Archives for March 2013
Fertile Diversity
March 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Here is a place to share your ideas, thoughts, feelings and experiences regarding diversity in birth and bereavement.
You can share anything:
- old wives tales
- ancient practices
- things you’ve heard of
- cultural practices
- religious beliefs
On any of these subjects:
- fertility (things that are said to help or hinder)
- pregnancy (things to do or things to avoid during)
- birth (things to do or not do during childbirth)
- early parenting, and this can include most anything.
- bereavement, mourning
- death and afterlife
Here are some examples regarding early parenting:
- beliefs about breastmilk
- family customs, the role of each member of the family
- practices immediately postpartum
- beliefs about various infant or maternal diagnoses or medical care
Here are some examples regarding bereavement:
- beliefs about proper mourning
- customs or expectations around bereavement
Share Your Thoughts
You are invited to share comments, links or other resources that can help create a positive dialogue and more open communication regarding better understanding diversity in all subjects surrounding birth and bereavement. Sharing a comment does not make that opinion exclusive fact (there may be many beliefs in one culture, for example). As with everything at stillbirthday, these comments are moderated and anything remotely derogatory toward any belief will not be published.
See What We Have
Check out the great resources we already have listed at our Long Term Healing resources; we want this list to keep growing – specifically as they apply to diverse beliefs, practices and traditions on these subjects.
Get Even More Involved
Share Your Story
Please, consider sharing your special story here at stillbirthday. It will also be held in our section of diversity stories.
If you feel particularly well versed in any belief system, you might want to expand on your comment here,and contribute an article as a member of the SBD News Team!
Stillbirthday provides birth and bereavement support globally, and students in our training come from all over the world! If you’d like to become a member of our internationally respected birth and bereavement doula training program, with an emphasis in diversity, check out our SIS discount and join our Stillbirthday Birth & Bereavement Diversity team!
A {Still} Birthday Wish
March 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Told by: Maggie
The majority of parents await the day for their child’s first birthday. Planning the party, inviting guests, making or buying the cake, buying presents. And the first birthday is always the most exciting! But what about those who are celebrating and honoring the first year milestone of the loss of a child?
March 17th, 2013 was my sweet angel, Makayla’s, first birthday (and as I also call it, her “angelversary”). The days and weeks leading up to Makayla’s {still}birthday, my emotions were running wild and were on a rollercoaster. I’ve learned to allow myself to feel the emotions as they come, whether they are upbeat or more on the low side.
Last year has changed my life. I can’t say if it was for the better, or for the worst; I can’t put the loss of my daughter with those terms. I will just say that it has changed me, SHE has changed me. At my 20 week ultrasound, my husband, daughter Kaydence, and myself, found out that our sweet second baby had a fatal diagnosis, her brain did not develop and within her skull, there was fluid where her brain should have been. She was brain dead even in the womb and had a zero chance of survival outside of me. We made the decision to induce and say goodbye as it was better for OUR family. Others would have chosen to carry to term.
Don’t get confused. I did not WANT this. I did not WANT to say goodbye to my daughter at only 20 weeks. I did not WANT to change my life in that way. I did not WANT to be faced with such a decision that NO ONE wants to make. I did what my husband and I felt was right for OUR family.
Makayla’s birthday was spent with loving and caring people, holding me up and sending prayers and thoughts too my family and I. I didn’t just lose my daughter; my oldest daughter lost her sister, my husband lost his daughter, our parents lost their grand daughter, our brothers lost their niece… the world lost a beautiful little girl who would have been a beautiful addition.
As times goes on, I want and will continue to honor Makayla. I want for Kaydence and other future children we make have to know about their sister. I want my family to speak her name, to never forget her. I want Makayla to know she will always, ALWAYS, be loved and missed and is in our hearts. I will forever carry her with me, she will forever be with us, where we go, what we do.
I will look back on her first birthday, remembering each and every emotion, remember how weak I was at some points in my grief but also how strong I was to live each and everyday.
Happy 1st Birthday Makayla Rose. We love and miss you everyday.
You are invited to read Makayla’s birth story here.
Parenthood through ART
March 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Here at stillbirthday we address many aspects that may present themselves through pregnancy and infant loss. Some of these include primary infertility, secondary infertility, utilizing ART, and, loss after ART (medically assisted conception).
I invite you, mothers and fathers, to share what your experiences, perceptions and feelings are in regard to identifying motherhood, fatherhood, parenthood, through ART.
Have you utilized, or contemplated utilizing, the assistance of ART for pregnancy? Have you utilized an egg or sperm donor?
Have you been challenged by feelings of identity? Inferiority? Jealousy? Grief?
Has your journey and your parenthood given you elation? Validation? Redemption? Healing?
I invite you to consider sharing your story with stillbirthday, so that more parents can learn from your journey.
Take Your Shoes Off
March 13, 2013 by 2 Comments
Welcome to stillbirthday. Read below for our password, and for our copyright information.
Take Your Shoes Off
Stillbirthday is not just another website on the internet.
It is a place that holds life. We at stillbirthday speak life. We at stillbirthday honor life. We at stillbirthday mourn life.
Parts of stillbirthday are password protected. All of stillbirthday should be respected as if it were password protected.
Our stories are a first hand account of possibly our darkest of days, our most traumatic days, and we share our most intimate of thoughts and feelings as we reflect on the life, and death, of our children.
As you step into a story, it is like you are stepping into the room in which a mother first discovers her lifeless child.
Whatever her interpretation, whatever her beliefs, whatever her reaction, whatever her words,
you are walking on holy ground.
Take your shoes off.
Show respect.
Show reverence.
Show compassion.
Learning about the password is intented to slow you down.
It’s intended to get your spirit right. Your mind right. Get your soul right, before entering.
The Stillbirthday Password
The ONLY reason to see something contributed at stillbirthday is to be loved and to give love. Anyone who uses any contributed materials or content published at stillbirthday, outside of these standards may be subject to its author/rightful owner pursuing legal action to the fullest extent of the law, including within the anti-circumvention law, misusing the electronic password barrier. This might include republishing a story in part or in entirety with re-interpretation, republishing a photo that does not belong to you, publishing the password without this notice, or in any way using a bereaved authors own healing journey in a way intended to cause emotional harm to that author or any other bereaved person who potentially may interpret their own experiences in a similar way. You can view our Sharing Rights and Responsibilities page for more information.
By entering in our password to access what a member of our stillbirthday family has contributed here, you are agreeing to these terms and agreeing to abide by these expectations. It should be considered that by proceeding with using the password you are in agreement of the above. Finally, the password is stillbirthday
Heidi Faith’s story
This place is where I come to mourn my fourth child, born via natural miscarriage on April 19, 2011.
I saw his lifeless body, bobbing on the ultrasound monitor. I was terrified. I searched, frantically.
I peered into the screen, praying, more deeply than I ever have in my life.
“Please God, speak life back into him. Please, God. I know You can do this…”
It was the most intense request, the biggest miracle, the deepest I have ever pressed into God.
When the ultrasound machine was shut off, and all I could see was blackness, I was encountering a spiritual experience that would change the course of the rest of my life.
Why wouldn’t God perform this miracle?
Why has my baby died?
I was having a holy encounter. A supernatural experience.
I was deeply, profoundly vulnerable, as my entire being was overcome by the vastness and weight of what I was experiencing.
A doctor entered into the room, and attempted to break through this sacred space.
She tried to cut through with slicing words.
The very first thing I heard from another human being, in my most vulnerable, spiritual encounter, was
“Call it whatever you want: products of conception, the potential for life, but…” as she clasped her hands firmly on my trembling shoulders she continued, “we need to get that debris out of there.”
The Rights of the Bereaved
Every bereaved person has a right to an authentic mourning.
Every bereaved person has a right to interpret his or her experiences in his or her own way.
Every bereaved person has a right to their feelings shifting and their perception changing through the course of their healing journey.
Every bereaved person has a right to discover how to nurture and discipline their grief for their own greatest healing.
Every bereaved person has a right to bring a flicker of light, of hope, of healing, to another bereaved person as they may be in the darkest days of their life.
Every bereaved person even has a right to make mistakes, to stumble, to not have a smooth, linear grief, but to recognize their own accountability within their own experience with grace and the accountability of others within their own experience with mercy.
Every bereaved person has a right to explore healing options, resources and expressions, free from the condemnation of others.
I implore you, to read our stories, read our experiences, with an awe and an admiration for the courage, the raw heartbreak, the discoveries, the grief and the healing, these, our stillbirthday families, pilgrimage on and sojourn through.
I invite you, to consider sharing your story, your baby’s photo, and to participate in the many opportunities for journeying toward healing we have at stillbirthday.
Thank you, for visiting stillbirthday. May you find a flicker of light if even in your darkest hour here.
Related: be a part of Debris Day!
