Sloane's CuddleCots for the IWK
Donation protected
“I’m so sorry, there is no heartbeat”.
On March 27th, this sentence changed our lives. Such a small sentence yet it bears so much weight. This sentence plays on repeat in our minds daily.
Our beautiful little girl, Sloane Marie Galvin, was born on March 30that 9:50am weighting 1lbs and 12ounces. She was stillborn. She was still born.
No one prepares you for this type of tragedy. These things always happen to someone else- a friend of a friend, a neighbor, a distant relative. This isn’t supposed to happen to us. It cannot be our reality. Not after everything we have gone through to have our family. Not this far into our pregnancy. But we the sad reality is we are somebody, a statistic, seven out of every thousand pregnancies in Canada (Stats Canada, 2012).
“NO! My baby! I want my baby! What did I do wrong? I need my baby!”
The instant I heard the awful sentence, I cried out until I couldn’t scream anymore. The rest is a blur. I was a prisoner in my own mind. The overwhelming guilt and fear takes over. Waiting to go into labor was the scariest moment of my life. We had no idea what to expect. How long will it take? Will we want to hold her? How decomposed would she be, if at all? What happens after?
The topic of stillbirth is still very much in the shadows. There is this common belief that once you get past the first trimester, you are safe. You begin to tell friends and family the joyous news and envision what your future may look like. Then slowly, as the months go by, you begin to plan a baby shower, create a nursery, choose the baby’s name and attach yourself to all new hopes and dreams for your family. No one tells you that although the risk for a miscarriage has greatly decreased, there is still a chance things can go wrong. And the longer stillbirth remains out of pregnancy conversations, the more unexpected and traumatic it is on a family.
Going into labor, we made a commitment to each other that Sloane’s arrival needed to be a happy moment. This was going to be our daughter’s birthday- the one and only we would ever get to have with her. And however difficult it would be to set our grief aside, we needed to create these precious moments to look back on. We packed a bag with a book to read to her, a stuffed animal to cuddle with her, a swaddle we slept with to wrap her in our warmth and a ceramic kit for her hand and foot prints. We had a list of things we wanted to talk to her about and promises we wanted to make to her. We knew even before going into it that we needed as many memories with Sloane as possible to help with our healing.
Thank you Julie Pearson for our beautiful family photos.
Sloane came into this world peacefully and was the most beautiful girl we had ever seen. While the silence in the room was heartbreaking, the intense love we had for her overshadowed all else. After being handed Sloane to hold for the first time, my memory of the short hours we had with her are broken pieces. Being left with those pieces has become a huge barrier in my healing and discovering a new normal.
The hospital’s practice is to have families in our situation deliver on a separate floor from other laboring mothers. The intent is to avoid further trauma and create a safe, private space. However in doing so, you are forgoing an epidural, which can only be done on the maternity floor. In that moment I couldn’t imagine hearing the muffled cries of babies through the walls. The choice seemed obvious. The alternative was a hydromorphone drip that, over the course of a 26-hour labor, had left me very foggy. Time was not on my side. To avoid compromising the accuracy of the autopsy, we were limited in the amount of time we had with Sloane. Therefore the opportunity to nap off the foggy feeling or waiting it out meant sacrificing the little time we had with our baby. My last memory of Sloane’s birthday was handing her over to our nurse after being told it was time. Time was 6 hours after delivery.
What makes a stillborn loss so different than any other type of loss is the mourning of what could have been. There were so many hopes and dreams you created for your family. You cannot fit a lifetime of memories and conversations in a few hours, but remembering the little ones you had are all you have left to look back on. This is where we have the power to make a change.
A CuddleCot is a refrigeration system that pumps cold water through a pad lining that lies underneath a mattress and converts a bassinet into a cool unit that preserves a stillborn baby’s body by slowing down the decomposition process. This allows families to spend more time with their babies. CuddleCots are becoming more common in hospitals across Canada, the U.K. and the United States. Personal stories flood the Internet on how utilizing a CuddleCot has helped families in the grieving process and find some type of closure. Additionally, there is research on the increased psychological outcome its use has for families. Without the utilization of a CuddleCot, a baby is taken to the morgue after a few hours, leaving little time for families to bond with their child and realize some of the hopes they had. The use of a CuddleCot is a way to create memories such as dressing and bathing your baby, reading a book, inviting family to come meet your baby, taking family photos, and giving parents a voice and a choice as to when they are ready to say goodbye. It provides some control in an uncontrollable situation.
http://flexmort.com/cuddle-cots/
This fundraiser will help us donate one or more CuddleCots to the IWK Health Centre (Atlantic Canada’s only children’s hospital) to help parents who tragically follow in our footsteps have the opportunity to say hello and goodbye to their babies, create some beautiful memories and avoid any additional trauma. Sloane’s short time on this earth was not in vain. Not only has she shown us a new intensity of love, she has raised our awareness on the prevalence of stillbirth and created advocates of us. The donation of a CuddleCot to the IWK Health Centre is just the beginning in our journey to creating a safe space to talk about stillbirth, bringing humanity in such an impossible situation and honoring our sweet baby girl.
Thank you.
Sloane Marie's Mom & Dad
And billet parents to Alexis Gravel
On March 27th, this sentence changed our lives. Such a small sentence yet it bears so much weight. This sentence plays on repeat in our minds daily.
Our beautiful little girl, Sloane Marie Galvin, was born on March 30that 9:50am weighting 1lbs and 12ounces. She was stillborn. She was still born.
No one prepares you for this type of tragedy. These things always happen to someone else- a friend of a friend, a neighbor, a distant relative. This isn’t supposed to happen to us. It cannot be our reality. Not after everything we have gone through to have our family. Not this far into our pregnancy. But we the sad reality is we are somebody, a statistic, seven out of every thousand pregnancies in Canada (Stats Canada, 2012).
“NO! My baby! I want my baby! What did I do wrong? I need my baby!”
The instant I heard the awful sentence, I cried out until I couldn’t scream anymore. The rest is a blur. I was a prisoner in my own mind. The overwhelming guilt and fear takes over. Waiting to go into labor was the scariest moment of my life. We had no idea what to expect. How long will it take? Will we want to hold her? How decomposed would she be, if at all? What happens after?
The topic of stillbirth is still very much in the shadows. There is this common belief that once you get past the first trimester, you are safe. You begin to tell friends and family the joyous news and envision what your future may look like. Then slowly, as the months go by, you begin to plan a baby shower, create a nursery, choose the baby’s name and attach yourself to all new hopes and dreams for your family. No one tells you that although the risk for a miscarriage has greatly decreased, there is still a chance things can go wrong. And the longer stillbirth remains out of pregnancy conversations, the more unexpected and traumatic it is on a family.
Going into labor, we made a commitment to each other that Sloane’s arrival needed to be a happy moment. This was going to be our daughter’s birthday- the one and only we would ever get to have with her. And however difficult it would be to set our grief aside, we needed to create these precious moments to look back on. We packed a bag with a book to read to her, a stuffed animal to cuddle with her, a swaddle we slept with to wrap her in our warmth and a ceramic kit for her hand and foot prints. We had a list of things we wanted to talk to her about and promises we wanted to make to her. We knew even before going into it that we needed as many memories with Sloane as possible to help with our healing.
Thank you Julie Pearson for our beautiful family photos. Sloane came into this world peacefully and was the most beautiful girl we had ever seen. While the silence in the room was heartbreaking, the intense love we had for her overshadowed all else. After being handed Sloane to hold for the first time, my memory of the short hours we had with her are broken pieces. Being left with those pieces has become a huge barrier in my healing and discovering a new normal.
The hospital’s practice is to have families in our situation deliver on a separate floor from other laboring mothers. The intent is to avoid further trauma and create a safe, private space. However in doing so, you are forgoing an epidural, which can only be done on the maternity floor. In that moment I couldn’t imagine hearing the muffled cries of babies through the walls. The choice seemed obvious. The alternative was a hydromorphone drip that, over the course of a 26-hour labor, had left me very foggy. Time was not on my side. To avoid compromising the accuracy of the autopsy, we were limited in the amount of time we had with Sloane. Therefore the opportunity to nap off the foggy feeling or waiting it out meant sacrificing the little time we had with our baby. My last memory of Sloane’s birthday was handing her over to our nurse after being told it was time. Time was 6 hours after delivery.
What makes a stillborn loss so different than any other type of loss is the mourning of what could have been. There were so many hopes and dreams you created for your family. You cannot fit a lifetime of memories and conversations in a few hours, but remembering the little ones you had are all you have left to look back on. This is where we have the power to make a change.
A CuddleCot is a refrigeration system that pumps cold water through a pad lining that lies underneath a mattress and converts a bassinet into a cool unit that preserves a stillborn baby’s body by slowing down the decomposition process. This allows families to spend more time with their babies. CuddleCots are becoming more common in hospitals across Canada, the U.K. and the United States. Personal stories flood the Internet on how utilizing a CuddleCot has helped families in the grieving process and find some type of closure. Additionally, there is research on the increased psychological outcome its use has for families. Without the utilization of a CuddleCot, a baby is taken to the morgue after a few hours, leaving little time for families to bond with their child and realize some of the hopes they had. The use of a CuddleCot is a way to create memories such as dressing and bathing your baby, reading a book, inviting family to come meet your baby, taking family photos, and giving parents a voice and a choice as to when they are ready to say goodbye. It provides some control in an uncontrollable situation.
http://flexmort.com/cuddle-cots/ This fundraiser will help us donate one or more CuddleCots to the IWK Health Centre (Atlantic Canada’s only children’s hospital) to help parents who tragically follow in our footsteps have the opportunity to say hello and goodbye to their babies, create some beautiful memories and avoid any additional trauma. Sloane’s short time on this earth was not in vain. Not only has she shown us a new intensity of love, she has raised our awareness on the prevalence of stillbirth and created advocates of us. The donation of a CuddleCot to the IWK Health Centre is just the beginning in our journey to creating a safe space to talk about stillbirth, bringing humanity in such an impossible situation and honoring our sweet baby girl.
Thank you.
Sloane Marie's Mom & Dad
And billet parents to Alexis Gravel
Organizer
Samantha Ann
Organizer
Dartmouth, NS