With 1 in 4 pregnancies ending in miscarriage and 9 babies stillborn every day, many women are privately grieving a child they never knew.
But open conversations about such experience help to deal with this suffering.
The theme for Baby Loss Awareness Week 2019 is “Break the Silence”. We ask you to post a #FakeSmileSelfie and share how you feel about your experience of baby loss.
You can take a photo using a drawing of a smile, or one on your phone, found in a magazine – or get creative!
With 1 in 4 pregnancies ending in miscarriage & 9 babies stillborn every day, many people privately grieve a child they never knew.But open conversations help.For #BabyLossAwarenessWeek, we ask you to share a #FakeSmileSelfie and your feelings about your #babyloss experience. pic.twitter.com/c6CtPS1mlN
— Genesis Research Trust (@GenesisTrustUK) October 9, 2019
Please tag our Twitter, Facebook or Instagram profiles, (@GenesisTrustUK, GenesisResearchTrust and @genesisresearchtrustuk respectively) and link your social post to this article to encourage your friends to join in! To make this easier, you could share one of our social posts, adding your own #FakeSmileSelfie.
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As Baby Loss Awareness Week begins, the need to research the causes of baby loss remains urgent: Neonatal deaths have increased in the UK since 2014, according to latest figures.1
Professor Robert Winston, founder and chairman of Genesis Research Trust, commented; “Miscarriage is common, devastating, and yet under-researched. We still have a great deal to learn about its causes. We are researching markers in the blood stream, the genes and molecules which have an important effect on the genes. Our research begins to offer better help for those at risk with new revolutionary treatments to prevent it.”
Baby Loss Awareness Week is the annual initiative to highlight how many people endure miscarriages, stillbirths and neonatal death, and increase political pressure to improve the statistics and related medical care. This year’s theme is ‘Break the Silence’, encouraging open discussions about the impact of baby loss.
The initiative is a co-operation of charities working in this field – including Genesis Research Trust – as well as the public.
Genesis Research Trust CEO, D. M. Sterling, commented: “There have been countless reports into the societal impact of miscarriage and stillbirth in terms of affecting people going back to work and the extra visits to their GP or hospitals with mental health issues such as depression and relationship breakdown. It is important we improve the amount of funding that’s coming into pregnancy related research. Reducing neonatal deaths would save society a significant sum of money and families undue hardships.”
We ask you to recognise that many people bravely hide grief without the opportunity to talk about it by joining our social media campaign: #FakeSmileSelfie encourages people to post a selfie with a fake smile over their face using a photo, drawing or a picture on a phone.
The fertility research charity urges that policy makers must translate the latest medical research around the causes of baby loss into clinical practice. Genesis Research Trust continues to break new ground in supporting the scientific understanding of the causes of miscarriage and stillbirth to enable at-risk women to be identified and better treated.
Reference:
- “ONS Publishes Stillbirth / Neonatal Mortality / Infant Mortality Statistics 2017” – https://genesisresearchtrust.com/news/ons-publishes-stillbirth-neonatal-mortality-infant-mortality-statistics-2017/