Advice on holding stillborns 'misleading'

Official advice encouraging grieving mothers to hold their stillborn babies may prolong their grief and exacerbate their trauma.

Guidelines for maternity units say bereaved parents should be encouraged to see and hold their dead infants to help them with the loss. But a study published in The Lancet today suggests physical contact could increase rates of depression in mothers.

Dr Patricia Hughes, a psychiatrist from St George's Hospital Medical School, in south London, said: "Our findings ... suggest that mothers who elected not to see and hold their stillborn infant had a better outcome than those who did."

Psychiatrists studied 65 women who had experienced a stillbirth, through the later stages of a second pregnancy and for one year after delivery.

Thirty nine per cent of women who saw and held their stillborn infant became depressed, compared with 21 per cent of women who saw their infant but had no contact and 6 per cent of those who neither saw nor held their dead baby.

Women who had seen their stillborn infants were also more likely to show symptoms of anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, and their next children were five times more likely to show signs of detachment from their mothers.

In the past, dead infants were removed before the parents had seen them. But in 1985, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said that after a stillbirth "staff should create an atmosphere which encourages parents to see and hold their baby".

The Royal College welcomed the new study as "important evidence" in a difficult area. But a spokeman said: "It is important that those that do wish to hold their baby are given every opportunity to take leave of their baby in the way that they wish."