Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving North Central Kentucky
email: MariBrannan.SBD@stillbirthday.info
Support for birth. Support for bereavement. Support for you.
Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving North Central Kentucky
email: MariBrannan.SBD@stillbirthday.info
Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving Cleveland, Ohio
email: MelodyLyons.SBD@stillbirthday.info
Told by: Lori
They were gone before I knew there were there… before I knew there were two. My beautiful twin babies. I went in for my first prenatal appointment at 18 weeks. I had a feeling something was wrong because my belly wasn’t growing. And I was spotting. And my heartburn had suddenly subsided weeks ago. I sat in the ultrasound room alone for 20 minutes, staring at the blank screen. I wondered what it would show. I thought about all the other women who had looked at that same screen. I thought about all the emotion-filled moments of joy and sorrow they had experienced. The midwife who greeted me was very kind and asked about my concerns. She applied the gel and waited awhile before delivering the news in a very gentle voice, “I’m looking for movement and, unfortunately, I don’t see any. I’m SO sorry… But what I do see is 2 babies”.
I was shocked and teary-eyed immediately. There were two cords and one placenta, which she confirmed meant they would’ve been identical twins. I was anxious to tell my husband the news. His mom is a twin and always wanted twin grandchildren. With 22 grandkids she never had any luck. He was shocked like me and took the news hard. It’s the first time in 10 years that I’ve seen him cry. We scheduled a 2nd ultrasound for the next day to confirm and have photos printed. We learned they died at 11weeks 3 days and 12 weeks 3 days. I thought about what I was doing back then. How could I not wonder if I had caused this? I had kept a diary of my diet and how I was feeling, and planned to check it when I got home. The ultrasound photos were so precious to us. My husband gave copies to his mom who covered her mouth in shock when she saw them. There was lots of crying and sadness, but also joy that we’ll one day see the babies again in heaven. I opted for a natural miscarriage. Two days later we got to see our twins. I had cramps for 1.5 hours that increased in severity. I got up to pee, but my husband was worried about losing the babies down the toilet. He insisted I use our portable camping potty.
After peeing I sat there a minute or two longer and felt one gush, followed by a second gush 30 seconds later. It had felt like only water had passed, but when I looked down I saw the placenta still half way inside me and one twin dangling by the umbilical cord!
I finished pushing everything out and my husband cut the cord (something he felt too squeamish about with our first child). I located the other twin (still partially inside the sac) and washed them both off. I couldn’t believe we were holding our babies in our hands. They looked so peaceful and I was glad they had each other, that they didn’t die alone. We took pictures immediately and were so thankful for the opportunity to see our babies. I had read tips about taking photos in water and those turned out especially beautiful. We were also glad to know the sex of the babies (they were boys). We named them Jonathan and Ethan. It would’ve been so wonderful to know the them… to have them be a part of our family. They will be forever in our hearts. I wrote the attached momento for their baby book (complete with their tiny footprints).
Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving Perth, Western Australia
email: JodieMoss.SBD@stillbirthday.info
Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving Kitsap, Washington
email: BetheSmith.SBD@stillbirthday.info
Discover what the SBD credentialed doula has achieved.
Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving Seattle and surrounding areas, Washington
email: NatashaCrouch.SBD@stillbirthday.info
Certified in Psychological First Aid
Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, New Mexico
email: EvonnieFomento.SBD@stillbirthday.info
Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving Phoenix, Arizona
email: BeckyBrimhall.SBD@stillbirthday.info
Becky is a wife and mother to three babies in heaven. Since her last loss on October 7, 2013, she has been undergoing fertility treatments and looking for ways to use her grief to help other women.
In 2013, she co-founded “Forget Me Not Ministries,” which provides resources and encouragement to women and families grieving the loss of a baby.
Becky is so excited to have completed the Stillbirthday Birth and Bereavement Doula training and hopes and trusts that the Lord will use what she has learned to continue to support these women to whom she is ministering.
2 Corinthians 1:4
He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. (NLT)
Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving Colorado Springs, CO
email: ChristinaTrimble.SBD@stillbirthday.info
Luminosa Wellness & Birth Services – luminosawellness.com
Certified in Psychological First Aid
I am an Army wife and mother of 2. My passion for supporting clients is based in Holistic Health and Wellness. True wellness is comprised of emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing and I believe providing all three together is important for my role as a Stillbirthday Doula. I knew I wanted to become a doula during my first pregnancy. After my second was born friends of mine experienced the loss of their son. In researching loss support I came across Stillbirthday and knew immediately that I wanted to become a doula through Stillbirthday so that I could help families in need. Loss support, birth education, nutrition and wellness are all things I am passionate about.
I offer customized support to fulfill the individual needs of each client. Bereavement services are free of charge; however, love donations are gratefully welcomed so that I can continue to support other families in need. I believe no mother or family should feel alone when walking any journey of loss. I can assist local mothers and families in person and anyone by phone, email, or Skype.
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Since the DSM –V changes there’s been talk in the healing community about the insult it is to even suggest that grief is anything near depression.
But might I offer another perspective?
In my own little experience, grief has been like a spiritual cold. I laid down on that crinkly thin paper on that hard table, felt the gel on my belly. Saw my lifeless baby bobbing gently on the ultrasound, in time with the motions of the technician, searching, pressing in for his heartbeat.
A spiritual cold. A sudden chill, causing me to wrap my arms around myself and have an inconsolable compulsion to curl up in – ironically – the fetal position.
Filling the trash pail with snot and bunches of tissue.
My grief requires my self-care through nourishment. Warm brothy soups quench blood loss in the earliest days of grief, and warm a chilly soul on any day. Deep mugs of cocoa with dopples of cool whip and droplets of peppermint essential oil befriend my taste buds and remind me that some things are still good.
My grief requires my self-care through action. Expression of some kind – art, poetry, dance, throwing rocks into a pond.
My grief requires my self-care through rest. Bereavement can be stored in our physical body and manifest as seemingly unrelated issues if not nurtured into healing. Plus, sometimes, grief can get kind of messy. So if you’re one whose grief dance looks more like a shrieking, yelping, frenzied wild lady with hair pasted to your face with sweat, you might need a good long nap after your beautiful expression.
Grief, like a cold, has its moments of pure comfort in the midst of the ache. Maybe even because of the ache. When the warm blanket feels just right. When the bath feels sublime and when the toast with jam is delightful because – hallelujah – you know your stomach is strong enough to handle it.
We think we can pre-emptively prevent a cold. We think we know when “cold season” nears and we think we can find ways around it. We follow old wives’ tales about how we catch a cold and we follow old wives’ tales on how to treat a cold.
When my grief is showing, people run from me like they’re afraid of catching a cootie.
For gracious’ sake, sneeze into your arm, not your hand! We smear sanitizer all over our feelings and placate our hearts with plastic gloves, believing that the impression of a touch is as good as real contact.
And, like seasonal sneezes, even after months of sunshine, happiness and splendor, I can still catch that cold of grief again. And so I’ve learned to tend to my grieving heart, stock up on broth and hankies, and discover purpose in the respite.
Depression is different.
Depression, feels like spiritual cancer. And I don’t want to trip up my Christian friends so if you believe that your soul has an eternal home, spiritual cancer does not mean that this home is eroding or becoming any less secure. What I mean by spiritual cancer is still purely within the earthly realm. Nor do I mean to belittle anyone surviving with physical cancer. I mean this analogy in the deepest reverence for your endurance.
And so yet this becomes harder to explain.
Depression, despite its name, does not feel so much as a pressing in. It feels like a cataclysmic barging in, like a wringing out of any last droplet of the dew of happy. Where grief is a tenderness in my heart, depression’s work feels mostly rooted in my mind. Physically, I can feel it there, like a presence invading my home. Depression feels like my mind has become so preoccupied with a conversation with this intruder; it feels like the purpose of my committing to this conversation in the first place is literally to tell this intruder that it is not welcome here. The dialogue is in trying to deny my feelings for the good of others, and is such an investment of my attention, such a consuming task, that anything from outside of this conversation becomes an interruption and invariably, proves to be an attack against the very point of the conversation.
My depression requires self-care through my permission. Resisting the reality of depression does not heal it. Willing it away only works as long as your will does. If depression’s really here, it’ll test your will and, it will break your will.
My depression requires self-care through my building of my team. This is the tipping point and why so many who endure depression do so alone. Because the alternative, attempting to build your team, does something terribly frightening to someone already becoming deepened by depression. It means you become vulnerable to even more attack, and, at your most vulnerable – the place you are literally asking to be filled. And if you are vulnerable to attack, you will likely find it. Because your loved one who is depressed and who has the boldness to ask for help, is like a little kid with a scraped arm. They cusp their hand over their crooked, outstretched arm – taking it to you, yet guarded even in doing so. They move their clasped hand and, with eyes wide and wet, reveal their wound to you. And rejection of depression is like the trusted school teacher or parent slapping the arm down and ridiculing the child for the injury in the first place. Exposing depression is a terribly frightening thing to do, because it’s hard to prove the worthiness of the injury.
These statements sound bleak, and at first, they are. Frighteningly so.
Both in and out of grief, I require affirmation, validation and love. Because I need these things, I have learned to harvest them from safe places, like home, friends and church. But under attack of this spiritual cancer, even these safe places have become infested with doubt, minimization, silence, and even flat out rejection.
My depression is a kind of starvation. A soul gnawing hunger for the most basic acknowledgement of the worth of me. When I take a deep breath and become intentional of the other parts of me, I find that depression feels like a full grown person squashing my stomach. It makes me literally ache. It hurts to breathe. It hurts not to.
My depression is not a new version of grief. If I could just suppress my feelings about the death of my baby, the death of his personhood, his inherent worth, his place in my mother heart, I would be relieved of neither grief nor depression.
Depression is not grief magnified. Depression is not grief.
Cancer is not caused from too many colds. There may be some precautions to prevent cancer, or depression, but those should not be blamed on or waddled in with shame once the cancer, spiritual or physical, manifests and is identified.
But what is it like, when the two meet? Grief, and depression?
Let me say this:
I am still bereaved. I am still depressed. I am still good.
I know it’s grief when:
I know it’s depression when:
My personal life is such that the feeling of impossibly trapped in alone, suffocated by everyone else manifests quite often. It perpetuates and festers the depression.
I have felt like those who have a view of my life have taken an irresponsible approach in waiting for me to identify my own mental unwellness as the root of all that is not in place in my life. I have felt betrayed and abandoned. I have felt blamed.
I have felt that their breathing their assessments in my face has taken up the sweet oxygen I have needed when I was already drowning.
I have already crossed that tipping point and have asked for help when I so desperately needed it, and I have felt the slap on the wound.
So I want to be careful to those who are reading this who are nearing the embrace of your own depression. You should ask for help.
But I need to speak about what to do when help doesn’t help.
I was ignored.
I was ignored.
I was ignored, again.
And there was no book to read, there was no phone number to call, there was no place to drive to, that heard me.
When I read Bible verses like horoscopes and they still didn’t work.
When I called my counselor and was put through voicemail.
When I went to my church and was left in the hallway.
There might be a time you reach that critical moment. That peak. When you feel like you are supposed to jump. To quit. To quiet the depression, to find rest from this exhausting journey.
In those moments there is literally nobody else. Not your husband, not your friends, not your children. Nobody. Nobody is rescuing you, nobody is even hearing your heartcry, and in fact may seem to be taunting you with even more needs you’re expected to fill.
Please, just don’t jump.
Someone once said, and there’s beauty to it, that when everything hurts, do the thing that hurts the least.
Pull over to the side of the road, if you have to. Get into a storm shelter.
Crumble, if you must. Collapse on the ground, and let the dirt mix with your tears and make you a mud mask. Roll around in it, and maybe you can even laugh at the fun.
Just, don’t, jump.
I promise, I promise, I promise, a gentle breeze will come. One that listens, believes you, believes in you.
For me, that breeze has been God. I have felt in those sudden, terrifying, horrifically overwhelming moments on the cliff that it is literally just me and God. I can’t explain it academically and even the word God might seem to you to carry the stench of proselytizing. But I have been in some real moments, when there was literally nothing else. Nothing. Else. Call it what you want, I do not care. Just call for it. It will come. I promise.
When you are ready to build your team (again) – consider these resources:
For those reading who aren’t familiar with depression, and you believe some of those old tales about what it is, here are some things that are true:
Love, itself, the mysterious force,
not by person, place or thing, but by simple, supernatural, invisible presence
can find you, even in the ugliest moments, the moments of disorder, chaos, and overwhelm.
The impossible moments.
If you believe this, simply and only this, you too can love wildly.
The SBD® Doula provides support to families experiencing birth in any trimester and in any outcome.
Here at stillbirthday.info, you can learn about the SBD® Doula.