Dear Mommy who just had a Rainbow Baby, My name is Katie, and I'm going to be your nurse until 7pm. I am going to do an assessment on you and then baby, and then I have some paperwork in this folder to go over with you real quick. It's a lot of information, but [...]
Planning for birth during pregnancy after loss can be filled with so many fears, anxiety, and even ambivalence. But, it can also offer much hope to focus on preparations for the birth experience you desire. For many moms pregnant after a loss, the only thing that matters is that baby is born alive. All she [...]
There are people in our lives we only see intermittently. We see the dentist once or twice per year. We see our hairstylist every two to three months (or longer if you are growing it out.) We see certain out of town colleagues only at the big meeting in April. And we see our third [...]
As a kid, a popular playground activity was the see-saw: a simplistic device that promotes relationships and excitement. We would take turns going up and down in either a rhythmic way or erratically to promote the most thrills. I loved the metronome-like quality of it as it was almost hypnotic for me. Recently, I began [...]
So many times I heard this phrase: "When you are a mother." It is always meant casually, sometimes even as a joke. “Sleep now, because when you are a mother….” Or “When you are a mother, you’ll see things differently.” Another phrase that should come with a warning. When do you become a mother? I [...]
There are so many ways to connect with people we love, both those who are living and those who have passed away. This blog post was inspired by a conversation I had recently with Alison Feik, a Minnesota artist and environmental designer. Alison Feik has a profound interest in the healing properties of plants, energetically, [...]
Your birth journey is just that--your experience. Own YOUR birth journey. It is not a competition with your friends, family and the internet. The only competition you have is with yourself. Your expectations, your goals, your beliefs, your birth history, and your biology. People's reactions to you and your pregnancy is all about them. They [...]
It is normal to be a little anxious about a first pregnancy: the sensations are new, it might bring up normal concerns about what will your parenting look like, and overall, it is a novel experience that you don’t have anything to compare it with as a reference. What is normal in a pregnancy after [...]
I’m a librarian, so maybe it’s natural that when I became pregnant again after a loss, the first thing I did was look for a book. I had my copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting that my husband had given me when I was first pregnant. But as I looked through it for [...]
Too often we forget that our partners suffer too. Maybe their suffering is more so as they don’t get the same opportunities to grieve in our current culture. Instead, they have to hide their grief. Or, when they take a chance and show their sadness or grief, it is often dismissed by others, as culturally [...]
