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.

Mother’s Day is forever a mixed blessing for me. My first one, just two weeks after losing Casey at 20 weeks gestation, was so terrible I have blotted it from my memory. And even now, 14 years later, I still feel the pull of emotions in both directions as I think of the babies I lost (Casey, Daniel, Emma) and the ones that I got to keep (Emily, Elizabeth), and now, the one we’re trying for (our friends call him Thor even though he doesn’t exist yet…)

I want each of you to remember that whether that baby is in your belly, in your arms, or in the sky—you’re still a mother. It doesn’t matter who recognizes it or who doesn’t—your baby most certainly does.

I’m kicking off a week of give aways! You can comment here or on the Facebook page for chances to win! Feel free to comment both places—I’ll be giving away items both here and at A Place for Our Angels.

The first give away is a new book of poetry about infertility, pregnancy, and loss that came out just a few weeks ago by Nicole Breit, called “I Can Make Life.” This collection was a finalist in the Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Prize this year.

Check it out below, or if that’s too small on your browser, click through to check it out bigger here!

All the mothers who win any of the give aways over the next few days will be notified on Mother’s Day this Sunday (if I remember! If not, on Monday.)

All I can say is, “Fourteen years and counting.”

One of the hard things about losing a baby that no one else felt, or saw, or touched is that everyone wants you to get over it quickly. They don’t have the same emotional investment. Pregnancy, with its sleepiness and dream-like quality, encourages the visions of the baby to come, the moments ahead. It’s how you get through the hard stuff—throwing up, bone-tiredness, caution and fear. So we’re wired to already see and experience this baby well beyond the sensations in our belly.

In her book Virgin Blue (which has lots of miscarriage and pregnancy trauma within it), author Tracy Chavalier’s characters, both midwives, talk about how the pregnant mother is always ”listening” inside her. She’s distracted, taken out of the outside world, and focused on what is happening within.

It really doesn’t matter when the conversation stops, the day after the positive pregnancy test or during the birth, when some tragedy takes the baby during its final journey to the outside. It’s still a cutting off, a silencing of a relationship that had become the focus of your life.

Fourteen years ago today, I didn’t realize my connection had been cut. I suspected—but then every pregnant mother seems to always have some fear—but until the Doppler was silent, until the doctor was rushed in and the sonogram machine powered up, until he moved and moved and moved the paddle, trying to find an elusive heartbeat for a 20-week baby who should have filled the screen with movement and sound, but didn’t. Until I had proof; I hadn’t known.

April 28 taught me how to listen, how to hear, how to know when the conversation ceased. My next two losses were no surprise. I had learned the difference between the hum that reverberates between a mother and an unborn child and the silence that means the child is gone.

And this year, at 42, I am getting married again and, next month, taking that journey one more time. I don’t even know if the conversation will start. I may not be able to get pregnant at all. The chromosomes in my eggs may be too sticky to divide properly and get the baby on its journey. But I will listen, and I will hear. And whatever conversation I might get, however many days or weeks or months I may get to feel that hum, I will take them.

One thing I’ve learned in 14 years—I am not afraid. I hope, for all of you, who may be finding this page for the first time or the fourth, that you find that courage too.

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.