Sculpture by D.  Antonia Truesdale.

Angel Lullabies by Amy Robbins-Wilson.

And of course for Give Away #1, the poems by Nicole Breit. Did you comment to try and win a copy? GO!

I watch over all these things, and last year, added my own book to the mix, Baby Dust.

So today’s give away will be a copy of Baby Dust. The winner can get a paperback copy or the ebook for an ereader.

The book follows five women on their pregnancy loss journeys.

Melinda is 35 and has two step children, but lost her first baby in the first trimester.

Dot is 27 and discovered at 20 weeks that her baby had no brain.

Tina is 17 and went into labor at 19 weeks. Her baby lived for 40 minutes.

Janet is 32 and ended up with a molar pregnancy, which can become invasive cancer.

Stella is 44 and had 2 first trimester losses and multiple failed IVF. She never had children.

Comment to win a copy! I will probably give away several. I have to empty out this closet before I start trying again myself at the ripe age of 42!

The book trailer features the stories of several women from around the world. Double click to see it larger.

I know that in this story, they will weather more than the average couple. Two miscarriages. Multiple rounds of failed IVF. Eventually, they will give up on having children. And due to Dane’s terrible past, they won’t ever be able to adopt. I’m sure Stella often wishes a baby would drop from the sky.

By the time we meet them in my book Baby Dust, they are a well established couple, one to be envied in their devotion to each other after all this history. But how did they get this way? What built a relationship like that? It’s been on my mind as I form their love story.

I’m not sure I have the answer. The father of my angel babies and I divorced, and that shared history was lost. He and I were the only people who were really close to those babies and those hopes. It’s a hard thing. We clearly didn’t have what Dane & Stella had. We fell apart.

Recently two of my baby loss mom friends got divorced. In both cases, the men just walked out of the relationship. How does this happen? What causes it?

And more importantly, what creates a relationship that weathers this?

Disappointment in how the father handles the loss is one of the most common sources of upset in the emails and messages that I get. The fathers aren’t sad. They don’t get it. They want the moms to “get over it.” Is this part of what creates the rift? How do we get past that and back into a loving relationship?

I’d love to hear from moms with wonderful supportive partners after a loss.

And if you’d like to see how Stella & Dane develop, I have a mailing list where I share their story as it goes along. Currently they are still young and immature. Stella’s grandmother, the only person she’s ever felt loved her, has just died. And she’s ready to blow out of town, with or without her new man, Dane. But life is about to deal a severe blow, a course of events that their lives will never recover from. If you’d like to follow it, you can sign up and get updates as long as you want, unsubscribe if it doesn’t interest you.  Stella & Dane’s list.

I’m about to get remarried. I can hope I’m doing better this time around, and we’ll have to adopt as I’m too high risk for babies anymore. I’m looking for answers too.

This new book takes you back to when Stella and Dane meet, and how she stands by him, and gets you all the way through her losses and how she comes to terms with the way her life has gone.

So sign up to read excerpts of the book as I go along. The e-book will be sent to everyone on the email list when it’s done before it goes on sale.

Sign up here to get excerpts and the entire e-book when it’s done!

Writing begins next week! I’m so excited to get back to Stella!

I got a chance to talk about how to handle family members on Monica’s lovely blog Honoring Our Angels. She graciously stepped up as I’m doing the promotions for my novel Baby Dust and allowed me to post as a guest.

Deanna’s guest post on managing family

Monica began her blog in 2008 after her sweet daughter Devon was stillborn. She sees it as a place to put stories about your babies, and she puts together resources for managing life after losing a baby.

She’ll be writing a review of Baby Dust in the next few days. She’s also giving away a copy of Baby Dust! So go over there before Oct. 8 and comment to win it!

Baby Dust Give Away

Head on over to the site of Baby Dust, my novel on pregnancy loss that will be released Oct. 1, and comment on any of the titles that you might find helpful. We’ll give away the books on October 1 to kick off Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Month.

We’re also taking this special day to celebrate the completion of the Baby Dust Book Trailer. Women from Ireland, London, Australia, Mexico, and the US talk about their babies, and the women of Illuminate, a photography class for grieving mothers, took the images that are used. (Double click to view it full size.)

A book trailer is like a movie trailer, and it gives you a feel for the experience of reading the book.

Because Baby Dust is based on the real-life stories of several dozen baby loss moms, I wanted to use the voice of mothers in the book trailer.

(You can read the first chapter of the book HERE!)

We’d LOVE to have you participate. Here is a video explaining the process, and the list of questions are below. (You may need to crank your volume–the video turned out a little quiet! Gah!)

First, decide how you are going to record yourself.
The easiest ways are your cell phone or web cam.
Most modern cameras can also record video. I can pull your voice from the video and discard the images.

Choose a place. Now, listen.
Are there dogs barking? Lawn mowers? A TV? What might get in the background and make your audio unusable? If you hear something, move somewhere else.

Now read over the questions and form the answers in your head.

Question 1: Who are you?
Just a first name. Use this sentence:
My name is ____(Madonna)_______.

Question 2: Where do you live?
Just say the City/State/Province/Country. Whatever works.

Question 3: How many miscarriages have you had?
Just say the number
One. Two. Three. Etc.

Question 4: How far along were you?
If you’ve only had one loss, answer with a single time frame, something like
Six weeks.
Or
Three months.
Or
Full term.

If you’ve had several losses, give a number and a range. Like this:
I’ve lost three babies ranging from four to seven weeks.
I’ve lost two babies ranging from six weeks to five months.
I’ve lost four babies ranging from five weeks to a full-term stillbirth.
I’ve lost three babies ranging from five months to a premature baby who lived sixteen hours.

Question 5: Tell me one thing that really helped you get through your loss. For example:
My friends were what got me through.
Or
My husband was the most amazing strength for me.
Or
I couldn’t have gotten through it without the women I met online.
Or
God. He was the only thing that got me through.
(Make it yours. Keep it to one sentence.)

Question 6: Tell me one thing about this loss you will never forget (good or difficult). For example:
My two-year-old patted my belly before we left for the hospital to say goodbye.
Or
My mother-in-law told me to get over it.
Or
I had to sit in the emergency room for four hours.
Or
I held the baby in my hand, and he was so small.
(Make it yours. Try to keep it to one or two sentences.)

Question 7: Tell me one thing you’d like to see change about loss. For example:
I wish doctors would really listen to us.
I want hospitals to be more compassionate.
There really needs to be more research into late-term stillbirths.
I need for family and friends to let me talk about my baby.
I just want people to understand.
I don’t want to have to hide what happened to me.
(Make it yours. One sentence.)

Time to get me the file.
The easiest way is to record it on your cell phone and then “Share” the file via email to this address:
babydust@pregnancyloss.info
You can also upload it to Facebook or G+ or any social media and send an email with a link to it.

You can also record it with your web cam on your computer and email the file. Or you can use a digital camera and email the file.

To be considered for the book trailer, I have to have your file by Thursday, Aug. 18.

THANK YOU! I can’t wait to hear your voice!

_____________________________________

The trailer is DONE! Go see it!

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.

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 images at the Facebook page for the publisher.

You can also watch the video trailer for the book.

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.

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.