Making Plans for Your Baby’s Remains
There are several options for handling your baby’s remains, each involving varying degrees of parental involvement. You may choose to manage your child’s remains at home, or let the hospital make arrangements for your family. There is no right answer. Here is some information to help you make the best decision for your family.
The process for handling your baby’s remains depends in part on how far along you were in your pregnancy. Healthcare providers typically have policies for handling remains after a pregnancy loss, and those policies must comply with state laws. Generally speaking, this means that starting in the 20th week of pregnancy, hospitals must treat a pregnancy loss as they would any other death. They will, for example, help the parents manage the remains, find resources for planning a burial or cremation, and connect them with organizations that can help fund burial arrangements, if necessary. Check with your hospital for the regulations and policies that apply in your case.
Some couples let the hospital handle a stillborn baby’s remains; many medical centers even offer funeral ceremonies by in-house chaplains. Although this is a free or low-cost option, you might not be allowed to choose between burial or cremation, and whether the experience will be individual or shared with other babies. Talk to your hospital for more information about the options they provide.
If you don’t want the hospital to handle your baby’s remains, you can also plan a stillborn baby’s funeral yourself. Details of the funeral will be your decision. You may feel more comfortable honoring your child in an intimate ceremony, or with a larger group of family and friends. As with any other death, the funeral director will help you through the planning and organizing process, including deciding on burial or cremation. In this case, the baby will likely be kept in the funeral home or in the hospital before the service.
If you had a miscarriage (pregnancy loss prior to the 20th week), you can decide to plan a burial or cremation yourself, or you can bring the remains with you to the hospital if you would rather have the staff assist you. Generally, if you lose your baby in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, the birth and death of your baby cannot be formally registered. This means that you will not receive a birth or a death certificate. Some state governments offer optional certificates recognizing early pregnancy loss to support parents grieving a miscarriage. If this interests you, please contact the Births, Deaths and Marriage Registry in your state or territory to find out if such certificates are available.
Some hospitals offer additional services for miscarriage such as:
saving the pregnancy tissue from a D&C, where possible
arranging to have pregnancy tissue cremated at your request
giving you the pregnancy tissue for your own private burial or cremation
If your family would like to save the pregnancy tissue from a D&C, it is important to make these requests before the procedure occurs. If you do not make any specific requests, the pregnancy tissue is commonly examined in a laboratory and then cremated according to the hospital protocol.
There are some important questions to ask yourself when deciding how to manage your child’s remains. If you bury your baby, are you likely to move away from the area? How would it make you feel to not have easy or frequent access to the burial site? Do you want the infant to wear a special outfit for burial, or be wrapped in a special blanket? If you choose cremation, what would you do with the ashes?
Regardless of the stage of pregnancy during which your loss occurred, you are still a parent and the life you nurtured was real. Take as much time as you need to heal physically and emotionally after a pregnancy loss. Give yourself time to cope, grieve and accept your devastating loss. Counseling is available. Pregnancy loss support groups may also be a good resource for both parents. BenefitBump’s Care Navigators can help direct you to helpful resources for you and your family.
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