Over at A Place for Our Angels: Memorials for Miscarriage and Stillbirth Babies, we’re having a HUGE Mother’s Day contest. We’ve already given away several books to moms on the page.

At midnight on Friday, May 13, we’ll be giving away something extra special. We’ll donate $100 to the movie Peekaboo in your baby’s honor to get the baby’s name in the Thank You credits. You will also get a DVD copy of the movie when it comes out.

Peekaboo is a movie about a mother who loses her stillborn triplets. Read more about them in the post below.

To enter the contest, go to A Place for Our Angels and post a PICTURE of anything that reminds you of your baby (bear, jewelry, sonogram, photographs) between now and 10 P.M. Central Time on Sunday. Don’t forget to tell us his or her name!

Find a picture and click on the image below to go!

I know many of you this year were expecting a baby, but tragedy struck, and this Mother’s Day will be spent in grief rather than celebration.

Other Moms will be celebrating with their children, but lost their own moms or grandmothers this last year, making this the first Mother’s Day without them. I lost two grandmothers last fall myself.

I’m asking everyone I know to reach out fellow grieving moms on Mother’s Day in a very simple way.

I have designed several digital cards that recognize that Mother’s Day often comes with mixed feelings. These cards emphasize peace and love for those who may not feel joyous on the holiday this year.

So choose the one that you think fits that person in your life who may be having a bittersweet Mother’s Day. Then right click to Save As and email it this weekend.

Feel free to upload them to Facebook if that’s where your friends are.

They are also already uploaded on Facebook if you just want to use the “share” feature. Find them on one of these pages

My Personal Facebook Page (You don’t have to be my “friend” to see them, but feel free to friend me!)

A Place for Our Angels Facebook Page

Casey Shay Press Facebook Page

And bloggers, feel free to post them in your own blog posts to help them spread. They are free to use for personal use.

Even if you aren’t close to some of your Facebook friends, take note if you saw things happening to them this year. Do something. Remember. Reach out. It’s amazing what a difference such a simple thing can make.

Today we are featuring Neveah Hope. Her mom Samantha sent us snapshots of some of Neveah’s pages from In the Company of Angels.

Thank you so much for sharing, proud Mama! What lovely work on the pages you did for sweet Neveah.

Casey Shay Press is still donating $10 of every book sold in February toward the production of the independent film Peekaboo by Big Buddha Films.  The movie is about a family who loses triplets to stillbirth. Get your copy and help make this film a reality as well as preserve the memories of your baby. Sales on Amazon count too!

One of the reasons I started Casey Shay Press was to come up with ways for us to remember and celebrate our babies, even if they were only with us for a few weeks of pregnancy.

Early this year, I created In the Company of Angels: A Memorial Book, which is a record book to put down all your thoughts and hopes and dreams for the baby you lost.

Then, a few weeks ago, a fabulous graphic designer friend created a new bumper sticker for me that reads, “I believe in angels.” It is so beautiful! Go see it!

I encouarage you all to come up with your own ideas.

• Plant a tree.
• Buy a little baby statue for your yard.
• Start a journal or diary of your days with baby.
• Donate to the March of Dimes or a SIDS charity.
• Start an Oct. 15 (Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day) walk.

Some of the best healing comes through taking real action toward keeping those memories close.

The memorial book is 25% off through May 15 in honor of Mother’s Day in the US. And we are all mothers.

If you want to get your hands on that angels bumper sticker, the publishing company will be giving away 100 of them when they come in during the first week of May. Keep watch on our Facebook page for the giveaway! Once they are in, anyone who buys the memorial book while the Mother’s Day special is going on will automatically get the bumper sticker for free.

When we have so little to remember our babies by, a pregnancy test stick, maybe a sonogram, or just our throughts, anything can mean a lot.

Have the best Mother’s Day you can. It’s okay to be upset and disappointed, to cry or to be angry at what you lost. It’s all part of the recovery. Just don’t let anyone tell you that you are not a mother.

You are.

Hannah lost two babies to stillbirth in less than a year. I visited her altar at the exhibit, where she had tributes not only to her children, but also let visitors add to chains of bracelets with the names and dates of their own babies.

So many wonderful and proud mamas are doing great work to help get miscarriage out of our secret lives and into the open, where we can talk about it without discomfort.

See more pictures.

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.

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.