Shortest Lives creates a new way of grieving for parents of stillborn babies, based on what touches all parents-to-be most: the first time they hear their babies heartbeat. Parents were invited personally by the University Hospital of Ghent to get a personalised audiovisual memory of their stillborn baby. This is immensely important, because it helps these parents in their grieving process by recognising the existence of their baby. This new way of coping with their loss answers a great demand as they feel their grief is difficult to cope with, since they have practically nothing to remember their baby by.

In Belgium 4,3%* of births are stillbirths. Losing your child is the worst thing a parent can imagine. But for parents of stillborn babies the grief is complicated as they have very little of their children to remember them by. They also feel they can’t always talk about it with their surroundings, as other people may find it hard to imagine the connection parents already had with their unborn child.

According to the grief counselors of Child and Family, a governmental agency for child wellbeing, parents can be helped in their grieving process by recognizing the existence of their baby. How? By holding onto details like weight, length, ultrasound pictures or anything that else they can remember their baby by. But unfortunately, during pregnancy there isn’t much to hold onto.

*https://statbel.fgov.be/nl/themas/bevolking/sterfte-en-levensverwachting/foeto-infantiele-sterfte#:~:text=In%202020%20werden%20494%20kinderen,doodgeboorten%20daalde%20in%20alle%20gewesten. Official numbers for 2020 (last known year)

When you first hear you are expecting a baby it’s hard to already imagine this new life. The moment you truly become a parent is when you hear your baby’s heartbeat for the first time. This moment is when you connect emotionally and become a parent. In Belgium these heartbeats are data registered on ultrasound pictures and logged in the database of the hospital, only stored for medical reasons. When a baby is stillborn, parents never hear the heartbeat of their baby again. They have no memory left of when their baby was alive.

The University Hospital of Ghent wanted to recognize the grief of stillborn babies’ parents and help them in their grieving process. So, we found a way to reconstruct the heartbeat of stillborn children and bring it back to the parents.

Shortest lives, a new grief support and the first living memory for parents of stillborn babies.

We wanted to make it easier for parents to of stillborn babies to grieve and heal by recognizing and remembering the lives of their babies. But when a baby is stillborn, there isn’t much to hold onto.

The most emotional memory and signifier of the life that was coming was the first time parents heard their baby’s heartbeat. Unfortunately, in Belgium this heartbeat is stored away on an ultrasound picture on the server of hospitals, only accessible to medical personnel to be used for medical reasons, not to parents. On top of that, it is only stored visually, without sound.

Shortest lives transforms the data points on this ultrasound picture into a personal audio visualization and we encouraged parents to request this audio visualization of their baby’s first heartbeat so they can relive this memory whenever they want and share it with friends and family.

Shortest Lives is an initiative that allows parents of stillborn babies to request a beautiful representation of their stillborn baby’s first heartbeat on which personal datapoints like heart rhythm, gender and days of pregnancy are transformed to an audiovisual that represents their baby’s unique life. For this we needed the permission of the hospital to allow access to the data. Shortest Lives was created and launched in collaboration with parents, the University Hospital of Ghent and Berrefonds, a foundation that helps parents of stillborn babies.

We created a website, launched 27/01/2023 and promoted PR-wise, on which the parents could request having the audiovisual of their baby’s heartbeat. The name and design was purposefully chosen to recognise their babies’ lives and help share and remember them together with friends and family. Parents who experienced a stillbirth at the University Hospital, were given a flyer that directed them to the website.

We were able to turn data into a personalised and living memory for parents of stillborn children:

-Shortest Lives had 4,99M earned impressions within the first week of the initiative.

-Immediately after the launch there have been 223 requests by parents of stillborn babies to receive a personalised heartbeat of their baby.

-Of all the parents who already received the heartbeat of their stillborn baby, 3 out of 4 shared it with friends and familie, thus creating more awareness and helping to break the taboo around this delicate subject.

-86% of the parents who already received the heartbeat of their stillborn baby, said it helped them in their mourning process.

-Today, 1 in 3 of the parents whose baby was stillborn in 2022, already filed a request to receive their baby’s heartbeat.

-Other hospitals in Belgium and abroad have reached out to offer this service to their patients as well.

Belgians are reserved. They don’t grieve in public. Grief counselors that have accompanied parents of stillborn babies during the days of the stillbirth witness an additional difficulty to grieve because the existence of their babies isn’t acknowledged. They are not considered to be on the same level as parents that have lost a child that was already born. They don’t have many memories and their friends and family never got to meet the baby.

A lot of stillborn babies also didn’t exist legally. In neighboring country The Netherlands, the law does allow to register stillborn babies at an earlier stage of the pregnancy than Belgium. This means it’s harder for Belgian parents to grieve. They can’t even take official grieving time off.