A Celebration of Life

In honor of Baby Miles and to celebrate his legacy, we have established a Memorial Foundation where you can contribute donations into a memorial fund at Chase Bank. Miles transited this earth with the mission of raising awareness around complacency and acceptance of mediocrity in healthcare and medicine, particularly with regards to the tragic results of obstetric failure.

Issues of Concern:

According to the limited data and literature deriving from medical medical research that are currently available, fetal movements felt by pregnant women are a sign that the fetus is developing properly, and is growing in size and strength. The mother is the first to feel these movements, but they can later be perceived or felt by others. Although improved objective tracking and monitoring of fetal movements is low-cost and recommended, practitioners often fail to properly advise and treat pregnant women, based on basic standards of care that are promulgated in readily available publications on continuing medical and professional education. New and expecting parents should clearly be made aware that decreased fetal movements can be a warning sign of potential fetal impairment or risk. Thereby, healthcare providers and hospitals should be on notice that any decrease in fetal movements reported by the mother, warrants vigilance, and requires due diligence that should lead to further involvement, more advanced and specialized testing, and evaluation by an inter-professional team.

Unfortunately, the health of fetuses and mothers-to-be is not prioritized highly enough for evaluation, monitoring, and early intervention, by some healthcare practitioners in the settings of today's corporate healthcare delivery system. And little medical research has been conducted into preserving the health and wellbeing of babies in utero, at a time when hospitals are performing less than 2 percent autopsy in about 24,000 intrauterine losses every year between 24 and 28 weeks. Without an independent forensic autopsy, cause of death is treated as speculative or remains unknown. And without an accurate determination of cause of death, there cannot be any improvement or breakthrough in the prevention of prenatal injury or death of the fetus during gestation. According to the Center for Disease Control, while State laws require the reporting of fetal deaths, and Federal law mandates national collection and publication of fetal death data, few states report fetal deaths for all periods of gestation, which makes it difficult to address those issues and improve health care delivery for fetuses and pregnant women.

Our Mission:

The mission of the Baby Miles' Foundation is to support medical research, community education, forensic autopsy, and civic activities to secure funding for medical advancement and prevention in the area of prenatal and neonatal injury and death for both baby and mother. The foundation will work to drive understanding of these issues among healthcare practitioners and parents. But as a primary matter, the foundation will gather and disseminate information on the prevention of fetal loss in utero, as well as fetal injury and the death of the baby during delivery. To accomplish its goals, the foundation will work with experts, hospitals, and practitioners in the fields of obstetrics, pediatric, and primary care, and it will collaborate with existing child welfare organizations, to promote adequate evaluation of fetal movement, as well as the role of the inter-professional teams in educating patients and families on how they can improve pregnancy outcomes, regardless of the level of risk in the pregnancy.

How to Contribute:

You can donate to: Miles Philip Winfield Fetal & Birth Injury Memorial Foundation on this website, by using the "Give" button on the main page of this memorial website at the URL address below.

We thank you, and appreciate your contribution.

The Winfield Family Contribute