Archive for Miscarriage
October 8, 2007 at 1:26 pm · Filed under Miscarriage, Remembrance Day
A few years ago, a very dedicated mama enlisted some friends and set out to get Oct. 15 declared Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Day in all 50 states of the U.S.
She succeeded.
As the day approaches, I encourage everyone to light a candle for your baby at 7 p.m. local time to create the “Continuous Wave of Light” around the world to honor our babies.
Update: I am so IMPRESSED by some of you Mamas out there who are calling/emailing radio stations to ask them to announce the candle lighting on Monday. You ladies are awesome! Go proud Mamas!
Here are some words from Robyn Bear, the founder of Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Day.
In October 1988, President Ronald Reagan Proclaimed October as National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. “When a child loses his parent, they are called an orphan. When a spouse loses her or his partner, they are called a widow or widower. When parents lose their child, there isn’t a word to describe them.”
This month recognizes the loss so many parents experience across the United States and around the world. It is also meant to inform and provide resources for parents who have lost children due to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, stillbirths, birth defects, SIDS, and other causes.”
Robyn Bear, founder of www.october15th.com envisioned a day when all grieving parents could come together and be surrounded by love and support from their friends and families, a day where the community could better understand their pain and learn how to reach out to those grieving. This would be a day to reflect on the loss yet embrace the love. While our babies’ lives where so brief, they were also very meaningful. Yet, there was not a time to talk about them. Our society seemed to forget or perhaps, simply didn’t know how to reach out. Since October had been proclaimed “Awareness Month”, she chose a day, in the middle of the month to become, “Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day”. We are asking everyone in all times zones, worldwide, to join us in a candle lighting ceremony at 7pm on October 15th. For more information, please visit http://www.october15th.com
Ideas for October 15th
- Light candles and display them in your windows.
- Contact local Radio and News stations and have them announce that it is October 15th, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.
- Drive with your headlights on. Also, ask that radio and news stations announce this as well.
- Leave your porch lights on. Have radio and news stations announce this as well.
- Release butterflies (Can be expensive, but is very beautiful, Use a search engine such as yahoo and type in butterfly release)
- Release Doves (You can rent doves that are trained to fly back to the owner)
- Sponsor a candle lighting ceremony in a park, church, or local hospital.
- Send off a pink or blue balloon with your Angel’s name and/or picture. (Warning Please: If you do this, only send one balloon per child. This is very dangerous for birds and wildlife. The animals can eat the remnants of a balloon and die) (As beautiful and wonderful as it is, I can’t personally recommend it due to my love for animals)
Ideas for all of the Month of October
- Tying pink or blue ribbons around trees in yards, neighborhoods, and parks.
- Place signs and banners in your yard, neighborhoods, and parks.
- Contact your local radio stations and television news stations to have them announce that October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.
- Write an article and submit it to your local newspapers.
- Sponsor flowers in memory of your baby in a church service or hospital.
- Have a t-shirt made that says I have an Angel, and have your child’s name put on it.
Our Mission Statement To diligently work with local, state and national leaders to obtain a National Day of Remembrance recognizing the need for community education and awareness when a family loses a child to miscarriage, stillbirth, and/or neonatal death. While promoting the need for openness, understanding and compassion during a family’s time of grief and most importantly, allowing those who wish, to remember these children who we now hold dear.
Goals of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day
To have information and support available to families who suffer from pregnancy and infant loss, to help them cope.
- To inform and educate the public about pregnancy and infant loss so they can better learn how to respond with compassion to affected families.
- To enable professionals, physicians, clergy, emergency medical technicians, funeral directors, police officers, public health nurses, and employers, to better serve families if they have special training and better knowledge of pregnancy and infant loss.
- To set aside a day to remember all pregnancies and infants lost in order to heal and be comforted in a time of pain and heartache, and to have hope for the future.
Objectives:
- Encourage Doctor’s offices, Churches, Hospitals, Funeral Homes, etc. to give to patients at the time of their loss pamphlets that would include books, websites, persons to contact, local and national support groups, resource centers.
- Inform parents of their rights at time of loss; burial, cremation, naming the child.
- Promote Public speaking outline for parents wanting to share their loss.
- A list “Do’s and Don’ts” for well meaning family and friends.
- Encourage media to feature stories on perinatal loss and the healing involved.
- Network with National and Local Organizations.
- Talk to professionals; find out how they deal with feelings related to loss in their work. Explain to them how critical their care and compassion is during this time.
- Develop presentation to H. R. departments for information sessions on this type of bereavement.
- Have October 15th leaders be liaison for those wanting to plan/attend services in their state. An outline will be developed and available on the website.
- Encourage community activities, outreach.
- Give parents one day to openly remember, as parents NEVER forget.
- Provide this healing opportunity so that families can look towards the future.
Why have a day of remembrance for Pregnancy and Infant Loss?
Because EVERY life, even the tiniest and shortest lived deserves to be acknowledged and remembered. The parents of these children never forget, we would just like one day of the year for everyone else to remember then too.
July 21, 2007 at 8:41 am · Filed under Miscarriage
About a year ago, I redesigned this site. I wanted to create the most beautiful ever image of an infant lying on a cloud as an angel, but I didn’t have just the right baby yet–one small and fragile and gently sleeping–to represent our lost babies.
In March, some dear friends of mine gave birth to twins after many many years of trying to conceive. We were all so thrilled for them.
They came for images when the babies were still only a few weeks old, and baby Corey was so tiny (born at 5 pounds) and curled up that I knew she would make the perfect angel image. I gently asked my friends if I could use her, and they agreed.
The little girls grew over the months and on the Fourth of July, they sent out the cutest little patriotic shots of the twins in their holiday duds.
On July 5, about the time many of us were looking at those images of the girls, the twins’ wonderful and caring in-home babysitter laid them down for their nap.
Baby Corey never woke up. After an autopsy and toxicology report, they could find no cause of death, so she was ruled as one of the 2200 SIDS deaths that happen each year in the US.
Her parents have lovingly agreed all the more that she is just the baby to serve as our ambassador, our sweet respresentative, here to guide our lost babies from this world into the next. I will be incorporating her into the Facts about Miscarriage Site as I make changes.
Rest well, sweet Corey.
March-July, 2007
May 10, 2007 at 4:47 pm · Filed under Grief, Holidays, Miscarriage, Mothers
I know it can be a hard day. Every marquee at every restaurant touts it. Sentimental commercials broadcast emotion. Your inbox swells with gift suggestions. The grocery store explodes with floral arrangements.
And here you are. Your baby isn’t here. You expected a swelling belly, or maybe even the bundle to be here. Or like me, maybe yours should have been scrawling crayoned rainbows on handmade cards by now.
But, you feel you have nothing.
Think of this way:
- Did you feel joy when you learned you were pregnant?
- Did you plan and hope and dream about the day your baby would arrive?
- Did you want nothing more than a happy, healthy little one?
How is this different than every other mother? Are mothers whose children die full grown any less mothers because their children are no longer here? Of course not.
You are a mother. You were the bearer of that baby’s future. You brought this baby into the world, however it happened, at four weeks gestation, or full term, in a gush of blood and pain just like every mother does.
Don’t believe for a moment that everything out there isn’t talking about you. It is. And even more so, because you have born a grief that could destroy a mother’s hope–the loss of her child–and you have survived.
It’s your day. Take it to remember your baby. And send up a quiet word of thanks to your own mother, wherever she may be.
April 24, 2007 at 11:10 am · Filed under Deanna's Story, Miscarriage, Ob/Gyn, Pregnancy, Related Movies-Songs, Twins
Sometimes amazing things happen to remind us that we really don’t understand the machinations of our world. I often think of the line to Josh Groban’s song “To Where You Are” that says:
Isn’t faith believing all powers can’t be seen?
Yesterday my almost-five-year-old (countdown to the big day–seven sleeps!) and I attended a baby shower for her preschool teacher.
One of the games involved each of the kids suggesting what Ms. Lindsay should name her baby boy.
The children mainly chose names of male classmates or dads or brothers. A few provided gigglers–Star, Sunshine, Happy Feet. One future class clown offered up “Poo.”
Elizabeth’s turn arrived. She seemed confused about this, and the teacher asked her if she needed more time. She shook her head, stood up, and said, “Matthew.”
My heart seized. She knew no Matthews. No cousins or classmates or friends. The only time she could have heard the name in her brief existence would be in Sunday School, where it would compete with the likes of Mark, Luke, and John.
But Matthew is a very important name to us. When we were told Emily was a boy at her sonogram, we chose Ryan Matthew as her name. Naturally she became Emily later when the high risk doctor told us–that’s an odd name for a girl!
When we got pregnant with Elizabeth, we decided we still liked Ryan Matthew but would prefer it flipped. So we called the baby Matthew early on when we referred to her in the womb, until her sonogram revealed she was also a girl.
But of course, Elizabeth was a twin. Her little sibling died and my water broke when I was only ten weeks pregnant. Elizabeth survived, although we had a week or two of uncertainty that the pregnancy would pull through.
We’ve named her twin Emma Hope, but after this baby shower, maybe we were wrong. Perhaps Elizabeth knows more than we do, and maybe, just maybe, some little presence whispered in her ear that morning, and for the first time, without even knowing it, she uttered a name she’d never before heard–her brother’s.
March 26, 2007 at 1:00 pm · Filed under Family, Grief, Miscarriage
How many of you have heard these phrases?
- It probably would have been deformed.
- Thank goodness you were only in your first trimester.
- It’s not like it was a real baby.
- Just get pregnant again and you’ll feel better.
- It was just a miscarriage.
When friends, family, acquaintances, and coworkers learn of your loss, they are going to feel the need to say something. They feel awkward and unsure. They definitely don’t want to make you cry.
So they try to come up with something to make you feel better. Somehow, they really do believe that downplaying the loss (only first trimester, not a real baby, just a miscarriage) will help you downplay it too. Or, that they can show you a “bright” side (deformed, nature’s way, not the right time.) Or give you advice (get pregnant again, don’t dwell on it, you’re only making yourself depressed.)
I’m not happy with these people. I wish I could be your personal guardian, walking around with duct tape and sealing their mouths. But usually they aren’t really trying to upset you. They want to say something. They don’t know that “I’m so sorry for the loss of your baby. Please let me know if I can do anything,” is plenty.
Ignore them when you can. Just nod and walk away. And when you’re feeling up for it–tell them. And explain to them what to say next time, before they repeat these things to someone else.
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