New blog

[{"type":"paragraph","children":[{"text":"This month, I am recognizing the 20th birthday of my son Garrett, who was stillborn. As his birthday approaches, I’ve been looking back over the last 20 years. There have been some dark and challenging days, but there have also been many more bright spots than I could have imagined when we first started our grief journey. One of those bright spots has been getting to know Marti Perhach, Dr. James McGregor, and Group B Strep International. I’m honored they are allowing me a few words in this network to recognize this anniversary because they have significantly influenced my path.\n\nWhen I first tried to comprehend what had happened to us, I leaned on my background in healthcare. I was embarrassed that I must be the only health professional in the world who didn’t realize how many babies are stillborn every year. As a pediatric nurse practitioner, I was acutely aware of the neonatal death rate and challenges. Still, I didn’t truly understand the impact or recognize how much overlap there is with fetal death. I felt slightly less incompetent when I realized that my old textbooks didn’t hardly mention stillbirth – let alone offer any details about causes or prevention strategies.\n\nGroup B Strep as a cause of stillbirth stood out to me because that was one issue I was very familiar with in my practice. Unfortunately, I had seen too many babies impacted by this infection. However, I had very little understanding of how devastating GBS could be during pregnancy. It sounds obvious now, but it wasn’t something I was taught, and I hadn’t forced my brain to think beyond my training. GBS holds a special place in my grief journey because it demonstrated to me the need to think outside of the box.\n\nThat has become my main message to health professionals. We need to continue learning more and doing the research. We also need providers willing to expand what they know beyond training. Learning can occur through experience, conversations with families, and being curious. There has been tremendous progress with GBS, and it started because a few people were willing to ask those challenging questions and look for new answers.\n\nI am now passionate about many more issues within perinatal death than I was in the early days of my grief. This is partly because organizations like Group B Strep International have welcomed my perspective and questions. The new developments in GBS prevention inspire me. They give me hope that this can be a model for addressing other causes of poor pregnancy outcomes, and they will be important elements in future approaches to pregnancy health.\n\nIt isn’t just families devastated by GBS who value the work and progress of this network and many of you as individuals. So thank you for asking the challenging questions, thinking outside the box, and partnering with health professionals like me who didn’t always see the whole picture."}]}]