The March of Dimes Mission/Support group met for our first official support group meeting lastnight. We all introduced ourselves and shared a little about our babies. We had everyone there from a teenager who has experienced a missed miscarriage, to a stillbirth at 28 weeks due to a clotting disorder (me), to a lady whose son was born premature and had to fight and still is fighting (four years later) to live a healthy life and she also had a baby girl in December at 37 weeks, stillborn due to placental abruption. Then there was the mom who delivered her twins at 24 weeks...one is now an active almost three year old and the other passed after two days in NICU and then there was the couple who joined us later and tearfully told us about the miscarraige she experienced less than a week ago at 8 1/2 weeks. We all had our own varied experienced with pregnancy and loss, but there we sat, in that small meeting room opposite the hospital cafeteria, bonding through our grief.
I shared what I believe the three main purposes of this group are.
1) To support each other.
2) To support other grieving parents through care packages and resources.
3) To educate the community in the matters of prematurity and pregnancy & infant loss.
So after our introductions we started to talk about the care packages. We are currently assembling care packages for our local hospital to give to women who experience stillbirth, but I really didn't know what was available for women experiencing miscarriage. Come to find out...nothing. The lady who had the most recent miscarraige said they gave her a stack of papers about pain management after the D & C and medical stuff and she just happened to find the brochure about the MoD Support group among those papers. So we started a list of what we might include in these packages.
This is where I need some help. I know many women that have felt the pain of miscarraige and I would like your input on what to include in these packages. If something was given to you during your time at the hospital or the doctors office that was particular helpful, what was it? Or what do you WISH you would have been given at that time? Thank you all for your input! If you have thoughts to contribute, leave a comment below or friend me on facebook and we can talk.
I will be making a request later in regards to our "education" goal and I know lots of you have great ideas in this area as well!
5 comments:
Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious, but perhaps talk to both the ER and the clinic parts of your hospital. With my first miscarriage at home, I went to the ER. They gave me nothing. When I learned of my second miscarriage in my doctor's office, the nurse brought me a packet right away. Unfortunately, I already knew what to expect, to an extent, and it would have been much more helpful had the ER provided me with anything.
One of the helpful info sheets was on how dads grieve. My husband didn't spend much time reading it but appreciated it was there. There was also a brochure on SHARE with the local meeting information. I appreciated those pieces the most.
I got a memory box. In the box was a blanket, bib, canteen to make hand/footprints, etc. I put a few other things in there to myself. I really wish they had given me a list of options of what might be helpfull to grieve like dressing or bathing your baby, taking photos, etc. I have heard of other care packages that have included things like chapstick or lotion too though but I liked what I got in my memory box.
I think it would be good for the ERs to have packages to give to moms who are miscarrying. I've heard a lot of people say that they weren't given much compassion or information by the staff in the ER.
I think anything you could provide would be helpful. I have never had a miscarriage, but my hospital had a fulltime perinatal bereavement counselor that counseled those that miscarried or experienced a loss.
I think what you are doing is beautiful and much needed to help those down the road (it breaks my heart to think there will be others).
I think what was most helpful was the booklet of poems/songs/scriptures that related to losing a baby/grieving.
In the hospital I wish they would have told me to READ the packet they gave me. I had no idea that I could bathe my baby, dress him and so forth. It was in the packet, however, I had NO interest in reading the packet they gave me at that time. Had I known it had tons of information for the present time, not just after leaving the hospital, but while we still had him in our care.
Then later, in contacting the lady that made my care basket, I have been able to find all kinds of people who have gone through what I have, and I think that is very important...feeling like you are NOT alone in this journey.
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