This blog post was written by Shaiyan Sanchez, a Summer 2026 Aaliyah in Action Emerging Leader

Midwives are known to be an important and detrimental speciality for the field of women’s health. These practitioners are meant to help women and family in the reproductive spaces conceive and carry safely, while also being supportive to the woman making their own decisions and helping advance healthy pregnancies.

But what happens when the institutions giving them this knowledge fully doesn’t understand the depths of the work midwives provide? Especially in times of stillbirths?

In this piece I will be talking about how Jill, a midwife for over 20+ years, has felt about the experiences she witnessed and helped patients go through. My goal in highlighting her story is to give more people, women and families insight on the care and love midwives hold for others but also the double edged sword they carry themselves.

Bereavement care comes in so many different forms – everyone has a role and space in it. It’s just figuring out what that may look like for you.

As we spoke we talked about a range of topics starting from grad school, becoming who you want to be as you navigate courses, figuring out what you may want to do in the field of women’s health and of course personal stories of why we do the work we do!

As a midwife and professor Jill has a nuanced perspective of not only the clinical but the research that connects statistics and people’s actual experiences. So, she is able to piece all these ideas, realities, and ideologies together to enhance the field of women’s health and educate herself and others – such as myself.

Throughout her lifetime of being a midwife she pointed out how there were sooo many cases of stillbirths and difficult pregnancies. I could see in her face, the way she paused, the way her eyes lowered a gaze to the ground and her lips tightened. It touched her heart and she felt it, and potentially had a flashback of all the days she witnessed something gone wrong. When I asked “do you feel like you were prepared in moments like that?” Before even finishing she immediately said “NOOO NOOOO – They never prepared us on how to care for our patients when they lose a child nor how to care for ourselves”.

She shared three short but heavy stories of experiences with patients who navigated a stillbirth. These stories hold so much weight – of course trauma but love for the people who she interacts with. Whether that’s for a second, an hour, a full term, years or more.

One story was about a woman who was considered high risk and decided to carry her baby full term knowing that the baby will not survive. Jill talked about how she did not understand the decision her patient was making but supported her no matter what! That is the purpose of “your choice” – not every choice can or will be a “right one”. She hated the fact that people from the outside will say to people making complex reproductive decisions that someone “didn’t think about it” when she first hand watched women and families make the hardest decisions of their life.

As a society we need to understand that there is no such thing as a good decision. Each decision holds some pro’s and con’s and it’s up to that person to decide not us – not the people on the sidelines that have no actual connection to a fetus or the issue present. At the end the woman delivered her baby and Jill was there to support her and the baby – the baby passed an hour later. She supported her throughout the pregnancy because she knew that this pregnancy was the only relationship that the mother could formulate a bond with the baby through. Nobody thinks about how deep and hard a decision like that can become the strongest bond for someone else just through the movement of a baby in utero. The little kicks, burps, hiccups, stretching – all the little things formulate an unspoken bond between a woman and her baby.

Two other women she helped support had early labors at 19 weeks. One woman was a breech baby and she talked to her patient for 2 hours while she held the body of her patient baby who’s head was wrapped up and couldn’t fully be delivered. The other woman delivered her baby and felt that it would be better for her and her family to not see or hold the baby because of the grief and emotion she had and would have by seeing them. So for her mentally it was hard to make that decision but felt right for her and the circumstances she was in.

Jill held that baby for an hour until it passed in her arms. She highlighted how nobody realizes the trauma bond that is formulated between midwives and infant loss. You can never fully mentally grasp that type of loss. And many cultures and people think this form of loss is better to not be spoken about.

One of her coworkers she described as “tough as nails”. Who always had a poker face and never really showed much emotion. In one case the coworker had a patient who went through a stillbirth – after witnessing it she walked out of the room and immediately slid down the wall and cried. This is real. These are real people. These are real stories. This is real pain. This is real care and work that goes in. And everyone is absolutely moved by it and do not take it lightly.

As a midwife systemically there is no bereavement care, no course taught on how to work in these cases of pregnancy lost but being in this space and providing support in people’s darkest time is how she contributes to this. Being there to support their decisions. Being the woman who holds the babies. Being the one that holds these patients and talks to them.

It is extremely difficult when you have one room that just lost a baby and you go to the next room and a woman is having the most healthy wonderful birth ever and then the next room something horrible is also happening. All while having to keep your composure in each room you enter – which is not easy.

As a midwife her contribution to bereavement care is actively at the time of loss being there with the family and mothers who are navigating this. Being the support for them to talk about decisions to make.

She included how baby hats and outfits are created and made to dress the baby up for burials and how the footprints and handprints are also important aspects to help mothers grieve.

Through Jill’s openness her perspective gives insight on how it truly takes a village to figure out what bereavement care really is. Everyone’s role is different. And it cannot be tackled by one person. It cannot fall on one person. Of course their still is work to be done such as incorporating courses of pregnancy and infant loss in the curriculum of nursing, medicine, etc. But, we can’t just put the weight on providers. They carry so much that we do not see behind closed doors.

One thing she also noted was how devastating this process is for women who have navigated infertility for the longest. Seeing them lose a child is not easy. But, I think this is also important for us to understand that people’s decisions and free will is that person and that person’s choice only. They are navigating a life outside of our understanding. We must hold space for everyone to feel.

Written in Remembrance & Reflection

This blog post was written by Shaiyan Sanchez, a Summer 2026 Aaliyah in Action Emerging Leader