The Language of Loss When a Baby Dies Prior to Birth: Cocreating Human Experience
Open accessAbstract
When a baby dies prior to birth, a woman and her family begin a life long journey of living and transforming with loss. The language used with families during times of devastating loss is important to reflect upon since, language has the potential to either intensify suffering or enhance the family’s experience of grieving. Words that affirm the meaning the baby holds for the family can provide comfort as families engage with the reality of lost hopes and dreams. Recognizing that healthcare professionals do not intend to harm families whose babies die prior to birth, the current authors offer this column as a vehicle for reflecting on the meanings of words used during this particular time of loss and grief. The authors further explore the role that the arts have to play in expressing loss and in helping others to understand.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Our findings reflect Jonas‐Simpson and McMahon's finding that the language of loss has the ability to 'intensify suffering or enhance the family's experience of grieving'.
“Our findings reflect Jonas‐Simpson and McMahon’s finding that the language of loss has the ability to ‘intensify suffering or enhance the family’s experience of grieving’.7”
From Parents’ experiences of care following the loss of a baby at the margins between miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death: a UK qualitative study (2020) · cites this paper as [7]
Jonas‐Simpson and McMahon identified positive experiences associated with language that acknowledged the loss of a baby and harmful effects of language that aimed to diminish the loss to ease suffering when the meaning of that loss is significant to parents.
“They identified positive experiences associated with language that acknowledged the loss of a baby and harmful effects of language that aimed to diminish the loss to ease suffering when the meaning of that loss is significant to parents.”
From Parents’ experiences of care following the loss of a baby at the margins between miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death: a UK qualitative study (2020) · cites this paper as [7]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 25 · Cited by 33
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Fritsch, 1., & Use S. (1992). The anguish of loss (2nd ed.). Maple Plain, MN: Wintergreen Press.
- Authors
- Jonas-Simpson, C., & McMahon, E.
- Affiliations
- Sunnybrook Health Science Centre (CA)
- Venue
- Nursing Science Quarterly
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2005-04
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 124-130
- ISSN
- 0894-3184 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-7409
- OpenAlex
- W2125867748
- Cited by
- 33
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 1 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 0.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Locations
- Nursing Science Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- YorkSpace (York University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Palliative and Oncologic Care
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning
- Keywords
- stillbirth, perinatal loss, grief, bereavement, family support, healthcare communication, coping with loss
- MeSH terms
- Attitude to Death, Female, Fetal Death, Grief, Humans, Language, Terminology as Topic, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Complications, Maternal-Child Nursing
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
