Doctors create app for parents who have lost babies
To support and inform parents who have lost a baby, doctors at the Rotterdam Maasstad Hospital have launched the free Loss App. The app also makes it possible to get in touch with fellow sufferers.
“When you are dealing with the loss of a pregnancy or baby, there is a great need for information and support,” gynecologist Babette Prick tells the newspaper. AD. “As a parent, you get this partly from the hospital, of course, but often there are many questions later on.” To prevent parents from going to Google with questions, they offer safe and reliable information on the free app.
Supporting parents
The app is especially for parents who lose a baby due to a miscarriage, during pregnancy, termination of pregnancy, around birth or shortly afterwards. “The primary goal is to support people mentally and psychosocially with the loss of a pregnancy or baby.” In addition to help and support from the hospital, parents can also look up information from home. The hospital developed the app together with experts from VSV Rotterdam-Zuid, a partnership of midwives, and Support Center Nova, a national support center for parents who lose a baby.
Contact with fellow sufferers
In addition to articles and videos with information, the Loss App also contains poems and exercises. “The Loss App explains which feelings and experiences are ‘normal’, indicates when to sound the alarm and helps parents share their experience with others,” says the gynaecologist. There is also room to get in touch with fellow sufferers. According to Prick, this is valuable, because parents often feel lonely and misunderstood after such a loss. She hopes to reduce the taboo on miscarriages with this. “I notice that women often do not know how often miscarriages occur, precisely because there is little talk about this.”
The Loss App can be downloaded for free from the Google Play Store and Apple Store.
Source: AD
