Archive for About Deanna's Book
September 24, 2009 at 9:02 am · Filed under About Deanna's Book, In the Company of Angels, Remembrance Day
I want to remind all of you that October is Pregnancy Loss Awareness Month. Robyn Bear, founder of the organization that got the designation of this month in all 50 states, has a listing of all the public walks and candle lightings that will be going on. You can see those on her walk page. If you don’t have one near you, start one!
If you are looking for items for your babies, she has lots of lovely jewelry, stepping stones, boxes, and many other memorial pieces. You can see those at her store. She has beautiful pink and blue awareness ribbon car magnets for just $4 to help you spread the word.
And my own memorial book is safely at the printer! In the Company of Angels is done and many of you proud mamas are already preordering your copies. They should be here in a few weeks. I can’t WAIT to fill one out for Casey Shay! You can find out about ordering it at the publishing company web site.
It’s been an amazing month! The video I made (see it in the upper right corner of this screen) has gotten thousands of views. People are starting to understand how important our babies are. They are not to be forgotten, but real people who made a huge impact on our lives.
September 12, 2009 at 10:31 am · Filed under About Deanna's Book
In the Company of Angels, the baby record book for our angels lost to miscarriage or stilbirth, is almost final and will head to galley proof stage very soon. I’m so excited about it. I’ve always wanted to have a book to fill out for my baby even though I never got to see him in person.
Sometimes it seems as though life gives you the skills and experiences to do the one thing you were meant to do. And I think the path that lead me to this book was that:
- to decide against journalism as a career
- to teach journalism instead and to sponsor the school yearbook
- to learn darkroom and photography in order to teach it
- to embark on a photography career when I left teaching after the loss of my first baby
It all comes back around to having the ability to make the images for this book, and to have the lovely little clients to pose for it. And to know a community I can share it with.
I am blessed.
See more images at the Facebook page for the publisher.
You can also watch the video trailer for the book.
January 14, 2009 at 11:18 am · Filed under About Deanna's Book, Miscarriage
So many of you are having a hard time.
I’ve had a four-fold increase in direct emails since the new year began. Heartbreaking stories, difficult moments. Many of you feel so very alone.
I’ve heard women say things that make me so sad that in the ten years since this site began, so little has changed in how we feel about revealing the extent of our grief:
- On Facebook, a woman wrote me thanking me for the private support, but she couldn’t join the Facts about Miscarriage support group because she didn’t want any of her Facebook friends to know she’d lost a baby. (Note that you have to be a member of Facebook–which is free–to see our Facebook group.)
- Via email, another woman felt uncomfortable sharing the name of her baby, as she thought others would think it silly to name her lost child.
- And everywhere, friends tell me how they keep their pregnancies to themselves for months, “just in case.” They don’t want others to know about the baby should they have a miscarriage.
I understand all this. I’ve been in these places, felt these things. But I want, really really want, a world where life CAN be celebrated from the moment it is known to exist. That we CAN tell our friends and family about this devastating loss, and feel loved and supported as we would in any death in the family. That we would NEVER feel guilty or as though we did something wrong, that the miscarriage was our fault.
This year I’m going to work even harder to make this happen. I’m applying for fellowships, trying to find time (and grant money to support me) to finish Baby Dust. I want to get this so visible, so public, so open, that we can change this feeling that we should hide what has happened.
We can’t change the miscarriage rate. This year, like most years, 6 million women (in the US) will get pregnant and almost 1 million of them will lose her baby. We are probably one of the single largest groups that suffers so silently.
I know from your emails, your notes, and your blog posts that you are having a hard time. 2009 isn’t starting off anything like you hoped. But this is a year we will get stronger. We’ll make something out of what has happened to us. And we’ll change things, because our babies, those beautiful little life-lights, live through us.
August 8, 2008 at 11:05 am · Filed under About Deanna's Book, Early Pregnancy Detection, Miscarriage
During research for my book Facing Miscarriage, I stumbled across an article in the British news source, The Telegraph, talking about a “panic” that spread across the UK when early detection home pregnant tests first became available a few years ago.
I didn’t find any similar articles in US papers, but it’s easy to see why the new home pregnancy tests could cause a flurry of concern.
Old-style tests, manufactured prior to 2004, typically looked for a pregnancy hormone level of 50-100 mIU/ml and were not effective until the day a woman missed her period, on average, about 14 days post fertilization. This is when the baby is well implanted and the miscarriage rate is expected to be between 8 and 20 percent.
The new tests, however, detect the hormone at 20 mIU/ml. This is within a day or two of implantation, more like 9-10 days after fertilization.
Since the advent of early sonography, we’ve known that a huge number of fertilized eggs either never implant at all, or attempt implantation and fail. This number varies depending on who you ask, but is always frighteningly high — between 50 and 75 percent.
For many moms, working so hard to achieve pregnancy and the family of their dreams, this is a terrible and sad loss. The emotional pain in getting their period after seeing a positive pregnancy test is often strong and frightening.
These early losses, however, almost never indicate a problem that needs treatment. The fusing of the egg and sperm’s genetic material is tricky and often goes awry, either misaligning or dividing improperly in early cell growth. When the egg with chromosomal errors bumps against the uterus, the body will start the implantation process. This sets off the manufacture of pregnancy hormone, but often, the lining rejects the egg. In this case, the woman’s body will register a fleeting rise in pregnancy hormone even though the baby could not implant and grow. The new tests are so sensitive as to catch the temporary rise.
This early chromosomal rejection has no bearing on the health of the mother or her ability to carry children to term. The rush of hospital visits by distressed moms causes extra upset and frustration. They often find they are simply turned away. Others might be subjected to invasive and unnecessary tests. The problem amplifies — moms want their babies to be recognized from conception, and health care providers want to maintain a simplicity in diagnosis and treatment of clinically recognized pregnancy and miscarriage.
As I write what I hope to be the newest book about miscarriage and how to get through it, I will address the issue of the new definition of miscarriage. Do we adjust our statistics and scare women with the real figure — that over half of their pregnancies will be lost before week 5? And how do we decide when a woman actually needs intervention for recurring miscarriages? Do early losses simply “not count” anymore? I do wish sites like this one that advocate super-early testing also include a reminder of how common an early loss can be.
Perhaps we will rewrite the rules based on our early detection of pregnancies, creating a hierarchy of risk based on gestational age. But the rules will be for treatment and clinical relevance only. Our babies are our babies, whether at 16 cells or fully formed in our waiting arms.
September 30, 2007 at 9:59 pm · Filed under About Deanna's Book
I’m mainly putting this blog post up because so many people have asked about the status of Baby Dust, especially as the site underwent some rather cataclysmic changes in the last month.
As the members of my writing critique groups know, I am one tough cookie when it comes to judging books. They go through the ringer when I put their manuscript under the microscope, and even when I go to Barnes and Noble, I’m usually done with a book by page 3. For my friends and critique buddies, I hope it helps them make a better book. Most of them are grateful for someone to help them shore up weaknesses rather than just repeat a trite “It’s great!” As a writer myself, I appreciate so much when someone takes the time to really analyze the book and give an honest constructive reaction.
I set aside my miscarriage book for six months to let it “rest” so I could judge it with an open mind. Many people had loved it, others had given some criticism, but I didn’t feel I was getting a critical enough response to know if it were worth pursuing yet. Sure enough, I wasn’t two chapters in when I set it down and thought, “That book isn’t ready. It’s just not good enough.”
So I have a major rewrite to do if I want to pursue it. Baby Dust is still around, and I still think of it, but for now, it waits, and simmers in my mind, and I’m in no hurry. I’d rather put out a good book than a rushed one.
If you’ve never read chapter one, you can here.
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