Jamie Crouse Gwynn, SBD

Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving Austin, Texas

email: JamieCrouse.SBD@stillbirthday.info

website: www.austinareadoula.com

 

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Shelby Larson, SBD

Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving Anchorage Alaska

email: ShelbyLarson.SBD@stillbirthday.info

 

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Born on Christmas Eve

She learned she was pregnant while the late summer sun was hot in the sky.

Two tiny pink stripes of motherhood and two flushed pink cheeks as she excitedly dashed and waved her wand of victory at her unsuspecting husband.  The information still over his head, her eyes ablaze with thrill calculating every decibel of the crinkles on her lovers face as the revelation broke through his own ever widening grin.

The season was quickly moving into autumn, and the smells of freshly sharpened crayons and the sites of bright yellow school busses seemed to her to be a message that the entire world was preparing for developing young children.

Halloween decorations across the front yards of her neighborhood seemed to whisper adoringly to her small but busy middle that we each of us can dare to dream to be anything or anyone we want to be.

Magic in the air.

Rain drops brought the end of summer and as such seemed to usher in the whole end of the year.

Shopping malls seem to long desperately to duplicate the vibrant colors of October deciduous trees by ushering in the brightly colored packages ornamenting their shelves and tempting consumers to long for.

She observed how autumn seemed to proliferate a sense of longing, a desire to be like others.  She marveled that this maturity in her thinking just happened to emerge while she achieved pregnancy, a destination she longed to travel to since being a pig tailed little girl toting her dolly in her backpack., peanut-butter-and-jellied chubby fingers pressed stickily in her mamas warm grasp.

“I’m here,” she whispers marvelously at herself, the subconscious joy becoming so pervasive that her hand finds its place on her ever growing yet unobtrusively small belly, more often than she even senses her hand there.  Her hand and her baby, simply, unnoticeably, harmoniously, perfectly together.

She prepared Thanksgiving dinner in her home – a large affair, with great extravagance and beautiful detail, even through her sheer exhaustion.  She wanted it to be perfect when she and her husband announced to their too-distant family that they are expecting their baby.

The Christmas tree went up early, per her insistence.  She wanted the tree up before Thanksgiving and her husband conceded, yet with a grin, caught by the contagion of his wife’s pure, blissful joy.  He was delighted too.

The Thanksgiving feast was stressful, difficult, and marvelous.  That night, when the house was once again quiet, her husband found her, hand on belly, gazing at their Christmas tree.  She was worn, socked feet crossed lazily on the ottoman.  He slid in next to her on the couch, wrapped one arm around her shoulders, and placed a small, brightly colored package adorned with a crisp red bow on her lap.

Face flushed from exhaustion, her dreamy eyes were brought back from their wandering and met his gaze, and the two held a beloved moment of peace, serenity and thanksgiving before she opened the gift.

An ornament.

“Baby’s First Christmas” it read.

He stammered something about how the first Christmas probably really won’t count until next year, after the baby is born, but, that he couldn’t pass it up.

She was sure she felt the baby moving.  She pressed his hand onto her middle and said, “No, you’re right.  This counts.”

She remembers these things, as she labors.

As her contractions build while she stands, rocking, holding her belly.  She remembers these things, as she looks down at her middle, realizing she is wearing the same shirt as that Thanksgiving day.

She is rocking, walking – it is a rocking walking that is a laboring mother’s kind of dance.  She rocks and walks in this way until she is in front of her Christmas tree.  She reaches out and touches the ornament – Baby’s First Christmas – that was placed just a few weeks ago.

She holds the ornament with one hand, her belly with the other, as she heaves a cry from the depth of her soul.

She heaves cries like this in succession.

Her husband stands near, now reaching in for a kind of standing, leaning, embrace.  She falls easily into his arms.  He is strong, and he holds them up, his family.  He is weeping, but she can’t see his tear stained cheeks from where she is.

She labors.  For long stretches of time, she labors, drinking ice water with cucumber slices, changing positions and talking.

Her husband and her midwife take turns holding her, wiping her forehead, encouraging her.

She takes long visits to the bathroom.  Her husband freshens the room after each visit, placing a firm footing onto a large, outstretched bath towel, and sweeps the area of the floor with his foot, lumping the towel into a bundle around his foot, smearing and wiping up blots of birth blood.  He opens up a clean towel and lays it down, this becoming a sort of ritual.  They have a lot of towels.

She comments on more than one bathroom visit that she is afraid of clogging the toilet.  She uses the peri bottle as instructed by her midwife.  She looks intently at her clean white tissue paper colored bright red each time before releasing these wads of red and white to fall into the crimson water of her toilet bowl.  She flushes and sighs.

She decides for a time to sit in her dining room.  She seems to collapse into the chair with a forlorn weariness.  The large wooden table has no cloth on it.  It is covered with wrapping paper  and endless yards of ribbon and gift tissue of every color of the rainbow.  Between two fingers she holds the corner of a single thin sheet of gift tissue and follows carefully to pull out a perfect sheet of thin white paper covered in gold, sparkly glitter.

“How ironic” she speaks softly “that my baby may be caught in tissue.”

“It is because she is a gift” her husband speaks, almost croaks, his first full sentence since this began.

Nobody knows the gender for sure.  This is the first mention, and it is especially powerful because the mom has been hoping for a little girl.

In time, the mother is later squatting, with her husband behind her, her midwife in front of her.

In time, her baby emerges into view.   The mom slips from a squat into a sit, leaning into her husband’s chest.

The mother’s hand, finds her baby, still.

Mother holds her baby, and husband holds his wife.

Midwife holds the space.

The mother looks up at her twinkling Christmas tree.  She can’t see the trunk for the gathering of hope, the message of affirmation of love packaged as gifts to her from her beloved waiting below the tree.  This mother marvels aloud, at the vibrant splendor of the beautiful colors of tissue paper, for the wonderful surprises that they hold.  She quietly decides then, that gift tissue will forever remind her of her baby.  An affirmation of love, packaged as a gift, waiting for her.

“Baby’s First Christmas” she utters.

Her doula scribbles onto a journal as fast as possible to keep up.

This is her story.

 

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{This is a story compiled and edited from birth notes written by an SBD doula, and approved by the mother to share.  As with all stories shared here by others than the parents, identifying information is omitted and only the message of fondness and love from the writer to the family is conveyed.}

 

Sarah Davis, SBD

Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving Tulsa, Oklahoma

email: SarahDavis.SBD@stillbirthday.info

Certified in Psychological First Aid

 

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Thanks Giveaway

tgInto our third year of providing support to families and training to professionals, we recently credentialed our 198th certified stillbirthday birth & bereavement doula, Ashley Arnold, SBD.

 

Ashley was sponsored into our training program and now wants to offer a full sponsorship to someone interested in the training.  Just complete the form below, and one random entry will be selected and announced on Friday, December 5, to enroll into our training session beginning January 5, 2014.

That’s it.  It’s really that simple.

 

You can click here to learn about our doula program.

You can click here to learn about our general sponsorship program (and can list your name there or sponsor a name there as well).  We ask if your name is listed on the general sponsorship list already only because it is a long list – one way or the other is not required to enter the giveaway.

 

 

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The Courage to Christmas Shop

Each year, various organizations partner together to help community members purchase Christmas gifts for orphaned or needy children.

These are such wonderful and important opportunities for all of us to be reminded that we do have love to bring, and these opportunities are usually outlined to guide us to follow a few simple steps to bring tangible items to children who would cherish them.

I grew up in foster care.

Through the years, my name was on many lists for love to show up.

And love showed up.

 

The additionally personal opportunity – and challenge – for bereaved mothers, is the realization that we also have the opportunity to intentionally select gifts for a hurting child who is at or near the same age our child would be.

You don’t have to become that specific, of course.  But, the extension of endurance, the opportunity to stretch your courage, is there.

 

So this year, if you’re considering purchasing Christmas gifts for a child in need, I thought I’d share a few resources with you to help support this wonderful, but challenging, opportunity.

 

To Bring Love to Local Children

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Here are some ways you might get connected with “wish lists” of local orphaned or needy children:

  • Your local grocery store may have a Christmas tree with wish lists placed as ornaments on it.
  • Your local churches may have wish list information.
  • Your local children’s hospital may have a wish list for the children healing there.
  • Local children’s group homes or battered women’s shelters may have information if they have a website.
  • Do a simple google search for things like “Adopt an Angel ____” and enter in your city or town.
  • Salvation Army.
  • United Way.

Adopt an Angel” (Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, West Virginia)

If you’d like to be a part of this program, you can select the age and gender of the child, and Adopt an Angel will email you the details and the child’s Christmas wish list.  You can then mail your items either directly to Adopt an Angel or to stillbirthday headquarters, at: The M0M Center, 11117 N. Oak Trafficway, Kansas City MO 64155.

 

To Bring Love to International Children

There are various charity organizations that aim to bring support to children in different struggling conditions from various countries.

 

 

To Be Supported for Your Courage

Because intentionally shopping for gifts for a child, particularly if you’re choosing a child of the same age and/or gender as would be your beloved baby not alive, can be a healing but also a difficult thing to do, stillbirthday simply wants to thank you for your courage, and to offer to you that this doesn’t have to be something you do alone.

 

Meet Your SBD Doulas

If you are choosing to purchase items for an orphaned or needy child, please know that if you’d like, this can be a lovely time for you to meet your local stillbirthday doulas.  If you’d like to have a little moral support during your healing – but possibly challenging – shopping trip, you can view our listing of doulas, and see who is nearest to you.  Send the doula an email, and just tell her that you want to purchase Christmas gifts for an orphaned child, and the two of you can arrange a time when she can meet you at a store.  You can push the cart, make the selections and purchase the items for the Christmas wish list, and just have a chance to share your story with your doula.  She’ll just be there for you, simply to walk alongside you and listen, and to bring the tissues if needed.

This is a very individual, non-threatening and wonderful time for you simply to get to know your nearest SBD doulas, and to allow your story to be heard.

The gifts you purchase are about bringing joy and hope to a child.  But your decision to bring such joy and hope is about you.  It’s about your sacrifice, your courage, your love.  Your stillbirthday doula simply wants to bring some free and tangible validation to you for these things you bring.

For this opportunity to meet your nearest stillbirthday doula, please click here for our doula listing, and send a brief email to the nearest doulas (you can certainly email more than one).  Your doula won’t make any purchases but is simply there to be with you for a couple of hours to walk alongside you as you shop and listen as you share.

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Melissa Ballman, SBD

Certified Birth & Bereavement Doula® serving Minnesota

email: MelissaBallman.SBD@stillbirthday.info

 

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GhostBelly: Mothers of Unexpected Home Stillbirth

There are times when a message not only opens doors and breaks down walls FOR the bereaved community, but WITHIN the bereaved community.

In the past three years of stillbirthday, I have learned that the very spaces where we can find home within the healing community can also become festered with exclusivity and as a result, isolation – from within and from without.

  • Mothers of stillbirth can sometimes feel as if their grief is more substantial than mothers of miscarriage.
  • Mothers of miscarriage can sometimes feel as if their grief is more substantial than mothers of elective abortion.
  • And mothers of elective abortion can sometimes feel as if their grief is more substantial than mothers who have yet to conceive, but who long desperately to.
  • Infertility as primary or secondary can become isolating, even from each other.

Not only is home stillbirth rarely talked about, but, even this demographic divides into two seemingly polar opposite experiences:

To the latter, let me make one thing clear:

I like birth choices.  But I love the mothers who make them.

Unexpected home stillbirth is a difficult thing to discuss, because shame and blame both can become intricately woven into the story.  If not from the parents themselves, assumptions and judgments can be thrust upon the parents by loved ones, by neighbors, co-workers, and friends.  From the investigative process that may include law enforcement.  Projected upon by the midwife or later, from the hospital staff.  And if this doesn’t happen, there are certainly enough predatorily minded people online who will seek to script the story into something outright dangerous to the mother’s bereavement journey – if she doesn’t hate the midwife, they will be sure she hates herself.

All of these things impede upon healing.

 

If you have experienced unexpected home stillbirth, may you know:

  • there are resources and there is support for you.
  • you have a right to define your own experience.
  • you have a right to change the definition of your experience whenever you need to.
  • you have a right to know that you are not required to align with anyone else’s interpretation of your experience.
  • you have a right to support in navigating the emergency transfer, medical involvement and possible legal involvement there may be.
  • you have a right to postpartum care.  Lactation, lochia, sleep deprivation, hunger, help with household chores such as raking, shoveling, grocery shopping, errands, cooking and cleaning are all areas you deserve postpartum care, just as any mother does.
  • you have a right to explore the fullness of the reality of your baby, including calling your baby by name, having keepsakes, and bonding with your baby.
  • you have a right to be the recipient of support, while your midwife receives her own, needed, emotional support from her own sources.
  • you have a right to memories not filled with blame toward others.
  • you have a right to memories not filled with blame toward yourself.
  • you have a right to unconditional support.
  • you have a right to unconditional support (yes, it is worth mentioning twice).

 

Listen to GhostBelly

gb1The author of GhostBelly graced stillbirthday headquarters – The M0M Center – with a visit recently, and, her book is phenomenal.

Everyone who attended left with a signed copy.  Her book is an important one and I would encourage any mother or midwife impacted by unexpected home stillbirth to read her book and learn from her wisdom, courage and love.  Rarely does a book come along that so profoundly and so articulately speaks into its niche demographic in the way that GhostBelly does.  Rarely does a piece of writing offer such a fair consideration and from such an intimately impacted role of personal bereavement.  Lisa is a beautiful mother and phenomenal writer.

I have never seen a writer speak into unexpected home stillbirth with the depth and bredth and courage and maturity and love as Lisa has.

GhostBelly is a must read for anyone desiring to gain understanding of birth setting choices, homebirth midwifery, and the larger scope of impact of infant loss when such loss occurs unexpectedly at home or during hospital transport.

 

In true gorgeous fashion, Lisa has offered us an audio excerpt of her book.  Please, be sure to be in a safe place, with quiet, love….and tissue.

Here is the link to purchase your copy of GhostBelly, and to follow GhostBelly on facebook.

 

Click here for YOUR FREE AUDIO EXCERPT OF GHOSTBELLY.

 

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GhostBelly is the kind of reading experience that I think truly could benefit from a private book club.  If you’d be interested in reading this book along with a small group of peers, let me know by sending a message to the stillbirthday facebook page, and I’ll share a link with you where we can read the book by chapter together, and,  just really cherish the personal as well as the collective experience of home stillbirth, and of maternal bereavement.  Order your book now, and we’ll get a group started in November.

Come, and let us open up doors not just FOR the healing community, but WITHIN it.  Because, we are all in this together.

 

 

 

When Grief Meets Depression

 

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:

  • When I can source the feeling to my baby or motherhood experience.
  • When I can be consoled with hope, joy, or peace.
  • When I can assess and determine that my reaction is in proportion to the circumstances.
  • When I can identify that the experience does not involve the internal dialogue with the foreigner in my mind.
  • When it doesn’t attack my interpretation of my worth.

 

I know it’s depression when:

  • When I am complimented but the gift doesn’t stick to my heart.
  • When the feeling of hopelessness is pervasive.
  • When the feeling of despair is cataclysmic.
  • When I feel like every day I make life worse for those around me.
  • When I feel impossibly trapped in alone, suffocated by everyone else.
  • When I feel incapable in prominent physical and/or psychological, and/or spiritual ways.

 

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:

  • Crisis Hotlines
  • Counselors, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists in your area.
  • Mental health facilities in your area.
  • Simple postpartum depression screenings, which are available online or in any pediatrician’s office.
  • Any church.  The nearest church, of any denomination.  Ask them to speak love to you and don’t accept anything that doesn’t fit exactly that.
  • Your loved ones – but with a very real stipulation.  You will need to help them help you.  If you are enduring depression and they are resisting realizing it, for any reason, or if they have been or will use this as a fallback reason for other areas of growth, this will absolutely impact their response and ability to support you.  If you are concerned about how they will support you, ask the other members of your support team how to equip your loved ones to really love you – when and how you need it.
  • People.  I have learned that the people placed in the most critical situations are so very often divinely appointed, and in the most bizarre ways.  If you are in a black moment, believe the people around you have something worthy to give, and that you, have something worthy to give.   People aren’t perfect.  But there might be something to that specific person involved in that specific moment, placed specifically so just to remind you that you are good.
  • Moments.  Moments are on your team.  You are worthy.  You are valuable.  You matter.  You are not broken.  You are good.
  • Love.  Self harm can be intentional physical, nutritional, interpersonal, or really any kind of other harm to yourself.  It is not love, even when that foreigner in your mind tells you that it is rational and loving – this is a lie.  You are true love.  You are true love.  Treat yourself with forgiveness, acknowledgement and love.
  • God.  I am so entirely serious when I say there can be moments in depression when there is literally nothing else.  When I have absolutely nothing else to bring.  Nothing.  Nothing.  And I am so entirely vulnerable, and I am so entirely terrified.  And then, absolutely miraculously, the breeze comes.  It didn’t rescue, it didn’t cure.  But it lightened, it cleared, just enough, just, enough.

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:

  • Depression is not laziness. Neither is it selfishness.
  • Depression is not a reason for blame, shame or punishment.
  • There are different ways to successfully address and heal through depression.
  • Depression needs to be taken seriously.
  • The person is not depression.  The person is love.  And the person can still have a ton of good to bring and ton of love to give.
  • You might need to build a support team for yourself in learning how to support your loved one.

 

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.

love is

 

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High School Mothers Matter

High school mothers matter.

High school mothers matter, because mothers matter.

If she experiences pregnancy during the formative years of adolescence, the young mother deserves unobtrusive validation and unconditional love.

 

In Recent News

Less than a week ago, a teen mother experienced a natural miscarriage in a second floor bathroom stall at her public high school.

And, as the baby was discovered yet in the basin of the toilet by the school janitor, the high school principal alerted the local authorities.

The authorities arrived by vehicle.  By helicopter.  By what high school students called a “swarm.”

 

I personally hold a great deal of respect for our authorities and I understand the urgency in defending the life of this baby, and the importance of investigating to ensure that the mother is safe.

The fact that media coverage is painting an overarching response by police doesn’t seem coincidental and it seems like a ploy to turn one mother’s loss into propaganda against authorities trained to serve and protect our communities.

I sought a medical provider.  I learned that my baby was not alive, and my provider literally said, “We need to get that debris out of there.”

I gave birth in my bathroom.

And my baby had no medical right, no legal right.  I felt entirely abandoned and alone.

I do not appreciate the media coverage painting this story as if police were eager to barge into the school to shoot down an innocent girl.

The authorities were told that a teen girl had had a baby in the bathroom stall on a school day, and they came on the scene.  A situation like this would have a million different questions, each gigantically important and they had to respond.

I am glad that they did.

 

The Mistakes That Were Made

With that said, mistakes were made.

A spokesperson for the local initiative to promote the Baby Moses law offered a presumptuous, ill-informed message about the mother that was saturated in arrogance and offense.

Baby Moses law is a valuable opportunity for struggling new mothers of many situations.  It provides a small window of time in which the mother is exempt from criminal charges by relinquishing her baby to a designated institution such as a hospital, fire station, police station or even some churches.   This as an alternative to abandoning babies in trash cans, and it is an option that has and is saving lives.

Opportunities to provide mothers with real options, such as the many different approaches to adoption, teen single parent education and the Baby Moses initiative, do empower individuals and families to make the best decisions in the situations they are facing.

However, for a spokesperson of an infant crisis initiative to declare that the display of authorities entering into the public high school or even that the death of her baby was preventable had she chosen to carry to term is cruel, ill-timed and flat not true.

It’s speaking into an area the man knows not of.

 

Statistics

By the age of 19, seven out of one hundred girls become pregnant.  And that’s not from a firmly pro-life source, that’s sourced from planned parenthood itself.

Add in the statistics that every minute a mother in the US experiences a pregnancy and infant loss, the reality that a teen mother can endure a spontaneous miscarriage or stillbirth is real.

The reality that teens can face not only parenting, but bereavement, is real.

 

A Social Shortcoming

Teen parenting is hard.  Flat hard.  But coming from the place that every teen mother either should have an elective abortion or wants to have an elective abortion is offensively irresponsible and horrendously inappropriate.

Teen mothers face doubts of their abilities, not only as mothers, but as mothers who are charged with the balance of wearing the shame from their parents and/or local leaders, the isolation from their previous social construct, the pressure of maintaining grades during a pregnancy that requires prenatal medical appointments, and trying to make due with the lack of emotional support from a partner who is facing many of the exact same challenges, pressures and burdens.

These, among many other things.

 

High Schools Need Help

Here are just a few questions to consider:

  • Does high school sex education or parenting education discuss anything at length about miscarriage, stillbirth, or grief?
  • Is this young mother receiving physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual support according to her beliefs and needs after having experienced miscarriage?
  • What has happened or will happen with the physical form of the baby?
  • How will this janitor be gently validated?
  • How is the school going to address the longterm impact of grief amongst the students – this mother and her friends and peers – after learning that a baby was born not alive on their campus?

 

There are options.  Options not just for teen mothers, but options for those who are in roles of authority or charged with their care.

Inspired by Lisa Miller, stillbirthday has a Church and Campus Doula tuition discount program as an opportunity into our comprehensive birth & bereavement training to prepare individuals to serve as doulas (through our online doula program for a dramatic discount on tuition) who have a heart to serve within specific congregations of any faith or to serve as a real, tangible support for students on any school campus.  In fact, it was Lisa who first came to know about the recent situation and the young mother in the high school.

 

An Open Letter to the Young Mother

 

To a warrior,

What you have faced, I do not know all the details of.  Were you in love?  Did you know you became pregnant?  Did he know?

Oh, sweet young friend, I wonder so many things about you.

Did you know that labor was happening?  Did you feel alone?

I think of you and in my mind I see you trying to go back to class.  And I weep for you, I weep for you, my friend I think of with fondness.

You are courageous.

You have endured so much.  So, very much.

And when the police came, how terrifying that must have felt.

Like a nightmare that not only didn’t end, but brought everyone you knew into it.

And then the shame and condemnation already thrust upon you, before you even spoke.  People who are supposed to be trustworthy, representing places and resources and options that are supposed to be trustworthy.  To hear from them that you did things wrong, that you did things bad, and that giving birth in a bathroom stall during school hours is a criminal act.

I want to tell you, and I want all teen girls to hear me.

Even if the thought of elective abortion had crossed your mind – or, even if you had decided on and had acted on elective abortion – you are still worthy of love.

Even if laws regarding the right of life in utero are involved in your story, even if medical involvement ensuring your obstetrical and physical health are involved in your story, those are aspects (aspects that likely feel huge, but they are only aspects) and are not – are never – the whole story.

You matter.  You count.

And to the students of the school, if you felt that the police presence was a really big deal – may you know, that giving birth to a baby not alive really is a big deal.  Your fellow student matters.  She has endured more than you know, and she is in need of and worthy of honor, validation and love.

I can promise you, that many of your teachers, faculty, or friends’ parents have likely experienced pregnancy and infant loss.  Your own mother might have.

 

It Is Time

We need to talk about it.  Politics and agendas and propaganda aside.  We need to talk about the realities, the needs of those impacted by pregnancy and infant loss.

I challenge you to open the conversation.  Ask the women of all ages in your life.

“Have you ever, or do you know of anyone, who has been impacted by pregnancy and infant loss?”

 

Statistics: A Closer Look

Between miscarriage of all its names, elective abortion, stillbirth and neonatal death, for every baby who reaches two months old past birth, there is another who is not alive.  Literally, the statistics are 1:2 in the United States.

So if you have not personally been impacted by pregnancy and infant loss, you are an arms length away from at least one person in your own life, who has.

Do you know who they are?

It is time we ask, and listen.

 

original photo source unknown

Additional Resources:

  • We have a library of stories shared by teen mothers who have experienced pregnancy and infant loss
  • You can share your story
  • We have resources for loved ones
  • We have a training for individuals to work on campuses to serve students
  • We have guidance and support for all pregnancy and birth situations
  • You can enter in search words in your search engine for local support

 

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.