Grieving Mother Shares the Part of Childbirth No One Wants to Talk About

Dr. Eleni Michailidis knew something was wrong when she stopped feeling her unborn baby move 38 weeks into her pregnancy. At first, she thought he was maybe running out of room in her womb, but she decided to head to the doctor’s office to be safe, she told The New York Times.

An ultrasound revealed that her son’s heart had stopped beating. Michaildis isn’t alone. About 24,000 babies are stillborn in the U.S. each year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. She delivered her son, Alexander, and got to spend four hours with him.

In the powerful video above, she shared what is was like to deliver a stillborn baby on a hospital floor filled with celebration and how experiences like her own aren’t as rare as one may assume.

“I consider myself a mom. I had a son. He was stillborn. People don’t talk about it because it’s too disturbing, or it’s just silenced because nobody wants to hear these things,” she told The New York Times. “But it happens, and it happens enough.”

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