When she was 25 weeks pregnant, Annika Paquette noticed that she hadn’t felt any baby kicks in about a day. After going into the hospital to get an ultrasound, she learned that her baby had died. She remained in the hospital to deliver the baby, and while she was in labor, she learned that her baby would not be able to receive a Catholic funeral Mass since the baby was not baptized.
“It is not great news in the moment when you are already going through something kind of impossible, and when the first thing you need is for people to understand the gravity of what is going on,” Paquette recalled in an interview with FemCatholic. While she understood the logic behind the decision, she remembers feeling like the lack of a funeral would mean “people are going to think this wasn't a real baby and my loss isn't a real loss.”
Also while in labor, the hospital presented Paquette with two options for what would happen to the remains of the baby after delivery: to have the body cremated, or to take the body home with them.
“I remember being so overwhelmed by those options,” she recalled. “Those sounded like two terrible options.”
Thankfully, Paquette’s husband knew someone who had also experienced a loss, and that friend helped connect them with a lay-led ministry called A Mom’s Peace.
A volunteer from this Northern Virginia non-profit was able to retrieve the baby’s body from the hospital and place it in a small casket. The baby was laid to rest with a crocheted blanket, and the family received small crocheted hearts made out of the same yarn. Two days after their baby was born, the Paquettes were able to have a memorial Mass and a burial for their baby at a Benedictine Monastery in Bristow, Virginia.
“When I think about that time, I can’t imagine what it would have looked like if that ministry didn’t exist,” said Paquette.
One in four
Paquette says the biggest piece of advice she gives to other families experiencing a loss is to have a plan for what will happen before the baby is delivered.
“I knew even before I gave birth what was going to happen afterward. I knew there was going to be a Mass and a place to bury them,” she said. “That made it feel just a little more survivable in the moment.”
The Paquettes were able to put this plan in place so quickly because of their personal connections. In addition to the friend who connected them to A Mom’s Peace, a priest friend had visited them in the hospital and, after explaining they couldn’t have a full funeral Mass, offered to celebrate a memorial Mass instead. If the Paquettes had not reached out to these friends, there would have been no system in place to explain that they had another option for the baby's remains, or to walk them through what type of memorial service they could have in the Church.
Perinatal loss – the death of an unborn baby or young infant – is extremely common. Miscarriage (loss between conception and 20 weeks) occurs in one out of every four pregnancies, stillbirth (loss between 20 weeks and birth) occurs in one out of every 100 pregnancies, and infant loss occurs in five of every thousand. But many feel the theology surrounding these losses can seem contradictory to the Church’s belief that life begins at conception, and the complex logistics necessary to seek sacramental or pastoral care from the Church places a heavy burden on families experiencing a loss.
This is a gap that Abby Jorgensen is dedicated to addressing through her work as a Catholic bereavement doula, her research as an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at St. Louis University, and her new book, “A Catholic Guide to Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss”, which will be published through Ave Maria Press on April 19.
“I talk a lot about being grief-informed, meaning approaching every situation with an understanding that someone may have experienced a loss,” said Jorgensen. “That sounds very dramatic, but statistically that is very much the norm. It's the norm that people have had a loss or know or love someone who has experienced a perinatal loss.”
Jorgensen became a grief worker accidentally after accompanying a friend through a loss. Her friend wanted to know the answer to the question, “Where does the soul of my unborn baby go after they die?”, so Jorgensen e-mailed a priest to find out.
“The response I got back was really clinical, was really academic, ‘This is why we tell parents they need to baptize their kids as fast as possible’ kind of thing,” recalled Jorgensen in an interview with FemCatholic. “That was not the type of compassionate voice that I really was hoping for for my friend, so I was glad that I could be that intermediary to rephrase that for her to highlight the comfort and mercy [of God].”
Theological confusion
At least once a year, Jorgensen works with a woman who has been told to go to confession because of perinatal loss. Once, she had a client who was told by a priest to go to confession because she had refused to have sex with her husband while recovering from a miscarriage.
“Experiencing a miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss is no more a sin to confess than experiencing the loss of a parent to cancer or of a spouse to a traffic accident,” Jorgensen writes in her book.
Sarah Ott, who experienced two losses – one at 11 weeks and another at 20 weeks – recalled doing extensive research when trying to decide which method to use when delivering her second baby, who they learned had died through a routine ultrasound. She was given the option of either inducing labor or receiving a dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure. She wanted to know if there were any sort of ethical considerations that she needed to take into account before choosing a D&E, since the doctor who does that procedure is the same doctor who performs elective abortions.
“There weren’t a whole lot of resources out there for a guide for ‘Are both of these options morally okay?’”, Ott recalled in an interview with FemCatholic. Ott wished for even a small piece of guidance from the Church–or an acknowledgment that both her choices were morally valid. Especially since many decisions around perinatal loss have to be made within hours or days. “You are kind of just flying blind,” Ott said.
Jorgensen found herself wishing that there were better resources out there for Catholic families navigating these sorts of questions during loss, so one of her friends told her, “You should just write it yourself.” She initially decided not to because she had a lot going on: she was writing a dissertation, was on the job market, had a new baby, and was newly disabled. But then Ave Maria Press reached out, inviting her to write a book.
The book’s main audience is Catholic families who have experienced the loss of a child, but each chapter includes a section with suggestions for how family, friends, clergy, or other pastoral care providers can best accompany those families. She begins by outlining the different types of perinatal loss and what happens during each, as well as some basic terms about the female body, birth, and bereavement. Then she digs into some of the difficult questions she has heard families ask through her work as a doula, including, “Is perinatal loss a sin?”, “Where do unbaptized babies go after death?” and “Why did God let my baby die?” Finally, she outlines Church teaching on what to do with the baby’s remains and the sacraments available to families who have lost a child – all of which can be tricky for families to navigate on their own.
Sacramental pain points
When Rebekah Vick was preparing to give birth to a baby who they did not expect to live for long, she called the pastor of her parish to ask if they could arrange for the baby to be baptized in the hospital. He readily agreed, and also reminded them that if they needed to, they could baptize their own baby (since in certain situations, anyone can perform baptism). The Vicks’ son, Jude, was born in a more stable condition than they expected. After hearing about Jude’s birth, the priest reached back out to the Vicks and he came to the hospital to baptize their son.
“I wanted it to feel like we are having the full ceremony,” Vick said. “I don't know if I'll ever be able to take him into a church, but I want him to have the same level of pomp and circumstance.”
After three weeks in the NICU, Jude was able to go home with his family with the help of perinatal hospice. Vick said she wishes people knew more about this support system, since the prospect of taking a dying baby home is overwhelming. The family had seven more happy weeks with Jude before he died at home, in his father’s arms, at 10 weeks.
Four years later, after giving birth to another child who is now five years old, Vick became pregnant a third time. She lost that baby at 13 weeks. Vick recalls that it was difficult not to be able to baptize her child since the Catholic Church does not baptize babies in utero, or after they have died. But she still found the other rituals that the Church does offer to be consoling.
“Knowing there are specific liturgical rites for miscarriages and stillbirths helped, when to the medical field it was such a nothing occasion— no certificate, not checked into [labor & delivery], remains from the D&C [dilation & curettage] discarded with medical waste instead of being buried as I would have done if I miscarried naturally,” Vick wrote in an email to FemCatholic, recalling how the OB who performed her surgery asked her why she was crying over a routine procedure. But Vick’s spiritual director, a Jesuit priest, offered a memorial Mass for the baby in his community.
“I felt that my religion acknowledged my loss when the rest of the world didn’t,” she wrote.
To Vick’s doctor, the procedure was routine. But, since Catholic theology teaches that life begins at conception, the Church understood Vick’s miscarriage was the loss of a child’s life. “The gifts we've been given as Catholics in terms of theology about compassion, about prenatal life, about humanness – all of these things could lend us to way better grief-informed care than I think they currently do,” Jorgensen said.
Jorgensen writes about how many families experiencing perinatal loss find it to be contradictory that the Church believes life begins at conception but refuses to baptize babies in utero – and that the mixed messages about whether or not their babies could be baptized is one of her clients’ most commonly cited reasons for leaving the Church.
Whether or not families are able to have a full funeral Mass or burial for their unbaptized babies is a decision that is made on a diocesan level. The burden of discovering the diocese’s stance on those services is often up to the families themselves to figure out on their own.
Jorgensen has seen through her bereavement work that the information about what happens in any given diocese is often difficult to find. She has tried to obtain that information for families she was working with. But she has often struggled to find it. Although she often begins her search on a diocesan website, she hasn’t found a single diocese that lists its infant funeral policy online.
“If you are in the midst of experiencing a miscarriage, stillbirth or infant loss, calling to get the information you need is a huge administrative hurdle,” Jorgensen said. “That is a big burden to ask of someone to reach out,” she added.
These logistical barriers from the Church come at a time when many families experiencing the loss of a child are feeling hurt and anger toward God.
“I remember being shocked that I didn’t question God’s existence,” Vick said. “I questioned if He was good.”
This administrative hurdle led to Jorgensen’s current research project, which she is undertaking with the help of three others: Faizan Raja, an undergraduate student at Saint Louis University; Anne Brown, a graduate student at Saint Louis University; and Gwendolyn Loop, a law student at the University of Notre Dame. Their goal is to create a national database with all of the information that loss families would need. Families will be able to enter their address and find resources and contact information in their diocese for funerals, caskets or other rituals. The team also plans to analyze the data to find out why some dioceses provide more resources than others. Once the project is finished – which Jorgensen says will likely be by the end of this year – it will be available on a website for anyone to use.
“Families should be able to get that information without having to call and listen to someone reject their request to have their baby buried in a Catholic cemetery,” Jorgensen said. A goal of the project, she added, is “to make it easier for the Church to provide more.”
Pastoral support
After Jude’s death, Vick’s pastor continued to follow up with the family. When he learned that the baby was coming home but expected to die, he put in motion a whole support network for them. He gave their address to a few people in the parish who offered to drop off dinner and also provide more support if the family desired that. Ultimately, Vick got connected to a rosary group of moms who became “a lifeline.”
“We didn’t cook food for two months. They brought us everything – diapers, used strollers, I went to their rosary group every week,” recalled Vick. “...I sobbed to them, I had religious conversations with them, I had, ‘How do you have sex postpartum?’ conversations with them.”
When Jude died, the Church was full for his funeral – largely with people Vick hadn’t known just three months earlier. They also hosted the post-funeral reception for them. One woman even went over and scrubbed Vick’s toilet for her.
Often mothers are offered support–spiritual or physical–after perinatal loss. But the father’s grief is often overlooked. Vick recalled that after Jude died, people would always ask her husband, “How is your wife?”
Vick is bothered that miscarriage and stillbirth are seen as events that happened to and affect women only.
“If we are going to take a pro-life approach to this, this isn't a fertility event, this was the death of a loved one that affected the family unit,” Vick said. “I know dads who have been devastated by a miscarriage and no one has thought to ask, ‘How are you doing?’”
Laura Kelly Fanucci had a similar experience, which led to her and her husband writing a book specifically aimed toward couples, titled “Grieving Together: A Couple’s Journey Through Miscarriage.” Many of the couples whose stories contributed to the Fanuccis’ book felt frustration and anger when they felt the Church ignored their grief, Fanucci wrote in an email to FemCatholic. Examples shared were being denied a funeral for their baby, having a pastor dismiss their grief about their miscarriage, and never hearing petitions about parents who have lost children.
The Fanuccis had a positive experience with their own parish after they experienced the loss of two twin girls. Their daughters were included in the Prayers of the Faithful, parishioners helped prepare a funeral liturgy, and the community helped launch an annual “Mass for God’s Children” for families who had experienced miscarriage, stillbirth, or the death of an infant or child.
“Older parishioners still come up to me and tell me that was the first time they got to pray for their baby by name at church—30, 40, 50, even 60 years after their death,” Fanucci wrote in an email to FemCatholic. “My hope and prayer is that more parishes will see how much pastoral care is needed in our communities to honor the lives of these beloved children and help their parents on the long road of healing.”
Jorgensen noted two examples of compassionate care that already exist. First, the Diocese of St. Louis created a Naming and Commendation Rite for families who are unable to have a funeral. This rite is available for anyone to use online. Second, the Diocese of Fort Wayne–South Bend created a ministry called Ava’s Grace, which offers spiritual, emotional and practical support to families who suffer miscarriage, stillbirth or infant loss.
Things like this can communicate to families, “The Church has thought of you, you are not ignored in this,” Jorgensen said.
Jorgensen’s new book will be the latest resource available to families who have experienced loss. She also runs a virtual grief parents community group.
“I want people to know that there is a place for you and a place for your child and you are loved and cared for, and there are so many people who are going to step up to the plate, you just have to find them,” Jorgensen said. “And I am sorry that you have to find them.”
