Huntington Hospital hosts event for mothers who lost babies in pregnancy

When Margot Dahlberg got to Huntington Hospital on a Thursday in April six years ago, she couldn’t wait to bring home her newborn daughter, Olivia.

"I was 35 weeks pregnant," Dahlberg said Sunday. "I thought I was having contractions. Everything was fine with the doctor the day before."

Instead, after a placental abruption — the placenta separating from the uterine wall — and an emergency C-section, Olivia had died. Dahlberg left with an empty car seat and what grew to be a lifelong commitment to supporting other women through perinatal loss.

"It’s a club you never really want to be a part of," she said. "But someone’s story is another person’s survival guide."

A day of remembrance

Dahlberg was one of many women who gathered outside Huntington Hospital on Sunday morning for its eighth annual perinatal bereavement event, which took place ahead of the National Day of Remembrance for Pregnancy and Infant Loss on Oct. 15.

Each year, about 1 million pregnancies in the United States end in miscarriage, and about 21,000 babies are stillborn, according to Yale University School of Medicine and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Up to half of the women who suffer these losses never get a clear answer about what went wrong on the day that changed their lives.

In a small garden outside the hospital on Sunday, rows of memorial stones featured the names of lost babies with loving messages like, "A moment in our arms, a lifetime in our hearts." Doctors read from a list of names, handing out flowers to grieving women and their families.

Since 2019, Huntington Hospital has seen about 74 losses in its Center for Mothers & Babies, according to Jennifer Baierlein, director of Patient Care Services for Women & Children's Health. But that number is likely higher, including the patients who come through the emergency room and other departments. 

Baierlein and her staff provide support kits to grieving mothers like Dahlberg, which include a lock of the baby's hair, a memory paper with the baby's footprints and a printed picture.

Finding support

Huntington Hospital supports patients in part through the Star Legacy Foundation, a national organization focused on raising awareness and helping people through pregnancy loss and neonatal death.

Jeanine Sabatino, 43, learned about the foundation when she lost her daughter, Diana, eight years ago in a stillbirth.

"I woke up one morning and I didn’t feel the baby move," she said. "I went to my [obstetrician’s] office. I didn’t even tell my husband, honestly ... And they were like, ‘Sorry, there’s no heartbeat.’"

"I’m like, ‘How could this be? I’m 36 weeks, and I had a perfect pregnancy."

Sabatino spent hours researching the cause of her stillbirth, poring over other women’s stories in Facebook groups, when she came across the Star Legacy Foundation.

She hosted a fundraiser walk several months later, raising more than $25,000 for the foundation. The group uses funds to host virtual and in-person support groups for grieving parents, navigating the next pregnancy after losing a child and parenting after loss. The group also hosts grief discussion groups for fathers and grandparents, and connects grieving mothers with "peer companions."

Talking is important

Now, Sabatino is the president of the foundation’s New York Metro chapter. She has had two daughters since losing Diana.

"The most important thing is for people not to be afraid to discuss it," said Kacey Farber, a social worker at Huntington Hospital and the program manager for the Reichert Family Caregiver Center and the hospital’s perinatal loss program.

"People shy away when someone loses a baby ... Send a meal, offer to take them for a walk. Don’t be afraid to mention their loss, because they are always thinking about it."

The support groups at Huntington Hospital are available even to those who are not patients, Farber said.

"Even after a loss, you still experience those hormones," she said. "Your body thinks you delivered, so a woman may still go through postpartum. Her body may create milk ... Your body doesn’t know the difference, and that complicates the grief even more."

Christine Gallo of Rocky Point said losing her daughter in 2008 has guided how she parents the two children she has had since, writing a book about the experience called "The Littlest Guru."

"We go to the cemetery on her birthday every year," she said Sunday at the hospital event. "We have a cupcake, sing happy birthday, and we bring cupcakes to the other babies who are near her in the cemetery. ... We call it angel day."