The Lilly Memorial Project - donation to MAMA Project

"For to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking." - George MacDonald

This is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.   Every year, about a million pregnancies in the United States end in miscarriage, stillbirth, or the death of the newborn child.  Ten to 25% of all "clinically recognized" pregnancies end in miscarriage, according to the American Pregnancy Center.  Also, 1 in 160 pregnancies end after 20 weeks, and are considered still births. 

Lilly was not an infant when she died.  She was 17 months old!  But I still think of her and include her during this time.  Last October, I had a miscarriage, and nicknamed that baby "Blueberry" because that was about the size of the baby when it died.  (You can read my "letter" to Blueberry here.) 

Lilly - 16 months

Yesterday was the International Wave of Light where people from around the world light candles to babies that died.  Here are my Lilly-colored candles lit for Lilly, Blueberry, and angel babies everywhere:

Years ago, Tabby and I started putting together different donations for a group called MAMA Project.  (See donation kit ideas here.)  I don't remember how I first learned about them, but they are doing a great work in helping very poor families.  They are a Mennonite based group in Pennsylvania that do a lot of work in Honduras and Haiti. 

In MAMA Project's recent newsletter, I learned that one of the things they were in need of was a pulse ox.  There are hospitals in Honduras that hardly have any medical equipment at all.  I started thinking about Lilly's pulse ox and decided I was now ready to part with it.  (I still have a lot of her medical equipment in a closet.)  

Lilly - snoozing away and hooked up to her pulse ox

Even though I really was happy with my idea, when I actually got out the pulse ox box and opened it up I just wanted to cry.  (In the grieving process - you never know when tears will take you by surprise!)  So I distracted myself and remembered with a smile this old blog post and how Hunter, as a toddler, was so fascinated by Lilly's medical equipment.  He had me make a pulse ox for him that he could hook up to his dog Sam:

When the medical team at MAMA Project is examining and treating children, they like to give them a little stuffed animal or toy when they can.  So I decided to buy two beanie baby type bears off of Ebay to include in my donation.  A Lilly-colored bear who's tag says she is named "Spangle" and blue bear who's tag actually says "Blueberry."

the donation

the donation between LillyBear and a bigger sized "Spangle bear" that I got as a gift ... AND ... I just noticed Hunter's washing machine Christmas ornament snuck into the picture!  WHAT????!!!!

Even though I believe the pulse ox and little bears will help others, I think that just the act of donating them in Lilly and Blueberry's names blesses me the most.

Frank gave me a copy of this article from BreakPoint titled "Dealing with Miscarriage & Stillbirth."  The article included an interesting quote from a book called Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver:  "A miscarriage is a natural and common event.  All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't.  Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had.  But ask her sometime:  how old would your child be now?  And she'll know."

My two children would be 5 years old and 5 months old.  How old would yours be?