Alina Smutko
documentary photographer
Six child per thousand is still born in Ukraine. However it is not a fact. Nobody can say for certain because there is still the practice of “cleaning up” the statistics: a child born dead too early can be write down as “late miscarriage” and a lively baby who has lived for less than a week can be stillborn on a paper.
According to UNICEF, five little Ukrainian per thousand died at the first month of his/her life. Ukrainian governmental statistics doesn’t report how many pregnancies don’t end with the usual “motherhood”. It’s really difficult to determine this, because until the 12th week of pregnancy a woman is alone with her problems, the fact of her status is not registered by the first 3 months. Miscarriages at different periods, incompatible with life pathologies of a fetus, missed pregnancies, stillbirth and death of a newborn – all these are defined as perinatal loss. Psychologists say, an abortion made from economic or social reasons, for example due to rape or material distress, should also be included there.
Women who have lost a child in any of these cases are faced with a complete rejection of their loss by society. Family and friends don’t even talk about this. In the loss of an unborn or soon-dead baby, pretending that nothing had happened. Mothers also face with the same indifference in medical institutions. Every such woman heard the phrase "oh well, don’t worry, you’ll give birth to more”. Ukrainian women who have lost babies tell me their stories about loss. For someone it happened 30 years ago and for others recently. Someone decided to have a baby again, others temporarily abandoned attempts at natural motherhood. These stories are united by the desire to help other women cope with this.
To read all women's stories in Russian, click here.
Six child per thousand is still born in Ukraine. However it is not a fact. Nobody can say for certain because there is still the practice of “cleaning up” the statistics: a child born dead too early can be write down as “late miscarriage” and a lively baby who has lived for less than a week can be stillborn on a paper.
According to UNICEF, five little Ukrainian per thousand died at the first month of his/her life. Ukrainian governmental statistics doesn’t report how many pregnancies don’t end with the usual “motherhood”. It’s really difficult to determine this, because until the 12th week of pregnancy a woman is alone with her problems, the fact of her status is not registered by the first 3 months. Miscarriages at different periods, incompatible with life pathologies of a fetus, missed pregnancies, stillbirth and death of a newborn – all these are defined as perinatal loss. Psychologists say, an abortion made from economic or social reasons, for example due to rape or material distress, should also be included there.
Women who have lost a child in any of these cases are faced with a complete rejection of their loss by society. Family and friends don’t even talk about this. In the loss of an unborn or soon-dead baby, pretending that nothing had happened. Mothers also face with the same indifference in medical institutions. Every such woman heard the phrase "oh well, don’t worry, you’ll give birth to more”. Ukrainian women who have lost babies tell me their stories about loss. For someone it happened 30 years ago and for others recently. Someone decided to have a baby again, others temporarily abandoned attempts at natural motherhood. These stories are united by the desire to help other women cope with this.
To read all women's stories in Russian, click here.