‘The placenta was small and deformed’: Mystery of Utah’s dead babies
4 MINS AGO
Midwife Donna Young believes air pollution from the oil and gas industries is killing children in her town.Source: Getty Images
EMMA REYNOLDS news.com.au
CAREN Moon’s third baby seemed cursed from the start. The pregnant 34-year-old suffered bleeding and cramping in her first trimester, and miscarried during a snowstorm the week before Thanksgiving.
A few roads away, her friend Melissa Morgan was struggling with the same problems. She felt sick every time she left the house and soon retired to bed, spending weeks resting while women from her church cared for her other four kids. The baby made it — just.
“It’s a miracle she’s here at all,” said Melissa. “When I saw the placenta, it was small and deformed, like it had used up all its tissue to protect her.”
For midwife Donna Young, it was more evidence that something was very wrong in the small Utah town of Vernal. That same year, 2013, she delivered the first stillborn baby of her 19-year career, a fully formed child who never took a breath.