The Girl Scout, the nurse working the night shift and the woman who just turned 100 have something significant in common.
Each wants to do something personal, tangible, to bring comfort to parents who have just lost babies. So they knit or crochet or stitch little dresses and blankets and hats, most of them too tiny to fit a child's doll.
They will be just right, though, says Wendy Roberts, for babies who lived only briefly — or those who died before they could be born.
Roberts, University Hospital Perinatal Bereavement Program coordinator, works with volunteers, health-care providers, social workers and interpreters to help families who are mourning.
There are many steps and stages to the grief of parents and grandparents and siblings who lost a baby to miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth or newborn death. And every individual will deal with it in his or her own way. For the hospital staff, the teachers are the families that have been there, who say quite frankly what went right and what they could have done without, says Roberts. What families have shared forms the program's foundation.
Volunteers make the outfits and blankets and hats, part of a bereavement kit that also includes a tiny gold ring and a mold of the baby's hands or feet or both. There's a thick information packet, with information on grief itself and area support services, with ideas on how to remember the baby and honor his or her memory.
Baby's hair can be clipped and saved in a little bag that's provided. They even have a tip sheet on how to get off product mailing lists. Nothing hurts more, they've been told, than going home without a baby, then opening the mail to find free samples of baby products.
Because the hospital serves many women from around the region who are having high-risk pregnancies, they deal with about 250 bereaved families each year. So they're always looking for volunteers to help with the kits.
Parents are encouraged, says Shayne Epperson, a women's and children's service line educator, to get to know their baby. To say hello before goodbye and to hold and love and take pictures of the baby. Siblings should be included, she adds. All those steps will be comforting, if not now, then down the road.
"I've had families call later and ask if we have anything left," says Roberts, who recently gave a mother the mold of her baby's hands, which she didn't want at the time as too painful. The hospital had saved it, in case.
They've learned from the families that keepsakes are very important. The more tangible items there are from the short time families have with the baby, in fact, the easier it is to both grieve and remember and treasure.
Volunteers play a role in all of that, sewing the fabric envelopes that house the kits, donating money and time and material. One local photographer volunteers to take pictures, lovingly set up, of the baby and family, a concept pioneered nationally as "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Photography." Cremation services are donated to families, if that's what they desire. The ashes are returned to them, as well.
If parents or grandparents or even a very close friend choose follow-up, they will be called at intervals. And during that first painful holiday season, they receive a card acknowledging the baby and the loss. On the anniversary, they get important acknowledgment in a card with a touching poem. You are not, the note says, the only one who remembers and mourns. You are not alone.
One of the most important, and basic, things they learned is to put a card on the door of the hospital room so well-meaning staffers will know the baby didn't survive and tailor their conversations accordingly. When possible, the women are placed in rooms where they won't hear babies cry as they recover, says Epperson.
Years ago, perinatal loss was treated as the way that nature handles "mistakes." Even now, people may say insensitive things like "at least you didn't have time to grow attached — it could be worse." But Roberts says most people now realize that that death of a baby at any stage is still losing a child. More often now, parents who are devastated are being comforted with a heartfelt "I'm so sorry. This must be so hard for you," rather than "you can always have another one," as if children were all alike and replaceable, she says.
It takes a lot of volunteers. "There are times when we have nothing, and I get busy," says Roberts, who adds she often calls for help from a particular nurse who makes several embroidered gowns each year. To make things easier, Roberts has also assembled a packet of patterns that she'll send out to those who want to make clothes.
For information or to volunteer for the program, call Wendy Roberts at 801-581-2261.
E-mail: lois@desnews.com