Movie Review: “Don’t Talk About the Baby”

HopingForBaby.com Rating: 4 out of 5

“Don’t Talk About the Baby” is a great documentary to watch if you’ve experienced Pregnancy and Infant Loss and you feel you are prepared to hear other people’s difficult stories. I believe sharing stories is so important for healing, especially sharing to others who understand. I’ve dealt with a lot of loss over the years and I believe I’ve developed more resiliency over time. This movie is great if you also feel you are at a point where you are mostly past the initial stages of grief. That is the only reason I gave it a 4 out of 5 rating because it may be too triggering for some viewers.

I strongly believe in people sharing their story, but I personally choose to not tell everyone graphic details of the trauma of pregnancy loss. I believe this part of my story was best processed with a therapist or through journaling. I also believe expressing this through works of art can be therapeutic for others. Everyone processes their grief in their own way, so if you believe in fully expressing every aspect of your loss more power to you. If you find yourself easily triggered by traumatic details, I’d recommend taking that into consideration when you decide to watch this documentary.

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On the flip side of that word of caution, I think this movie did an absolutely fantastic job of showing so many different stories of courage and hope. I felt a huge sense of connectedness to the women that were interviewed. I’ve watched a handful of other documentaries about infertility and IVF, but this one really touched my heart. There were several instances I just wanted to reach through the TV screen and hug the woman being interviewed. There was such a rawness with the emotions they shared, that takes an immense amount of courage. I find it hard sometimes to write some of my blog posts about my recurrent miscarriages, but I always feel better after I do. My hope is maybe someone reading my posts might feel a little better knowing they are not alone during their struggles. I feel this film was created with this same spirit.

I love how the documentary interviewed a variety of women who are at different points in their journey. Some are still deep in the emotions of their recent loss, others are a little further along, and some who have moved on from their loss and share their stories of how they healed. Another important aspect of this movie is that they take the time to interview multiple doctors who specialize in pregnancy and infant loss. The statistics they share may initially seem overwhelming to hear. But I believe the filmmaker’s intention was to emphasize that so many women experience this kind of loss and to show viewers they are definitely not alone.

Finally, the subject that I found most important in this film is the need to fight the stigma of pregnancy and infant loss. There is a huge stigma in our culture around this type of loss. As our culture becomes more comfortable talking about the hard subject of pregnancy and infant loss the stigma will begin to fade away. One of the women in the film remembers how cancer actually had a stigma and some people would avoid talking about it. But over time more people openly talked about cancer which created more awareness. More awareness resulted in more funding for research. Now there is an immense amount of energy put into raising funds for cancer research and education today. All of that effort has lead to a greater understanding for the public to know when to get screened for cancer, helping to catch it early on and save more lives with treatment at just the right time. The film “Don’t Talk About the Baby” discusses our culture can do the same exact process of openly talking about pregnancy and infant loss just as we now openly talk about cancer today.

That cultural shift can be duplicated with conversations about pregnancy and infant loss and maybe one day there won’t be as much of a stigma. The more people actually talk about it the more likely funding efforts will increase. Increased funding can allow for more research efforts to potentially find the causes to “unexplained infertility” which is said to account for up to 30% of pregnancy losses (Sadeghi, 2015). More research also needs to be put towards learning more about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Even the diagnosable conditions still have many questions surrounding what the root cause might be. It is incredibly important to increase research and educating the public to help prevent pregnancy and infant loss, and this includes reducing the stigma.

Thank you for reading. 🙂