Ron Reigns:
Welcome and thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption with Kelly Rourke and me, Ron Reigns, where we delve into the issues of adoption from every angle of the adoption triad and offer insight to unplanned pregnancy financial help available.
Speaker 2:
Do what’s best for your kid and for yourself, because if you can’t take care of yourself, you’re definitely not going to be able to take care of that kid, and that’s not fair.
Speaker 3:
And I know that my daughter would be well taken care of with them.
Speaker 4:
Don’t have an abortion. Give this child a chance.
Speaker 5:
All I could think about was needing to save my son.
Kelly Rourke:
My name is Kelly Rourke. I’m the executive director, president, and co-founder of Building Arizona Families adoption agency where we offer unplanned pregnancy financial help, The Donna K. Evans Foundation, and creator of the You Before Me campaign. I have a bachelor’s degree in family studies and human development and a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in school counseling. I was adopted at the age of three days, born to a teen birth mother, raised in a closed adoption, and reunited with my birth mother in 2007. I have worked in the adoption field for over 15 years.
Ron Reigns:
And I’m Ron Reigns. I’ve worked in radio since 1999. I was the co-host of two successful morning shows in Prescott, Arizona. Now, I work for my wife, an adoption attorney, and I can combine these two great passions and share them on this podcast.
Ron Reigns:
Here’s a quote from President Ronald Reagan. “When child loses his parents, they’re called an orphan. When a spouse loses her or his partner, they’re called a widow or widower. When parents lose their child, there is no word to describe them. This month recognizes the loss so many parents experience across the United States and around the world. It’s also meant to inform and provide resources for parents who have lost children due to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, muller pregnancy, still births, birth defects, SIDS and other causes. One in four pregnancies end in loss. If you or someone you care about has lost a child to still birth, miscarriage, SIDS, or any other cause at any point during pregnancy or infancy, please join us in raising Awareness this month because October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.”
Ron Reigns:
In 1988, president Ronald Reagan, proclaimed October as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. Tragically, approximately a million pregnancies yearly in the United States end in early pregnancy loss, stillbirth, or the death of a newborn child. In October, Share Pregnancy & Infant Loss Support will host several events to honor and remember all those sweet babies that have gone far too soon. These events include the Wave of Light Remembrance Service, the annual Share Walk for Remembrance and Hope in St. Louis, Missouri, and several chapter walks across the nation.
Ron Reigns:
The loss of a child stays with parents, friends, and family members forever, but it can be challenging for others to truly understand the emotional and physical impact. Events across the country take place each October and help people to better emphasize and support parents on their journey of hope. Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month enables us to consider how, as individuals and communities, we can meet the needs of bereaved parents and family members and work to prevent causes of these problems.
Ron Reigns:
Early pregnancy loss, stillbirth, infant loss. Sadly, these are deeply painful experiences that many families face daily, but they receive little attention. It may be hard to talk about, but the more open we are, the better we can serve bereaved parents. Early pregnancy loss at the most common type of loss. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, studies reveal that anywhere from 10 to 25% of all clinically recognized pregnancies will end in early pregnancy loss. When fetal death occurs after 20 weeks of pregnancy, it’s called a stillbirth. These tragic deaths occur in one in 160 pregnancies. Millions of mothers and fathers don’t know where to turn for grieving support after losing a child. Bereaved families long for ways to honor their deceased babies, and October is nationally recognized as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.
Kelly Rourke:
October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. As an adoption community, we need to make sure that we are supporting all facets of life. Birth mothers are experiencing pregnancy, and they, too, take part in the national statistics of one in four. One in four babies is lost to miscarriage or stillbirth. By spreading Awareness, we can not only help women that experience this loss, along with their partners, but we can help the adoptive families as well, because in an adoption situation, not only is the birth mother grieving for the loss of her baby, but the adoptive family is grieving for the loss of the baby that they believed was going to be theirs. So you do not just have one or two people grieving for the loss. You have three or four people grieving for the loss of this baby.
Kelly Rourke:
Today in the podcast, we’re going to go over what the Awareness is trying to educate people about, what the goals of the nationally recognized campaign are, and the foundations that support the campaign behind trying to spread the Awareness. And this is an exceedingly tough topic for myself. Ron, I’m not going to speak on your behalf, but this is a tough topic.
Ron Reigns:
Yeah, and it’s very personal to both of us. We’ve both been… Well, again, I shouldn’t speak for you, but we, Lisa and I, have been through this-
Kelly Rourke:
And I have as well.
Ron Reigns:
…and it still hurts to this day.
Kelly Rourke:
It does. It’s a pain that doesn’t ever go away. We can talk about that as we get into this. I hope that our listeners can take away, whether you are a birth mom or an adoptive family, or whether you are just somebody who believes in adoption and is listening to the podcast, that this is a really important subject. In 2020, this is still a topic that is not openly spoken about. I can tell you from my experience, myself included, this is not something that is brought up. It is something that has been under wraps for a long time with many, many people. And that’s why I think former president Ronald Reagan would so amazing when he took the steps to make this an awareness month, this topic, because it’s bringing light to darkness that wasn’t there before.
Kelly Rourke:
When we’re going through this, we’re acknowledging that the loss is on behalf of both the birth parents and the adopted parents. As you stated in the article that you had read, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists revealed that anywhere between 10 to 25% of all clinically recognized pregnancies will end in early pregnancy loss, and that’s clinically recognized, so that’s not even recognizing the pregnancies that existed before you went to the doctor. We have these pregnancy tests that are so accurate that when you’re taking them early on, if your period is a day late, sometimes even before, that a day or two, and you get a positive result and then the pregnancy doesn’t proceed. If we’re recognizing 10 to 25%, there are so many more possibilities that… I read statistics where doctors are speculating, and this is just a speculation, it could be as high as one to two, meaning… I’m sorry, 50% is what they’re saying. And if that’s the case, that’s scary and that’s hard and that’s devastating.
Kelly Rourke:
So the way that miscarriage and stillbirth are defined are, again… There’s a gray area, somewhat. In the United States, a pregnancy loss before 20 weeks of pregnancy is still referred to as a miscarriage. Stillbirth refers to the loss of the baby after 20 weeks. But worldwide, not all doctors agree on these terms. For example, the World Health Organization recommends a stillbirth be defined as a baby born with no signs of life at or after 28 weeks gestation.
Kelly Rourke:
So again, it’s so hard when parameters are not clearly defined. And I would say that, for a lot of women and men, it may be uncomfortable to talk about miscarriages or stillbirths. I know that for me, it was very uncomfortable because I felt… As a mom carrying a baby, the first thing you think of… First thing I thought of was, what did I do wrong? Did I have too much caffeine? Did I not rest enough? Should I not have gone for that long walk? You start second-guessing everything that you’ve done, and then you blame yourself. You go through those stages of grief that we’ve talked about so many times.
Kelly Rourke:
I felt like a failure every time I had a miscarriage, and I have had multiple, so I felt like a failure. And when I would disclose to people that I had had a miscarriage, I did, I felt like I’m walking up to somebody and telling them, “Hey, I just failed, and I lost my baby.” And that was so hard.
Kelly Rourke:
I was always careful. I have four biological children. I never disclosed to more than two or three people that I was pregnant until I was after 13 weeks. And that being said, I still didn’t want to go and tell the people that knew that I was pregnant, that I had lost the baby. Mind you, nobody ever said anything that was judgemental or hurtful. It was just, as a mother, I felt like I had failed my baby, and it was really hard to accept.
Ron Reigns:
I had similar feelings. Obviously, I wasn’t thinking, “Oh, it’s because I did this wrong or did that wrong during the pregnancy.” I got a little deeper into it and wondered if it wasn’t a punishment for past decisions. Speaking specifically about the abortion that I partook in. So I blamed myself in a lot of ways. I thought, “Well, maybe this is God saying, ‘You didn’t want the first one. You don’t get this one.'”
Kelly Rourke:
I totally get where you’re coming from, because I haven’t had an abortion, but I’ve made past decisions that I wish I had done differently. And you do wonder, is this just coming back at me? Is this karma on her worst day?
Kelly Rourke:
Birth mothers will talk to me and tell me, “I lost the baby. Is it because I was going to place the baby for adoption? Was that the wrong choice? Did the baby not feel like I loved the baby enough? Was it because I wasn’t bonded with the baby? What did I do? What was wrong? What was…” And it’s so incredibly hard to not wonder and judge yourself and process it when the studies say that most of the time, almost all of the time, when you have a miscarriage, it’s nothing that you did. It’s not daily life. There was something either genetically or something wrong, and that’s why the baby didn’t make it. And hearing that, as a mom who has had miscarriages, that really doesn’t make you feel any… It didn’t make me feel any better.
Speaker 4:
No, not necessarily make you feel better, but it… Even in reading these statistics now and realizing that a quarter of pregnancies, or maybe more, end in miscarriages or stillbirths, it really shined a light on it for me because I had no idea. I’ve never talked to other people about our miscarriage or anybody else’s. Again, and maybe this October being awareness month for it, it will shine a light on it continually. Year after year, more and more people will understand that it wasn’t something you did it. This is something that does happen, unfortunately, quite often. And maybe that will relieve some of the guilt feelings that people have as far as their decisions, their lifestyles, other things like that, that it probably wasn’t anything you did.
Kelly Rourke:
Right. The other thing that I hope that the awareness campaign accomplishes is, I know when I lost the babies, I felt very alone. It was so hard to look at other pregnant women. It was so hard to hear that somebody else got pregnant. It was so hard to look at a newborn. When you lose the baby, your dreams for that baby die right along with the baby. Your hopes, your plans, the future that you have in your head projected all the way out through college and grandkids and all of that is gone.
Kelly Rourke:
Before people started talking about it and it becoming more… More studies came out and this Awareness is being pushed, I think that the unrecognized pain that moms and dads go through, whether, like I said, they’re in an adoption situation or not, is almost unfathomable.
Kelly Rourke:
I mean, the mental torture that I know I put myself through when I would lose the baby, and then the silence that I would keep myself, because I didn’t go out and talk to people or tell people, I think it was just a way of maybe punishing myself that I didn’t want to, in my opinion, walk out and say, “Yeah, I failed. I did something wrong, I lost the baby.” And that’s really hard. It’s really hard. I was always so worried that I would have a miscarriage. Like I said, even with my first one, I was so worried that I just wouldn’t tell anybody until after 13 weeks. That didn’t make it any better. It didn’t change anything.
Kelly Rourke:
So, in looking at all the research that we’ve done for the podcast, I found so much comfort in knowing that I’m not alone. And if you sit down and you talk with women who’ve had multiple children or one child even, a lot of them have been the one in four.
Kelly Rourke:
I think everybody feels a little bit better when they know they’re not alone.
Ron Reigns:
Absolutely.
Kelly Rourke:
So when we’re silent about perinatal loss, we send the message that there’s no space for mourning, leaving adoptive families and birth families isolated and alone in their grief. And so one of the goals of the Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month is breaking the silence and stigma surrounding pregnancy and infant loss. This month is meant to honor the millions, and I mean millions, of families who have experienced loss through miscarriage, stillbirth, or even infant death. It’s so hard. This is such a hard topic.
Kelly Rourke:
And Ron, because you and I will talk until the end of the day about how we believe in life, and we want to preserve it at all costs. This is something that we can’t fix. And even though we can’t fix it, I think we still have the opportunity to help people through a process that is of no choice of their own.
Ron Reigns:
Right. And through no fault of their own, especially.
Kelly Rourke:
Agreed.
Kelly Rourke:
So they’re saying that one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage, and approximately 1% of pregnancies end in stillbirth. That’s a high enough number that… 1%, people say, “Oh, that’s not a big number. That’s not…” It’s one out of every hundred. That’s a lot of babies.
Kelly Rourke:
There are no right words to say to an adoptive family or a birth mother when they lose the baby, but there are wrong words, and we’re going to talk about that in the next podcast. But there are so many amazing ways to honor the loss of your baby, a family member’s baby, the baby you planned on adopting, a friend’s baby, or maybe even the loss of a baby who may have grown up to be the next president of the United States or the next doctor that cures cancer. So, some of the ways that you can participate in helping spread Awareness so that moms and dads out there who’ve lost a baby know that they’re not alone.
Kelly Rourke:
You can go to counseling if you’re somebody who’s lost a baby, or you can join a support group. And there is an amazing website and services you can access that we will talk about in the next podcast. But for all you moms and dads out there who have lost a baby to stillbirth, or infant death, or miscarriage, know that you’re not alone. And whether you were in an adoption situation or not, we’re grieving with you, and we’re going to help support the Awareness.
Ron Reigns:
Both Kelly and I will be participating in the International Wave of Light campaign. We’ll put those pictures on our Facebook page, our website, and various other sources. But also, we’ll be releasing our next episode of Birth Mother Matters In Adoption in remembrance and solidarity of those who’ve gone through this kind of tragedy.
Ron Reigns:
Thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters In Adoption. If you’re listening and searching for unplanned pregnancy financial help and want more information about adoption, Building Arizona Families is a local Arizona adoption agency and is available 24/7 by phone or text at (623) 695-4112. That’s (623) 695-4112. We can make an immediate appointment with you to get started on creating an Arizona adoption plan or just get you more information. You can also find more information about Building Arizona Families on their website at azpregnancyhelp.com.
Ron Reigns:
Thanks also go out to Grapes for allowing us to use their song I Dunno as our theme song.
Ron Reigns:
Birth Mother Matters In Adoption was written and produced by Kelly Rourke and edited by me. Please rate and review this podcast wherever you’re listening to us. We’d really appreciate it. We also now have a website at birthmothermatterspodcast.com.
Ron Reigns:
Tune in next time on Birth Mother Matters In Adoption. For Kelly Rourke, I’m Ron Reigns.