Archives for April 2013

Those SBD doula training applicants who complete their registration by May 5 will be entered to win a complete miscarriage blanket package from Miscarriage Blankets and More, valued at well over $200!

This package provides you with 11 differently sized sets of blankets and hats.  You will be able to provide a special set to the families you serve, and can restock the sets you have given easily, through Miscarriage Blankets and More.

Below are the names of those already registered and ready to enter the giveaway opportunity.  Make sure your name is on this list!

Visit the stillbirthday doula training registration page to get registered!

• Bethany
• Jennifer
• Hope
• Courtney
• Connie
• Maria
• Michelle
• January
• Michelle
• Karen
• Monica
• Jennifer
• Barbara-ann
• Tonya
• Emma
• Jodie
• Melissa
• Hope
• Kelly

This giveaway is now closed.  The random number selected was 4 – Courtney!

Grief is hard enough as it is.  Sometimes, we may have feelings that can serve to threaten an already fragile structure.

But our own silence of these things can be just as damaging as the silence our society has toward pregnancy and infant loss.

Here, is a little list, to serve as a platform for future posts.

These are things in addition to the already many feelings we know about bereavement – feeling isolated, misunderstood, silenced.

If you resonate with any of these, or if there’s one you’d like to see on the list, you can comment below, or you can email privately to Heidi.Faith@stillbirthday.info.

• I felt relief.  At any point, there was a sense of relief.
• I felt anger toward my baby.  At some point in the pregnancy or birth, I felt anger toward my baby.
• I really might be depressed.  I want to say it isn’t so, but, it might be.
• I feel confused as to what I grieve and how much I grieve.
• I feel angry at my surviving children and/or my spouse, because they either don’t understand my grief or they distract me from its work.
• I feel angry at God and/or at faith in general.
• I feel angry at my body.
• I feel insecure, threatened and angry at other people’s interpretations of loss, dying, or life after death.
• Issues and pains from long ago have resurfaced because of my loss.

Please know that you are not alone, if you have felt these or other things.  We have a large support section here at stillbirthday, including emergency support.

As far back as biblical times, there has been a connection with shaving hair and mourning (such as Micah 1:16).

In more recent times, there are studies that indicates women cutting their hair after major life events – breakups in particular.

And even among those who trim our locks, there are differing reasons for it:

“You can’t change the situation. But with hair you’re given the chance to change it and move on.”

“I didn’t think cutting my hair would help me cope… but would help me separate my life from the one I made with him,”

Source of quotes: How a Haircut Helps You Cope

And yet others, they think it has something to do with an underlying anger or hostility toward our husbands (source).  It might be connected to feelings of despair – a beautiful fresh hair style can help boost your self esteem, but a very radical change driven by impulse might also have a very negative effect.

So, what about you?

Have you changed your hair style since your bereavement?  Did it offer a needed freshness?  Was it a radically drastic hair style change?  Have you ever noticed the correlation of feelings and hair styles before?

Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to two beautiful stillbirthday mothers, Kat, for bravely asking such a question, and Nicole, for shining some light in how to answer it.

I have been working for days to reach through a situation in Minnesota.

A baby boy was born still, at 22 gestation weeks.

Later, the baby boy’s physical form, his body, was found at an off-site laundering service.  He gently rolled out of the hospital blankets he was tucked in.

I have reached several local hospitals – the one that this baby was born at is published elsewhere but I tend to not think that’s the main point.

In an enormously horrendous turn of events, while the hospital staff were undergoing policy alertness to prevent such an incident from occurring again, it has now been reported that there is a second baby, born at 19 gestation weeks, whom the hospital cannot locate.

This isn’t an official “Amber Alert”.  But, stillbirthday cries for the families of Minnesota.

Our color is lavender – it is pink and blue, combined.  We are all in this together.

We cry for the family who is now wondering if their baby rolling from the sheets seemed frightening, when in fact their baby is beautiful, and we long to tell them so.

We cry for the laundering staff who lost trust in their own community hospitals and who now go to work with unease.

We cry for the families who have given birth to stillborn babies, who now fear that their baby may be the one who is unaccounted for.

We cry for the families who are pregnant, anticipating giving birth in their local hospitals, who now clutch their expanded bellies in fear, who now dread entering the hospital and who perceive the staff with suspicion, who now look with reservation upon the linens they are laboring on and wondering with dissatisfaction about the attention given to their babies.

These are fears that are all brought on by preventable and terrible mistakes.

More hospitals need to be comprehensively trained in birth and bereavement support, so that they can salvage and strengthen the trust they ought to have with their communities.

May Minnesota find this child.  And may they find healing.

Click photo for complete news story and photo source.

 Thank you to the stillbirthday mothers and families who contacted me in regard to this situation many days ago, including Michelle, who first brought it to my attention.  We truly are all in this together.