---

PAM'S STORY
Broadcast starting week of April 20, 2005

This is an encore presentation of Pam's Story, honored with a Gracie Award and International Radio Festival Award.

This documentary takes an in-depth look at a topic we rarely discuss--the death of a baby in utero and how a family copes with the loss. Producer Cindi Deutschman follows her sister Pam for two years, as she grieves the death of her stillborn daughter Abrianna and embarks on another pregnancy. Stillbirth accounts for 7 out of every 1000 births. About 26,000 babies are stillborn each year in the United States. Most of us know someone--a parent, friend, sibling, coworker, or acquaintance--who has experienced a pregnancy loss of some kind, and yet we never talk about it.

This story begins with Pam Deutschman finding out that her daughter has died. She and her husband Tom Deutschman spend a mostly sleepless night at home after they hear the news, then make the trip to the hospital the following morning. Pam gives birth to Abrianna following 100 hours of labor, during which she refuses all pain medication. Prior to the stillbirth, Pam and Tom had planned to have a midwife-assisted natural birth at Tucson's Birth and Women's Health Center.

Having Abrianna at Tucson Medical Center introduces Pam to Dr. Jennifer Reinhart, an obstetrician whose compassion through the birth of Abrianna touches Pam and Tom deeply.

Abrianna is born, after having been dead already for nearly a week. Though her body has begun to show signs of decay, she is well-formed and quite large already--almost 4 pounds and 18 inches long. There is no obvious reason why she should have died, and indeed no reason is ever found for her death.

Pam and Tom spend time with the baby, holding her, counting her fingers and toes, and taking pictures. This is something they do out of their own need, but it's also an option that wasn't always open to parents. Decades ago, babies who died were generally whisked away before their parents even saw them. Cathi Lammert, the head of a national organization of grieving parents, called SHARE, says what's important is that parents have choices about seeing and spending time with their babies.

Pam and Tom leave the hospital the following day, close the door to the nursery they had been preparing, and try to make sense of their experience. Pam spends long weeks in bed, reliving her daughter's death and birth over and over, and wondering constantly what she might have done to cause Abrianna to die.

On Abrianna's due date, April 5 1998, Pam and Tom invite family and friends to a memorial service.

As Pam begins to make her way out into public, she has to confront her loss over and over, as people who saw her when she was pregnant ask her about her baby. She finds most people don't know how to react when she tells them about her loss, and although some are compassionate, others say unintentionally hurtful things, such as, "Well you could always have another." SHARE's Cathi Lammert says what people can say is, "I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

As Pam and Tom struggle through their grief, they look for support, but there is little available. They do go to their local SHARE group, where Pam meets Jessica Hall, a woman who gave birth to a stillborn daughter on the same day and in the same hospital as Pam. They immediately become close. Pam also meets Maricela Rincon, who a leader of Tucson's SHARE. Maricela became involved with SHARE following her own loss, when she felt she was going crazy because she hated pregnant women and saw babies everywhere. When she went to SHARE, she found she wasn't alone. Many women experiencing pregnancy loss go through the same thing.

Part of getting through the loss is finding ways to memorialize the child. Jessica Hall keeps a memory box full of mementos, including a quilt she was piecing together when her daughter died. Pam and Tom create a memorial in their backyard, and also have Abrianna's name placed on a memorial wall in Tucson dedicated to the children who have died, regardless of how they died.

SHARE's Cathi Lammert says the grief parents feel when they lose a baby never goes away. Pam Magi, perinatal bereavement coordinator at Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern, New York, has also seen that parents always remember their losses. She runs a number of support groups for parents in different stages of grief, and her hospital has set up a walkway, with bricks engraved with the names of children who've died.

Most couples experiencing the loss of pregnancy go on to get pregnant again. Women may be cautioned to wait a few months until their bodies are stronger, and longer to make sure they are emotionally ready. Most wait just a few months, but Pam and Tom waited a year.

She got pregnant on Valentine's Day, 1999, and very early in her pregnancy decided to go back to Tucson's Birth Center for her prenatal care. She opted to alternate visits between the midwives and Dr. Reinhart, who delivered Abrianna. Her first visit with the doctor is about 2 months into the pregnancy, the first time the doctor tries to find a heartbeat… and it's there.

They discuss how long and difficult this pregnancy will be, emotionally, how Pam will be concerned, particularly around her 30th week, when she lost Abrianna. But the first thing Pam experiences is exhaustion. As she tries to maintain an upbeat attitude, Tom stays positive. Pam wonders frequently whether the baby is dead. As the pregnancy progresses and Pam starts to show, she again has to handle strangers' questions. At a trip to Baby Gap, Pam and Tom are asked by a salesclerk whether this is their first baby. They answer at the same time, contradicting each other. Pam says yes, Tom says no. Tom explains their first baby was born still, and the salesclerk runs away.

Pam says it's difficult to know how to acknowledge Abrianna in public, because people so often react this way. But she very much wants to acknowledge her daughter. Around her neck, she wears a locket with several pictures of Abrianna, and given any genuine opportunity, she pops it open and shows the photos.

An ultrasound done mid-way through pregnancy reveals that this baby is a boy. Pam had been hoping for a girl, because she still misses Abrianna, but the evening after her ultrasound, she goes home and packs away the clothes that she had bought for Abrianna. She decides it's a good thing that this baby will have an entirely new identity. Tom is thrilled to be having a boy, and starts dreaming of erector sets and father-and-son tool benches.

They decide to name their son Zachary, which is the only name they can agree on. It's of Hebrew origin and means "God Remembered," which Pam also likes because it evokes memories of Abrianna.

As the baby grows and becomes more active, Pam's fears and attachment to him steadily increase. His movements are strong, and she finds herself living from movement to movement, often fearing he's dead if he hasn't moved for awhile. By 28 weeks, about 6 months into pregnancy, she begins to go twice a week for a special test to check the baby's health. The "non-stress test," as it's called, monitors Zack's heart rate and movements over a period of time. His heart rate is expected to speed up a certain amount when he moves. She's having these tests because of her prior loss. The thinking is that with such frequent monitoring, the midwives and doctor will be able to detect fetal distress in time to help the baby. These tests are themselves a source of stress for Pam. Just the process of going in constantly for tests is stressful. But Pam also has noticed strange blips and blank lines on the machine, at times when she's been all alone in the testing room, and has immediately panicked, thinking the baby's dead.

In the meantime, she tries to calm herself in a variety of ways--through yoga classes, meditation, and gardening. She finds it very soothing to be out among her plants. Pam hits the 30th week--the time in her last pregnancy when the baby died--with a lot of worries. Tom isn't worried as much, but he is thinking about Abrianna.

As they pass the 30th week, Pam grows a bit more confident. Pam and Tom start buying more baby things--clothes, a stroller, a car seat. They find very shortly that are ready for this baby. Meanwhile, Pam still has tests every few days, so the weeks go by slowly, but they do go by. As she gets to about 36 weeks, she starts to relax, since she is so close to term, and she realizes she feels very confident about the people she's picked to help her deliver the baby. Zack is hanging low and is remarkably active.

Pam keeps thinking she'll go into labor early, but instead she starts contractions right on time, in the early morning hours of November 12, 1999. Zack is born at the birth center at 11:16 p.m. Healthy and very much alive. Pam and Tom go home with him the following day. Zack transforms their lives. Pam is happier than she's ever been, and Tom, too. But Zack in no way erases their experience, and the transformation they experience is different but no more significant than the one they went through when Abrianna died. With Abrianna, they grew stronger as individuals and as a couple. They became all the more aware of the preciousness of children, so their joy in Zack is increased.

Despite all our scientific and medical advances, babies still die in utero. As long as that remains true, we need to learn how to talk about it, and how to comfort the parents. Tom remembers his coworkers who sometimes said the wrong thing, but at least tried. SHARE's Cathi Lammert suggests listening. Pam Magi, of Good Samaritan Hospital says that parents who've lost a child will always remember that child. And Pam has become the support she needed when she lost Abrianna. When a woman at the Birth Center loses a baby, the staff there now knows to call Pam. She's ready to talk, to comfort, to send flowers on Mother's Day.

If you or someone you know has experienced a pregnancy loss, you are not alone. SHARE Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support offers support groups across the U.S. You can write to SHARE at St. Joseph Health Center 300 First Capitol Drive St. Charles, Missouri 63301-2893, or call 1-(800)-821-6819 or (636) 947-6164. You can reach SHARE on the web at http://www.nationalshareoffice.com.

· Back to the The Infinite Mind Index