Laugh, Cry, Live

At least 60 years ago, it was common to keep a body (adult) in people's homes, instead of a funeral home.

Thank you so much for writing this article. I wish that people would try to understand what grieving parents are going through. Kudos to this family in bringing their baby home. I wish we would have done this. We did, however, keep our baby with us overnight in the hospital. It gave me time as a grieving Mom to be able to say my good-bye that I was absolutely NOT ready to do. We also had our 2 older children. They also were able to hold their baby sister and have the opportunity to grieve and say their good-byes.
Thank you a million times over for writing this. I hope that this helps educate people that this is normal.

hi, i chose to have my 13 month old son die at home, he suffered from a degenerative nurological disorder with no cure. after he died, we tended to his body for 3 days until the funeral, after being told that it was legal to do this. i couldn't imagine putting him in a cold room away from family and friends, it just didn't seem right. it was the most profound, sad but beautiful experience for everyone involved. people came to hold him and to say goodbye, everyone agreed they had been part of something special. it did help me with my grief, although it was a very traumatic experience it helped me to accept that he had gone and i was so glad that it was me who looked after him right up until he was placed in the coffin at home too. this used to be the way it was done for everyone but now people are so detached from death and dying. i had an amazing social worker from palliative care who tried to normalise death for me, she was also very knowledgeable on the history of cultural death practices. its not for everyone, there are some very pragmatic issues to deal with but i wouldn't have done it any other way x

I have been wanting to write something about this on my blog, but after reading what you wrote, I couldn't begin to address this as well as you did. Thank you, thank you, thank you Amy (and thank you Debbie/Psychology Today for giving her this forum)! I have shared the link to this on my Facebook page and will also likely wrote a short blog entry/intro and link to it there. Thanks for being such an awesome advocate for Perinatal Hospice and our community of perinatal bereaved parents. ♥

Thanks to a wonderful Christain Neonatologist Douglas Seglem who consented our baby Izza Bella could come back to her birth Hospital Saint Edwards Mercy Mecical Womens Center in Fort Smith Arkansas we got to have her close family sisters ,granparents,Aunts, Uncles,cousins, meet her and a few extremely close like her sisters, grandparents,Aunts but especially us her parents had time with her. The NICU transition room allowed us to stay the last few days of her life with her in it monitored by nurse and respiratory specialist but as though she and us could at least bond as a parents and child are ussually allowed but wouldn't be if she had been left at Arkansas cildren's Hospital.
We have the photo's , locks of hair, foot prints all done by both ACH and SEMMC for us to cherish. We as her mom & dad spent her last moments alone first with her sisters present but later just mom ,dad and our precious Izza Bella with a course Doctor Seglem and the care team who had to remove the machine that was keeping her from going as nature would take her because she had no healthy lungs to survive without it but we confirmed first with a genetics test since she was never stable enough for any extreme stuff that most babies in her state are put through to confirm what is in deed her medical issues.
Thanks to a wonderful Neonatologist she was allowed time with her family he also attended her funeral one of the kindest things done for such a gentle Angel as Izzy B who would never live her life here on earth with a family who loved and wanted her so very much.

My son died 45 min after birth and all 4 of his sibs held him. They were so proud of him and took pictures to school! I kept him with me all night and I tucked him into his casket and wrapped him warmly. It is so easy for those who haven't been in our shoes to judge us on how we grieve. NO ONE has the right to judge how parents grieve the loss of thier child. Shame on you who do.

Spontaneous abortion, miscarriage, fetal demise...it doesn't matter what name is put to it - it is the loss of YOUR baby! I went through my "spontaneous abortion" alone in a dark, cement block hospital room. I had insisted that my husband go home because he had been up all night and had to work the next day. When my "baby" had completed leaving my body, I called for the nurses. My "baby" - whom I loved completely - was taken away to be examined by the nurses and doctors to make sure that my body had completely expelled my "baby". It had. And then those professionals, who are trained to have compassion for their patients, took the "medical waste" and flushed it down the toilet, in my room. My hope is that NO ONE will have to experience that kind of loss with the lack of compassion that I did. Please keep informing people about this kind of loss - it is as great, if not greater, than any other loss any one will ever have to experience - especially without the understanding you are trying to provide.

First, Barbara. I'm so sorry you had to endure such ignorance and violation. I hope your journey of healing has been gentle.

Thank you, Deborah, for reflecting on this experience so eloquently.

My firstborn son was stillborn a few days past term more than 5 years ago. A priest friend came to the hospital and we shared the Eucharist, which is part of the last rites of our community. Viaticum...food for the journey, which we shared with my baby as he was still with me in my body. I birthed him in the hospital in the company of my husband and parents. After he was born -- my staggeringly beautiful, long-legged, red-headed son -- we took care of him through the night: bathing, dressing, holding him. My sisters and many friends came to be with us through the night, to meet him and hold him, and to weep with us over his body. I remember my dad taking him to the corner of the room with his grandson in his arms, calling out to him in anguish and love, and weeping. I remember recognizing that his small body was returning to the earth, as my husband described it, and finding the strength to allow him to be buried in the wide graciousness of that earth. Those short hours were the hardest and most important hours of my life. Though heartbreaking, birthing him and being with him in those hours were what I had for him. And, now, because of those hours, I know that his infant brother looks like him because I recognize the contour of the older brother's face in his <3

Thank you for writing this article. My husband and I knew in August that our son had a fatal diagnosis - we carried him to term; delivered him and within moments of the umbilical cord being clamped...he died. It all happened so fast, we were not ready to say goodbye. We bathed him, baptised him, family came to hold him, celebrated his birth with cupcakes and kept him with us in our hospital room. We were so thankful that we could keep him with us...otherwise, I am sure we would not remember what it was like to hold him...everything happened so fast. The day he was born was just a blur. Losing a baby is hard enough, please don't judge parents who are facing such devastation. My husband's aunt had a baby in the 1970's...the doctors kept the baby from her and later told her that her daughter lived 12 hours. She never got to see or hold her baby. Think of the emotional nightmare that must have been.

Reading all of the above stories about the loss of a child still brings back a twinge in my heart. My husband and I lost our identical twin boys that I carried 6.5 months. It was a cold Jan. morning in 1971. My first little guy came about 2:30 AM at home, where my husband had to deliver him stillborn. Unbeknownst to us, I was carrying twins, ( because they were identical and back to back and back then they did not do ultrasounds, it was a complete surprise to even the doctor. The baby was still attached to my body when they took me into the delivery room. The doctor finished removing him and I'll never forget when he said to the nurse, "Listen for another heartbeat." I thought they were talking about mine, until I realized that she was listening to my abdomen and not my chest. Sure enough, there was another little boy waiting to be born. He lived almost 17 hrs. My husband and my parents were there when they told us that he passed down in the ICU. They put me in a wheelchair and we went down to see him.
Things are so very different today. They would not let us hold him, brought him out in a small hand towel. We could only look.
Isn't that hard to believe? Being my first child, we were in shock and utter disbelief. I, too think that the hospitals and doctors thought it would interrupt you getting over the loss. Now when we look back, I wish we could have had some quiet, private time with them.
My mother-in-law called the funeral home and made arrangements for them to pick both babies up and have them buried together. We were young and didn't have much to say about it I guess. Everybody avoided the subjectI know now out of kindness and concern, but we grieved a lot and by ourselves. Seems strange, today everything is much more out there.
Every Jan. 7, my husband and I talk about the boys we never got to know. They would be 41 yrs. old now.
God bless them and we'll see them again one day.

We lost our beloved daughter, Shira, 5 years ago today. Thanks for publishing this story as it's heaviness is very true and accurate. Shira was born healthy and died unexpectedly from Group B Strep when she was 17 days old. We would not trade a single moment or undo any of the things we did for her. I blogged more thoroughly about the Santorum issue here http://www.rbisfromrachel.com/2012/01/santorums-family-choices-are-off-l... as well as my recent grieving experience leading up to Shira's birthday in December here http://www.rbisfromrachel.com/2011/12/5-years-later-or-was-it-only-yeste... . Parents make the best choices possible for their family and most importantly their child, when they are faced with a tragedy that defies all rules and laws about human order.

Thank you all for speaking up. It is through sharing experiences that bereaved parents and medical professionals alike can effect sweeping change in the way medical care is delivered and the way society views the death of a baby and parental grief. While standards of medical care have improved markedly, perinatal death is still taboo in our society and clouded in mystery as understandably, families tend to circle the wagons and grieve privately rather than face ignorant remarks or platitudes. But for those who are prone to speaking out, whether you're a parent who has reached a place of peace and healing, or a practitioner who has been able to implement relationship-centered care, climbing up on your soap box spreads understanding and empathy. Your advocacy is a wonderful legacy for all the babies you've loved and/or known, and it paves an easier path for all the bereaved families to come. And remember, even if you are met with blank stares, disbelief, or ridicule, you are spreading seeds that will germinate and in turn, spread more seeds.
Carry on; pay it forward.
With warmest wishes,
Debbie

Thank you so much for addressing this topic. I was horrified when I heard Mr. Colmes remarks. Having lost a baby at 19-weeks gestation and a 19-year old son to a drunk driver, I though his remarks were callous and heartless. My heart hurt for all parents who have lost a child.

Imagine a lawmaker so sure of the righteousness of his own moral beliefs that he is compelled to forbid—no! criminalize!—the Santorum family’s choice of bringing their deceased child’s remains home to grieve. Imagine if Karen and Rick Santorum were forbidden from making those excruciatingly personal decisions regarding their family tragedy. While we should all agree that the Santorums deserve the right to proceed in their own spiritually healing way, shouldn’t we also agree that another family requires equal moral latitude to navigate their own similarly tragic journey in a somewhat different way?

Please learn about another faithful Catholic family’s experience: the Horaks of Batavia, Illinois. Sophie and Bob Horak dearly looked forward to the birth of their second baby, Joey. In mid-pregnancy, however, Joey was diagnosed via sonogram with a severe fetal anomaly, just like the Santorums’ baby Gabriel was. But events progressed differently when the Horaks pursued fetal surgery. Rick and Karen Santorum’s very public decades-long crusade is to criminalize the grieving Horaks’ eventual medical choice.

See this article about the Horaks’ experience in the National Catholic Reporter of November 8, 1996:
http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/1996d/110896/110896c.htm

Remember why we are revisiting these personally tragic tales as a nation: Rick Santorum is running for president. He makes no secret of his intention to legally limit YOUR family’s intimate moral choices. Feel compassion for his family’s sad loss and respect the way they were able to choose how to get through it, certainly; but stop Rick Santorum’s 2012 political crusade to control YOUR options!

When a baby is wanted, its loss is heavy even if it is a very early loss eg just a few weeks. Thank you for this understanding piece of writing. I was shocked that another article was so callus http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/caveman-logic/201202/what-you-dont-k... though ostensibly it was supposed to be about the media and others not discussing the "strangeness" of the parents' behavior. Perhaps the media and others understand so much more about grief than they are given credit for.