routine ultrasound, her doctor was unable to locate the gestational sac, revealing that she had an ectopic pregnancy, in which a fetus develops outside of the uterus. To make matters worse, her fallopian tube ruptured while she was at the doctor's office, necessitating immediate emergency surgery. The procedure resulted in the loss of one of her fallopian tubes, but it ultimately saved her life. Had she not been at the doctor's office that day, she would have unknowingly bled to death internally.
Her subsequent pregnancy with Lucy felt like a dream come true, especially when she and her 3-year-old daughter, Juliet, joyfully announced the impending arrival of a new family member in their Christmas card. The dream turned into a nightmare when Lucy succumbed to cytomegalovirus (CMV), an infection that can be passed from a mother to her baby during pregnancy. Jen was horrified to learn that not only can one be tested for CMV early in a pregnancy, but also that there are preventative measures available for those who test positive for the virus and measures that can be taken that can potentially save a child's life while it's still in utero.
Domenique Rice
Domenique was feeling confident and strong late into her pregnancy. She knew what to expect, so at 36 weeks and 5 days pregnant, she knew the pain she was starting to feel was labor, despite it being a little early and the nursery wasn't even finished. Once at the hospital, she was asked to recount the last movements she felt from the baby, but it was hard because the contractions were clouding her memory. T.J. no longer had a detectable heartbeat.
Long after the trauma of learning of her son's death and giving birth to him, Domenique spoke to a placental pathologist, who told her that while T.J.'s body weight was in the 26th percentile, his placenta measured in the fourth. This is not something immediately noticeable in the few scans pregnant people get as part of the typical obstetric care in the U.S. Domenique's body had been rejecting the placenta, and if this had been detected and addressed with early intervention, T.J.'s life might have been saved before it was too late.
Michelle Allette
Formerly a U.S. Army reservist, Michelle has always worn many hats and held many positions. It was her job as a corrections officer at a prison that changed the course of her life, because while dating another officer at the prison, she found out she was pregnant with twins. At the same time, she learned that he not only had a wife at home but was also expecting a child with her. She decided to keep the babies and have nothing to do with him. She ultimately had to leave that job, as well, because they would spray a gas when fights broke out, and inhaling those chemicals was a danger to her and her babies.
Due to her difficulty obtaining care through Medicaid and not learning until late in her pregnancy that she could receive care through the VA, Michelle didn't see an OB-GYN until she was 28 weeks pregnant. At that appointment, she learned that Elijah, twin A, had died approximately three weeks prior, and in order to give her other twin, Elisha, a chance at survival, she had to carry the two babies, together, as long as possible. At 32 weeks, she went into early labor and gave birth to one living child and one dead child.
Mourning her loss, she returned to the hospital every day to care for and check on her living son, who was in the NICU. She spent nearly all the money she had doing this, so when it came time to pay the $250 for funeral and burial costs, she was out of luck. The hospital offered one option: a free burial in a mass unmarked grave at a nearby cemetery. Now, Michelle runs a nonprofit offering bereavement and burial support for families as well as partnerships with clinics to offer free ultrasounds and postpartum needs.
Dr. Patty Ng
When Dr. Patty found out that her daughter had died, or in her words, was an intrauterine fetal demise, she wanted everything from that point on to be treated like a medical procedure. No crying, no grief, no sadness around her and to get the baby delivered as soon as possible. Before this loss, she had consecutive early pregnancy losses and the way she knew to get through was to keep going. She didn't look at her baby or hold her, fearing the image of her lifeless body would be imprinted in her mind forever. She needed to treat this as medically as possible or she wouldn't have been able to live and continue to do the work that she does. She also wanted to get pregnant again and to get back on her feet. Two months later, she was pregnant with her rainbow baby, Evan. "I don't think anybody can ever recover from a loss like this but, having Evan around, a miracle after this thunderstorm, helped a lot."
As an OB-GYN who had experienced child loss, Patty realized that there were many women who also had these losses and wanted to get pregnant again, like she had. She now designates extra time in her private practice and created a rainbow panel dedicated to patients who also experienced such loss.
Nancy Borowick is a photographer, author, teacher and speaker. She currently resides on the island of St. John, USVI. See more of her work on her website nancyborowick.com and her Instagram @nancyborowick.
Copy edited by Zach Thompson. Photo edited by Grace Widyatmadja.
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