Parental Abandonment occurs with an overwhelming frequency in fiction. On top of that, an overwhelming number of victims lose their mothers during childbirth. So sad, so tragic, so heart-wrenching... such a goldmine for a plot device. Nothing impossible about it, but the statistics are ridiculously high, especially for any industrialized nations. Although, as Jane Austen observed, it wasn't used ridiculously often even before modern medicine.) See Her Heart Will Go On, the sort-of inversion of this -- he dies, she lives. Examples of Death by Childbirth include: