Currently, although it still continues to be a taboo that must be overcome, perinatal grief, which refers to the loss of babies during pregnancy, childbirth or a few days after birth (regardless of the days of life or the weeks of gestation). ), work is increasingly done with more care. Companies like Áltima Serveis Funeraris, a sector leader in Catalonia, each year look for ways to offer the warmth and hospitality spaces that families who have suffered this situation need.
For years it has been socially accepted to minimize these losses, but the truth is that what the loss of a son or daughter, a future, plans, a life project and expectations that are shattered means for families, is something that needs to be able to process no minor grief in an appropriate way.
No parent is prepared to have to say goodbye and bury a child, and for too long this perinatal grief has been something experienced only in the intimacy of the family. For some time now, society has begun to shamelessly name and say the names of the babies that have been left behind, and each time it is treated more naturally with a grief that, like everyone else, one must know how to process, and each person does so in their own way. the best way you can.
One way to process the loss and experience grief is to be able to make an appropriate farewell, to be able to pay the tribute that families want to offer their babies, and for all this, the Catalan company Áltima already has 11 perinatal spaces, four of them prepared during 2023, in the 35 cemeteries it manages throughout Catalonia.
The objective of these spaces is to respond to the emotional needs of people who suffer this type of grief through a physical point of reference where they can honor and remember the lost creature.
They are necessary, intimate, quiet and welcoming spaces dedicated to babies and their families, spaces of remembrance where families are invited to go whenever they need to and where they can remember their sons and daughters who have left early.
As stated by the CEO of Áltima, Joan Ventura, these spaces are a sign that the company continues to move forward to make known a mourning that has been silenced for too long: “cemeteries must evolve as society advances and respond, thus, to the demands of the citizens. The perinatal spaces are an example that at Áltima we are sensitive to losses that, for too many years, have been experienced in silence.”
To help navigate this particular grief, Áltima also collaborates with associations such as Umamanita, a project that seeks to accompany families grieving the premature death of a son or daughter. The objective is to help women from hospitals who have lost a baby during pregnancy, childbirth or a few days after birth. This project seeks to enable families to have a special memory of their son or daughter and to comfort them in the grieving process through a box of memories. The boxes, which are given to families by a health professional moments before receiving their son or daughter, whenever possible, contain a handmade swaddle to wrap the child, clay to remember the footprint of their feet. and hands and other elements such as stuffed animals, a candle, some glass jars, a diaper and a necklace.
The Catalan company has also collaborated in actions to support different projects and entities dedicated to gestational, perinatal and neonatal grief, such as Pequenos con luz, A Contracorriente, Anhelo Vallès or Umamanita. In the same corporate line of doing everything possible to naturalize a grief that has been silenced for so many years, Áltima has also collaborated in the publication of the first guide aimed at professionals on gestational, perinatal and neonatal death, prepared by various public health centers in Catalonia.
Under the title of ‘Perinatal Grief Accompaniment Manual’, the document aims to be a help tool for health professionals who must face a situation of gestational, perinatal or neonatal death. This is the first document aimed specifically at people working in fields such as midwifery, nursing or social work, as well as midwives and other healthcare personnel.
The guide includes how to deal with the communication of the death of a son or daughter during pregnancy, childbirth or shortly after birth, as well as the diagnosis of an illness that may limit life in these stages. The manual in which Áltima has collaborated closely also includes indications for the emotional support of the pregnant woman and her family in situations as painful as unexpected intrauterine death, spontaneous abortion, legal termination of pregnancy or perinatal palliative cures.
This Manual details the steps that both professionals and families must carry out in a situation of perinatal loss, as well as community resources to help with grief.
All the measures carried out in this regard aim to respond to the emotional needs of many families who, unfortunately, go through a process of gestational or perinatal loss. This very particular mourning, and considered taboo for a long time in our society, achieves, with spaces for perinatal mourning such as those in Áltima and with practices and talks such as those carried out by different associations, that it becomes normalized and more visible, and that families who have experienced it or will experience it find tools to better process grief and also have a physical reference point where they can remember the son or daughter who is no longer here.
