Born sleeping
A much needed change
A short post [and Trigger Warning] today. Part of what I will talk about here is what I spoke about in ‘Facing uncertainty’. But, this is on the topic of stillbirths. So, if this is a sensitive topic for you, you may wish to give this post a miss.
I had hardly seen any coverage on something that I thought would be rather important (and I did not even know about this until I saw someone on Twitter talk about the topic), but it appears that not much has been said about it since the news was shared back in April.
Ireland had always been a step behind other areas when it came to stillbirths, something that was never recorded until the ability to do so was introduced in 1995, despite other countries doing this decades before.
Up to July 17th, 2024, there was only one place where stillbirths could be registered and that was called the Register of Stillbirths, a restricted record which only parents of the child could view — looking at the details of a child who was a stillbirth.
Since that date, there has been the introduction of an optional public record, called a Record of Stillbirth, meaning this will behave like a typical birth, marriage or death record you can get from the General Register Office, with no restriction on accessing it.
This is a much-needed change that was well overdue. It is a way of giving some recognition to stillborn children. One such example (which was the impetus behind writing this post) was this tweet. (The picture is included with Maria’s permission.) Seeing this from someone affected by the change and the positive impact that it had made is wonderful.
This is only one component of the Civil Registration (Electronic Registration) Act 2024, a new piece of legislation.
This has brought civil registration into the modern age, allowing the registration of births, marriages, deaths, and stillbirths online. This online facility incrementally allows vital events to be registered. Births can be registered since August, with deaths following later [as of the latest update on the legislation on August 26th 2024 here.]
Great photo.