FUQUAY-VARNIA, N.C. (WNCN) — A Fuqay-Varina mom is celebrating the passage of a new federal law aimed at saving babies’ lives.
President Joe Biden recently signed the bipartisan bill, which provides resources for research and prevention of stillbirth.
It’s a cause close to Ana Lepe Vick’s heart. She shares her son’s story every chance she gets. “I think about him every day, every moment of my life,” she said, clutching a teddy bear the exact size of her son Owen. “I actually carry this around as a reminder to people because it’s his length and his weight. He was almost full term.”
Owen didn’t make it to his due date. 31 weeks into what Vick calls a “textbook perfect pregnancy”, she noticed a change in her unborn son’s movement that sent her rushing to the ER. “I just had like my alarm bells ringing. It was just like I was terrified, crying,” she said.
Initially, she said she heard her son’s heartbeat and was told things were going to be okay. “An hour later, the doctor arrived and they said, ‘We’re going to have to take him out.’ Unfortunately, his heart rate was crashing.”
Vick was rushed into an emergency C-section. “I woke up to be told my baby died,” she said.
She later learned a problem with Owen’s umbilical cord caused her son’s stillbirth, but the most painful questions remained: “How am I going to live without my baby? How am I going to be his mother still? I’m his mother, what am I going to do?”
While she doesn’t have Owen in her arms, he is in her heart as she pleads with legislators to pass laws to help prevent stillbirth. “He’s the reason I open my mouth every day to talk about it because babies should not be dying like this and I don’t believe that my son died in vain,” she said. “He needs to have a legacy now of helping babies survive and that’s what I’m doing for him.”
Owen’s legacy now includes a new law, the Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act of 2024. It enables federal funds to be used for stillbirth prevention, including education campaigns for parents-to-be about tracking babies’ movement, screenings for risk factors during pregnancy, and community-based programs that can provide home visits or support. “It’s just like a load off our shoulders because we know other families will have a better chance in this country now,” Vick said.
Still, she says her work isn’t done. She and other families who lost their children to stillbirth are now lobbying lawmakers to pass additional legislation that would provide funding for better data collection and research into stillbirth prevention. She is also one of the founders of the nonprofit PUSH for Empowered Pregnancy, seeking to find ways to prevent stillbirth.
While there is still work ahead, she believes the newly passed law can help grieving families honor their babies lost to stillbirth. “I think it gives people some hope, makes them feel like the babies they had are being remembered,” she said. “And they are. They’re the reason this change is happening”
