104: Breaking: What one of the biggest studies on stillbirth just revealed

Welcome to Two Truths, a bestselling newsletter exploring the many truths of motherhood from journalists & maternal health advocates Cassie Shortsleeve & Kelsey Haywood Lucas of Motherspeak. Two Truths is rooted in the healing & affirming principle that two (or more) things can be true. It’s a “best parenting Substack” per Motherly and The Skimm says you should subscribe; also seen on Vox, TODAY.com, HuffPo & more.

What I know from interviewing women who have lost babies is that the experience can bring you to your knees. It can isolate you, take your words, make you feel scared, and rob you of hope. Many mothers have told me that what they felt most after loss was alone.

And yet, one of the most meaningful ways to support someone through loss is to talk about it. I’ll never forget the mother who told me that after losing her son in infancy, people didn’t say his name; it was all she wanted to hear.

It was who said, this week, “If there’s one lesson I keep coming back to in this life, it’s nothing gets easier alone, but everything does when it’s shared.” «Be sure you’re subscribed to Two Truths so that you don’t miss our upcoming Q&A with Baer.»

Too many aspects of maternal health are like this: unspoken, stigmatized, and therefore…understudied.

Which is why today’s breaking news matters: Published in the leading medical journal JAMA, researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Mass General Brigham just released one of the largest studies of stillbirth to date (looking at about 2.8 million births). The study comes out during a moment when women’s health research is under siege in this country.

Stillbirth is considered the death of a fetus after 20 weeks of gestation; stillbirth impacts some 21,000 families each year in this country, and nearly half of those that happen after 37 weeks are thought to be preventable.

“There is very little research on the stillbirth burden and risk factors in the U.S.—shockingly little, relative to how tragic the outcome is,” Haley K. Sullivan, B.S., one of the study’s co-authors, told Two Truths.

Recently, we spoke with Sullivan and her study co-author, Mark Clapp, M.D., M.P.H., a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Mass General Brigham, about:

• What you need to know about stillbirth

• What this research means for women’s health