INFANT DEATHS BROADEN FEARS

Published on Thursday, January 20, 2000
© 2000 San Antonio Express-News
Deborah Wormser, Special to the Express-News

Carol Cirulli Lanham lost her first son, Patrick, the day before labor was scheduled to be induced. Throughout her fear-filled second pregnancy, she believed the birth of her new baby, Andrew, would put her anxieties to rest. While at the hospital after delivery, she dreamed that Andrew had died. Even when she called the nursery, and was assured that the baby was fine, she remained anxious. "In the middle of the night, all alone in my hospital room, I cried like I had never cried before - not even when Patrick had died. Now that I had another baby, I understood exactly what had been taken from me," she writes in her book "Pregnancy After a Loss" (Berkley, $14.95). The Dallas mother of three is determined to talk about a silent sorrow shared by thousands of women: the death of a child before birth or in early infancy.

Lanham speaks at pregnancy loss support groups across the country and hosts an Internet chat room at 8 p.m. each Tuesday on the SHARE Pregnancy Loss and Infant Loss Support Web site.

Tonight, she speaks to the Angels Away Support Group at Christus Santa Rosa Children's Hospital, 519 W. Houston St. The meeting, free and open to the public, will be held in the Pastoral Dept. on the hospital's first floor at 7 p.m.

Lanham describes her book as a "what to expect when you're expecting again after a loss." Up to one in four pregnancies ends in loss, Lanham says, adding that there are no official statistics on early loss. Estimates are that one of every 100 pregnancies that pass 20 weeks gestation - the halfway point - will fail. The incidence of pregnancy loss has risen as women have put off childbearing until later in life and reproductive technology has made it possible for otherwise infertile women to become pregnant, but more likely to miscarry, she says. Another reason the numbers are so high is because tests can confirm a pregnancy at earlier stages. Some women who experience miscarriage would never have realized they were pregnant in the past. "I was 40 weeks along. Full term," says Lanham, a former reporter for the San Antonio Light, Associated Press and Newsweek. "It was Friday, the 13th of May 1994. I went for a checkup and everything was fine. The doctor was going to induce on Monday. On that Saturday, I didn't feel the baby move. At first, I wasn't worried. Friends had said when you're this close to delivery the baby can slow down." After several hours passed without movement, the Lanhams became scared and went to the hospital, where they were told that the baby had died. On Sunday, as the doctor was explaining that the standard procedure was to go home and wait for labor to start naturally, Lanham began to hemorrhage and was rushed to the operating room for an emergency Caesarean section that saved her life.

Their son had died when his umbilical cord prematurely separated from the placenta, which provides nourishment. After the C-section, Lanham and her husband were taken back to the maternity floor to adjust to their loss amid the sounds of joyful new parents celebrating nearby. Later, a doctor came by to suggest that the Lanhams might need marital counseling to deal with their loss.

"If you talk to any woman who has been through this, my experiences were not unique," she says. "They all have similar experiences to report. Everything about it is horrible." When Lanham became pregnant again only four months later, she realized the vast silence extended to a lack of books to guide women through an experience she describes as starkly different from the hopeful anticipation of her first pregnancy.

"One woman described it as 'If you've been struck by lightning, you're going to be nervous when you go out in a thunderstorm.' I was very nervous," she says. During the next five years, Lanham wrote "Pregnancy After a Loss" and added two sons, Andrew, now 4 1/2, and Michael, 2 1/2, to the family.

Lanham's desire to do something to mark Patrick's influence on her life led her to interview dozens of women who had become pregnant again following a loss through miscarriage, stillbirth or infant death.

"Meeting these women gave me hope," Lanham says. Lanham's book covers everything from choosing a doctor for the subsequent pregnancy to decisions regarding selective reduction of multiple fetuses that result from high-tech treatments for infertility.

There is also a chapter on fathers' reactions to pregnancy loss and listings of support groups across the country.

Lanham says her experience has changed her as a patient and she encourages women to participate actively in their medical care.

"Ask questions, demand extra visits if necessary. If you feel like you want to go in just to hear the baby's heartbeat, go," she says. Although it is sometimes impossible to know what went wrong, it is important to try to find out - both for grief recovery and to avoid problems in subsequent pregnancies. Her experience has changed her "as a woman and as a parent." She realizes that life is fragile and has no guarantees; that her family will always feel incomplete to her.

She knows that every day she will think of Patrick and what might have been and that she will live the rest of her life differently.

Deborah Wormser is a Dallas author. Create mementos of baby Carol Cirulli Lanham says there are several ways to keep alive memories of a child who has died including: Plant a tree. Attend a memorial service. Make a baby book. Create a shadowbox of mementos of the baby. Wear a charm or bracelet engraved with the baby's initials. Wear an angel pin or start an angel collection. Start family traditions like candle-lighting ceremonies. Collect Christmas ornaments for the baby who has died. Tell other children about their brother or sister. Make a donation in your baby's name: One couple Lanham interviewed funded a new church library in their baby's name; another started a scholarship. Reach out to others who have suffered a loss. - Deborah Wormser