After My Baby Died, I Saw 4 Words On A Standard Form At The Doctor's Office That Stopped Me Cold

""You forgot to answer one of these questions," the nurse said as she turned to me. "I didn't forget," I said. "I just didn't have an answer." I paused, letting the silence fall around us. "Yes, I'm anxious, sometimes debilitatingly so. But no, it's not for 'no good reason.'" Her eyes scanned my obstetric history on the monitor, and I saw the realization settle in. She looked at me with a startled recognition and nodded."

"I'm still not sure whether the Edinburgh Scale was given to me that day because I had recently experienced a pregnancy loss, or if it was given to me simply because I was a newly pregnant patient coming in for my first OB check. Either way, what struck me most was that, up until then, there had been no systematic effort to check on my state of mind in the wake of such a devastating loss."

A patient attended an ultrasound appointment hoping to confirm the pregnancy. A nurse handed paperwork and noted an unanswered screening question. The patient explained that anxiety was present and not without reason, and objected to a poorly worded question. The nurse recognized and quietly validated the response. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale was developed in 1987 to identify postnatal depression and was later used to detect anxiety via three subscale items, including the problematic question. No systematic assessment of grief followed a prior pregnancy loss despite multiple hospital touchpoints.

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