What is stillbirth? What causes stillbirth?

Stillbirth is the death of an infant before or during delivery at 20 or more completed gestational weeks (ACOG, 2009).

Nearly two thirds of all stillbirth deaths remain unknown (SCRN, 2011). Some known causes include placental abruption, birth defects, chromosomal abnormalities, diabetes, pre-eclamsia and eclampsia, infection, and umbilical cord accidents (SMFM, 2020).

At what point in pregnancies does stillbirth happen?

The majority of stillbirths (85%) occur before delivery with 15% occurring during labor and delivery (SMFM, 2020).

Almost 50 percent of stillbirths occur at or near full term and often seem to be otherwise healthy babies (SCRN, 2011).

How often does stillbirth occur in the United States and worldwide?

More than 23,000 babies are stillborn in the United States each year – 65 per day.

Worldwide there are over 4 million stillbirths each year. 

(MacDorman and Gregory, 2015)

Tell me more about stillbirth in the United States.

The stillbirth rate in the United States has not changed in the last 50 years (SCRN, 2011).

The United States ranks 48th out of 49 developed nations in the world for annual rate of reduction of stillbirths (Lawn, 2016).

Does stillbirth affect populations differently based on demographics?

The stillbirth rate for African American women is double the stillbirth rate for women of other races (MacDorman and Gregory, 2015).

Stillbirth deaths cut across all socio-economic classes, races, religions and maternal age groups (ACOG, 2009).

Why haven’t I heard this before? What else can you tell me?

There is great taboo surrounding talking about stillbirth driven by misconceptions about the rarity of stillbirth, society’s undervalue of the long-term grief experienced by bereaved families and loved ones, and other reasons (Horton, 2016). These misconceptions lessen the value of medical research to investigate why stillbirth keeps happening and how to prevent it. Medical journal The Lancet recognizes stillbirth as “the most under-studied issue in medicine today” (Lancet, 2011).