I have a whole section on managing the holidays, but mainly, just do the best you can. It’s all anyone can ask.

A little video reminding us that it is okay to grieve:

Casey Shay Press is the publisher of In the Company of Angels, a memorial book for babies lost to miscarriage or stillbirth.

I spent today making votives for the people coming to the one here in Austin, Texas. If you are hosting one, and would like to use this label for votives of your own, feel free to right-click and “Save picture as.” It is designed for standard address labels, Avery 8160. It does not have to be printed in color. It looks good in black and white too.

The Austin candle lighting will be at the lighted fountains in Butler Park, which is behind the Parmer Events Center (Long Center.) It’s easiest to park along the street on Riverside. We generally light them by the water’s edge, but you will find us by our candles.

Here are the final votives and how they turned out. You can get little candles like these for about $4 a dozen.

Blessings to all of you who will mark this day for your lost babies.

Here is a sneak peak at one of the new images. All the angels featured in the book are children who lost a brother or sister. This is Addeline and Teresa, born after their mom lost three precious babies. I first met their mom via this web site, and later she moved nearby and came for pictures! I am so pleased to have them in the book.

I hear from the occasional dad after the loss of a baby. Usually he is worried about mom, wanting to know what he can do or say to help. It’s unusual, although it happens, for him to be sad for himself.

For moms who feel the father of the baby is not grieving like she is, remember that in a relationship, the balance dictates that only one of us can fall apart at a time. He may be holding down his grief to make sure he can be there for you, and he may prefer to keep it private.

I assure you that he notices Father’s Day, especially if the lost baby would have been his only child. He may not cry about it, he may not be emotional. And he may not need for you to recognize him on this day, or even be very open to talking about how this day might affect him.

Sometimes, though, dads find ways to express their grief and pain. Gerrit Hofsink lost his first grandson to stillbirth. He has written and produced a song for the baby. It’s a beautiful song — you can hear it here:

http://www.myspace.com/gerrithofsink

And if you love it, you can buy it for $1 here:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/hofsink 

Gerrit is working with me on some wonderful tribute projects using the song.

Tom of the UK band Oswald also wrote a song for his child:

http://oswaldtheband.com/littlesoul/

His song is also available for purchase, to benefit grief organizations.

So Dads, this day is for you.

Maybe you were pregnant and recently lost your little one. Maybe you’re in the process of miscarrying now. Or maybe you’re having scary symptoms and fear that a loss may be imminent.

No matter where you are in this journey, you are a mother. You felt hope and joy when you learned you were expecting. You made plans and dreams about your baby’s future. You wanted nothing more than a happy, healthy baby.

This is what all we mothers want. It makes no matter whether you were a mother a few weeks into a pregnancy, or 80 long years of life: you are a mother. Don’t let anyone make you feel otherwise.

On Sunday, we celebrate you. Even when the thought of being a mother is bittersweet, on this day, I like to just remember the sweet.

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Need to connect with other mourning moms? Our Facts about Miscarriage Facebook Group is a new community of women united in our losses, to tell our stories, leave our pictures, and find each other. If you belong to Facebook, join the group and invite others.  Joining Facebook is always free.

I get both scenarios in my inbox. Women who don’t see how they can make it through the due date or the anniversary of the loss, who may take off work or go through elaborate rituals. And women who suddenly realize — it passed by without my realizing it. Both things can send you spiraling.

But truly, either thing is a normal part of the process of healing. If you discover renewed grief on that day, then roll with it. Find a way to channel that emotion — make something for the baby, maybe a candle or an ornament, or if you aren’t crafty, do something good for someone else. Take a box of food to a food bank or a couple packages of diapers to a woman’s shelter. These are good and wonderful things you can do in honor of your baby.

And if you find the day has passed without your marking it — that’s okay too. The people who love us (and that includes our angels!) want to see us healing and back to living our lives. There is no better way to honor the ones we have lost than to be happy, healthy, and keeping their memories an important, but not necessarily debilitating, part of how we spend our days.

I got a jolt seven years ago when my ob/gyn tried to schedule Elizabeth’s c-section on April 28, the day we learned Casey had died in 1998. I was adamant — no way. So he tried the 30th, which was the day I had my D&E and actually lost the baby. I told him, “You can schedule it for that day, but I’m not going to show up.”

We settled on May 1, and Elizabeth arrived in all her glory, and my Casey days remained his. This time of year is always a mixed bag of somber and joyful, memories and celebrations. But if in the throes of party planning and preparing for sister’s big day, I don’t remember to bring my revelry to a halt to think of Casey, that’s fine too. He’s probably off playing somewhere anyway.

www.lonestarboudoir.com

See.

Recently I discovered Red Bubble, which is an online art company where artists can offer their works to the public. I love it there. It’s such a neat community.

But mainly I wanted to create greeting cards for people to give someone who has suffered a loss, one especially that would be a keepsake, since we all know how few of those we get. So I finally did. And it’s up. I put it on Red Bubble because they are the least espensive as well. I could offer it to pretty close to what you could buy a nice card in a store for.

Anyway, hopefully it will be one more thing that raises awareness, and helps.

You can see it here.

Deanna’s Card

It’s easy to think, “Who else will love and remember our baby but us?” You may feel as though you betrayed the baby somehow, that your love for that little one should have been enough to keep the family together.

It is even harder if these two are very close together, or worse, that the miscarriage seemed to be the final blow and the relationship fell apart at your darkest hour.

Realize this is a time for inner strength and renewal. Start fresh. Think new. Love harder. Vow to be happier. Know that your little baby changed your life–and surely, certainly it will be for the better. Find a partner who doesn’t leave when times are hard, who respects and loves who you really are, and with whom you can weather dark days together and not increasingly separate.

There is nothing harder than this–nothing. It will take everything you’ve got to trudge through each day. Don’t try to sort out your entire future. Don’t dwell on fears that you will be alone the rest of your life or that you will never have a baby. It’s not true, and you can’t know what will happen next. Focus on getting out of bed, what to put on, what to force yourself to swallow for breakfast. That is plenty enough.

Figure out who your real friends are, if you find yourself without any, join a grief and loss group to help you through. These days will be dark, so dark, and you will have to dig deeply into your inner reserves to find the strength to get through, but it is there. And as you draw from it, each day will get slightly brighter than the last, something random will make you smile when you never thought you would again, and these losses will be a part of what makes you a stronger preson with more awareness of life’s fragility and beauty.

We are not defined by what we have lost, or how, or why, but by how we survive it.

Tomorrow I’ll put the site back in its usual configuration, which is to place Frequently Asked Questions right here front and first-read, but for one more day we’ll think about what this candle lighting means and the day we got to stop and revisit our loss, spend time with our babies, and let the grief flow.

Today I got to tell Emily and Elizabeth about the babies who died in Mama’s tummy, and Emily started to understand. (Elizabeth still thought lighting the floating candles and setting them out in Town Lake was “great fun.”)

I’ll leave you with the image of us here in Austin, lighting our candles on this special day for our babies.