Support

If you are a mom who has lost her baby/babies, I am so very sorry for your loss. I feel your pain and I pray for your precious baby/babies. When I lost my girls, I felt like I was going to die and life wasn't worth living. The resources I have noted below have personally helped me through this difficult time. You can find many more resources online. Nothing will make the pain go away, but there is comfort in knowing you are not alone in your grief. To heal deeply you must grieve deeply and the healing process will take time. I am still healing.

Family/Friends

Your first line of support will most likely be your family and friends. You will need them more than ever during this difficult time. They will also need you during this time as they work through their own grief. Unfortunately the most caring people around you may not always know the right things to say or do. It's difficult, but try to remember that they want to help and may not fully understand the extent of your grief if they haven't experienced the exact same thing themselves. Take their love and compassion to heart and seek out others who have experienced similar grief to find the comfort you need.

Here is a brochure from the Share website on ways family and friends can help support you: http://www.nationalshareoffice.com/resources_loss_grief_support_parents.shtml.

The day after we came home from the hospital, we read this information on the grief of parents. It helped us to read this as we began to sort out the devastation we were experiencing and understand the reactions from those around us: http://www.forgottengrief.com/forparentspage6.html.

Support Groups

Empty Cradle is the local support group we called the night we lost the babies. Their message phone is available 24 hours a day: San Diego (619) 595-3887, Riverside (951) 686-LOSS. They have resource parents available to talk to on the phone who have experienced a similar loss. Support meetings are held three times a month in three different locations: Vista, Temecula, and El Cajon. Sharing experiences during the meetings have been instrumental in helping us work through our grief. I don't know what I would have done with Empty Cradle, especially in the early weeks. Empty Cradle has been such a blessing for us. After every meeting we feel more comforted and less alone. Please read more about Empty Cradle on their website: http://www.emptycradle.org/.

Share provides a lot of good information and support for parents who have experienced pregnancy and infant loss. Click on the various links under Support Resources: http://www.nationalshareoffice.com/index.shtml. I've included a few links from their site that were helpful to us:

• Early Pregnancy Loss (for babies born before 20 weeks)
• Father's Grief
• Grandparent's Grief
• Creating Memories

CLIMBS stands for Center for Loss In Multiple Births. CLIMBS provides a newsletter, information, resources, and stories for parents who have lost one or more of their children in a multiple birth pregnancy. Please visit their website at: http://climb-support.org/index.html.

LAMBS stands for Loss of All in Multiple Birth Support. LAMBS is an email list for parents who have lost all of their children in a multiple birth pregnancy. Once you become a part of the group and share your story, you will receive email responses almost immediately from other parents who have experienced similar losses and are full of compassion and support. LAMBS has been extremely comforting for me. I was blessed to have found a friend who lost her triplets just days before I lost my twins. We had each other for support as we worked through each day and each step of our grief and healing. Please click here to read some recent messages: http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/LAMBS/. To join the group, send a brief description of your loss to Cynthia at cjenks@iastate.edu. You can also use the subscription box below to join.

Books

The Empty Cradle support group meetings provide a Lending Library with many books available for you to borrow.

Here are some books that were recommended to me and have found comfort in reading:

• Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby - By Deborah L. Davis
• When Bad Things Happen to Good People - By Harold S. Kushner

Memory Items

Remembrance items in memory of your baby/babies can be very comforting. This is the reason I started making Mommy Memory Bracelets for the mommies at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital who have lost their baby/babies. Here are a few sites I have found that offer remembrance items:

• http://www.littleangelsonlinestore.com/
• http://www.griefwatch.com/default.aspx
• http://www.cafepress.com/mijaimprintz/
• http://www.october15th.wahmweb.biz/store/Default.asp
• http://myforeverchild.com/store/Default.asp

The Share website provides more links for memorial items: http://www.nationalshareoffice.com/funeralmemorialresources.shtml.