Donate a Caring Cradle in Memory of Ella Sheehan

May 5, 2024 will be one year since we lost our baby girl, Ella. We have been thinking of ways that we want to honor her life, and use the pain we experienced to bring others comfort. When we lost her, everything happened so fast and our heads were spinning. To hold her and tell her how much we loved her is something i will never forget and always be grateful for. But time was brief, and i look back and think what i would have done differently if i could have just had a little more time. With what was happening with her body, we knew it was time to say goodbye.

I learned about something called a "Caring Cradle", which is a device like a bassinet that is a cooling device meant to preserve the body of your stillborn baby longer to give more time before you have to say your final goodbye.

From the Caring Cradles website: At Caring Cradle® we know you want to provide more peace for mothers of stillborn babies. To do this, mothers need more time with their baby to say goodbye. The problem is, in these moments of crisis, hospitals aren’t equipped to provide them with the time they need, which makes mothers feel more trauma, shock, and grief.

As you can imagine, a device like this isn't cheap, but is priceless when it comes to the gift given to grieving parents. There are two sizes, and I am working to raise money to donate a mini cradle (for micro preemies and under) to Northside Hospitals Perinatal Bereavement & Palliative Care department. If we exceed that goal, we will either purchase another or donate the rest to an organization that cares for families walking through stillborn & infant loss.

You can visit https://caringcradle.com/ to learn more about the device.