For 20 years, Baby Loss Awareness Week has opened up conversations about pregnancy loss and infant mortality, developing the understanding of how we can process our grief, get support and be supportive to victims of baby loss.
Our O&G ultrasound conference at The Royal Society this year included a discussion of the topic, to explore how medical professionals might give more sensitive care.
Various events across the UK can be found here, culminating in a Wave of Light – lighting candles to remember little lives at peace – on Saturday 15th October at 7pm.
At the same time, we are marking 20 years of research into pregnancy loss at the Institute of Reproductive and Developmental Biology on the Imperial College London Hammersmith Hospital campus. We funded the six-storey lab building, which was officially opened by then Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2002!
Reflecting this week’s “Stepping Stones” theme, our continuous research has facilitated many significant steps forward to understand various causes of baby loss and infertility. It’s a long journey to changing the future statistics towards better outcomes for anyone who wants children.
It’s a long journey; spanning seven decades (so far), most of which time our charity was not known as Genesis. But it has brought about profound advances to care in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, including:
- understanding of pre-eclampsia
- identification of genes that cause obstetric cholestasis
- identification of genes that initiate labour, supporting the development of drugs to prevent preterm birth
- diagnosis of miscarriage with ultrasound
- development of models to predict pregnancies of unknown location (PUL)
- linking diverse vaginal microbiota with baby loss, which implies probiotic treatments and use of monofibre in cerclage can reduce the risk.
Please see the research section of our website for more information, and follow our Instagram, Twitter and Facebook profiles for bite-sized research insights.
Please also consider supporting our research with a donation, or in one of the many other ways.