It was the moment new mother Sarah Manvell had long been craving.
“I just wanted to feel him on my chest and just hear that cry. So when that happened for me. . . . that was the most incredible moment of my life. Nothing else mattered, everyone else dissolved in the room. It was just the three of us,” says the 32-year-old North Vancouver resident.
Manvell and her husband Simon experienced the usual flood of emotions new parents experience, overjoyed to be welcoming their little one, Hunter, the last baby of 2015 at Lions Gate Hospital, to the world and their family after long last. However, for the Manvells, their son’s arrival also marked another stop along their continued journey of healing.
Just 14 months prior, in October 2014, the couple received devastating news. Then pregnant with their previous baby, they had excitedly gone in for a routine 20-week ultrasound.
Having had a healthy pregnancy, they were hoping to find out the sex.
Instead the couple was told their child had no heartbeat.
Manvell was induced at Lions Gate and their baby boy was “born sleeping,” a gentle term used to describe stillborn infants.
Regretful that she has few memories of her late son, Wills, something she feels would have helped her better cope with her loss, Manvell decided to channel her grief and embarked on an effort to help other mothers with theirs.
She partnered with Sherry Moon, the North Vancouver hospital’s perinatal program patient care co-ordinator, and together they’re instituting a number of changes at Lions Gate to ensure parents experiencing miscarriage or stillbirth are supported in creating as many memories as possible in the short time available to them, as well as walk away with tangible keepsakes representative of their young child.
“I didn’t want someone to have to go through what I went through where I left with nothing. It’s hard enough you leave without a baby, but to just have some memories to hold on to I think is so valuable,” says Manvell.
Affecting change
It all started with a stuffed bunny, a gift Manvell had received from a friend several weeks into her pregnancy with Wills.
After hearing their child had no heartbeat (believed to be due to an umbilical cord accident), Manvell and her husband had to spend a couple of hours at home before going to Lions Gate to be induced.
“It was just horrible because you’re sort of hanging in mid-air,” says Manvell, a small business owner in Edgemont Village.
She spent some time googling what was to come and somewhere along the way read that it would be advisable for her to take something to leave with her child.
“All I had was the bunny,” she said.
After delivering Wills and spending some time with him, Manvell asked a nurse to take the bunny with him.
“She said to me, ‘Why don’t you keep the bunny because it’s going to mean more to you,’” she says.
Taking her advice, Manvell took the stuffie home. A few days later she came across the package given to her by the hospital when she was discharged, containing some printed materials on supportive local resources.
“I remember opening them and just throwing them away, thinking, ‘I can’t even deal with this.’ It was too raw. And then I found the bunny and suddenly I had a reminder of my baby,” she says.
It has given her comfort ever since.
Following Wills’ passing, Manvell sought private counselling. As her grieving continued, she came to realize she wanted to do something to help at least one other mother who had lost a baby. She initially came up with the idea of donating a number of bunnies and so got in touch with Lions Gate.
She was connected with Moon and a meeting was arranged, with a couple of other hospital staffers sitting in.
“Sarah came in and she told us her story, very eloquently. ... She honoured the things that we did really well but she also had those suggestions that only a mom that is in her position could possibly give us. We all shed a lot of tears during that meeting,” says Moon.
The more Moon listened to Manvell’s story, the more things started clicking in her mind.
On average, Lions Gate sees 10 stillbirths per year. The concept of developing a memory box, something given to these parents that they could take home with them and keep memorabilia in, was something that had been percolating in her mind for some time.
Feeling like this was the perfect time to launch the project, she asked Manvell if she’d like to join her in developing the boxes as well as reviewing the hospital’s policies, documents and written resources, looking at them through the lens of a parent who had gone through it, and offer feedback.
“She graciously accepted the challenge,” says Moon.
Manvell assembled the first 10 memory boxes for potential future stillbirths with each containing one of her bunnies, a quilt made by one of several local quilting guilds, an inkpad for hand and footprints, and a redesigned, more sensitive set of printed materials. Manvell also assembled 10 smaller packages for families experiencing earlier losses like a miscarriage.
The memory box program was launched in October 2015, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month as well as the first anniversary of Wills’ passing.
The Lions Gate Hospital Foundation has committed to funding the initiative into the future and is welcoming community donations. Moon is hoping to continue to expand the program and is currently in search of a community collective to volunteer to craft the boxes from wood or some other quality material. As well, she’s looking to organize a group of volunteers to be on call to cast three-dimensional models of hands and feet for interested families experiencing perinatal loss.
“I really want parents to feel that it’s not only the hospital that is providing the support but it is the entire community,” she says.
In addition to the memory box initiative, Manvell was invited to give a presentation at a hospital staff meeting in December 2015.
“It’s nice when the information is delivered from somebody that’s gone through it. There’s more impact. It certainly made the nurses aware in regards to how we guide the parents through their delivery,” says Moon.
While Manvell was grateful for the care and compassion she received while in the hospital, she wishes she had spent more time with her baby. As well, in a moment of fear, she regretted accepting some pain medication that altered her mental state to the point of having few memories of her time with Wills.
“That was what has been so difficult. I vaguely remember holding him, but I don’t remember all the other small details. My husband shares with me all the details I missed,” she says.
In light of her experience, she shared her view that it is important that pain medication and the effects it may have on mothers are discussed with them because in the moment they might think they want to wipe out the memory, but later they might need to remember.
“As a mom you need to feel that pain; that pain is part of healing and nothing will ever truly numb that,” she says.
Moon also says it’s important for her staff to take time to grieve these sorts of losses that they can encounter on the job.
“It’s extremely impactful. It never fades in the care provider’s memories. It’s something that carries with them forever. We encourage people to feel, our staff to grieve, and not deny their feelings because we are in a caring profession and sometimes we get caught up in the politics of things and we need to remember why we’re here, which is to care,” she says.
Moments in time
For the last two years, North Vancouver’s Felicia Chang has served as a member of a team of professional photographers who volunteer their time to shoot families with a child approaching end of life at Canuck Place Children’s Hospice.
“I knew it was something that I had to try because it just seemed like another part of family life. It’s not the beautiful part of it, it’s the really hard painful things. But if there’s a way I can give back with what I feel like I do best to these families, then why not?” says the married mother to two girls, ages four and six.
Chang, 38, takes a unique approach in both her day-to-day work as a documentary-style family photographer as well as at Canuck Place.
“I feel like there’s something way more emotional when you capture a picture of family life the way it is, very authentic. It just brings back way more emotional impact for you down the road,” she says.
Chang is currently working with Moon to bring a similar team of volunteer professional photographers to Lions Gate, the members of which would be on call. Her goal is to have free memory-keeping photography become an added component of the new memory boxes, offering families an opportunity to “come back to it any time they’re ready to go through the motions of processing what has happened, visually,” she says.
Chang encourages interested local professional photographers to contact her through her website, feliciachangphotography.com.
“If there’s help and local photographers who want to give their time to local moms, I think that’s a really beautiful gesture,” she says.
Vancouver resident Noel MacDonald, 60, volunteers with Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, a United States-based organization that’s active in 40 countries around the world and offers free, professional remembrance photography to parents experiencing infant loss.
Retired from his work as an outreach worker for Vancouver’s First United Church Community Ministry Society’s homeless shelter, he has also volunteered as a photographer for the last six years shooting pregnancy and new baby photos for B.C. Women’s Hospital’s Fir Square Combined Care Unit, which offers care to women using substances and their infants who are exposed.
In the last 10 months, MacDonald has photographed 35 families at B.C. Women’s Hospital and St. Paul’s Hospital with Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep.
He knows he’s in a very sacred space when he’s with these families.
“It’s a moment of respecting that child. It’s a moment of closure and it’s a time where we can step back from a lot of the medical stuff that’s going on and really spend some time focusing on that child. ... For the families that want it, it’s a very important time ... for the parents to be able to have a bond with that child in that short time that they have with them,” he says.
While of course MacDonald endeavours to capture the child’s “beautiful little feet” and “beautiful little hands,” his main focus is to find the emotional connection between the baby and his or her parents.
“There’s a phrase in photography called ‘the decisive moment.’ The decisive moment is that moment when I’m in the room with Mom and Dad and the child and they’re communicating in a way that only parents and an infant can communicate. If I can get that, that’s when I have those moments that I say, ‘Oh my gosh, look at how lucky I am to be part of this,’” he says.
Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep (nowilaymedowntosleep.org) is also always looking for new professional photographers to come on board.
“It’s not a place for everybody to be from a photography standpoint but for the people who feel comfortable and feel drawn to this work, it’s really rewarding,” he says.
Moving forward
“I hate the word ‘closure’ because there is never closure. It’s just a journey to where you can feel at peace with yourself and where you are,” says Manvell.
Despite what they went through with Wills, deciding to try to get pregnant again was an easy decision.
“We desperately wanted a baby, so we went in as soon as we could and started trying again,” she says.
That said, the process was difficult at times due to the multitude of feelings that continued to arise. Manvell remembers the first month she and her husband started trying and it didn’t result in pregnancy.
“It was just devastating. It was like losing the baby all over again,” she says.
“That was when I realized, ‘OK, you need to make space for this baby.’ ... As soon as I opened that up, we were pregnant the next month,” she adds.
She was grateful to her support network, her husband, her family and her friends, who gave her space to grieve, as well as to her doctor.
“When I was feeling anxious about something she never made me feel like I was going crazy or anything. When I said to her, ‘I haven’t felt the baby move today,’ she would send me for monitoring. She really supported me in my journey,” she says.
In addition to her involvement at Lions Gate Hospital, Manvell is also working to share her experiences on a more grassroots level, encouraging other women to voice their own journeys of fertility and pregnancy.
“A lot of women don’t talk about their losses and they feel that they shouldn’t. And I feel that women should, the same as post-partum depression and things like that,” she says.
On a number of occasions, Manvell has found herself engaged in conversations with other women who’ve experienced a miscarriage or some other challenge and they downplay their experience with, “but it wasn’t as bad as what you went through.”
She’s quick to set them straight.
“I always say to them, no. There’s nothing that’s worse. As a parent it’s difficult. Whether you just found out you were pregnant, whether your baby was full term, whether it was 20 (weeks), it’s all varying degrees of being upset and sad and vulnerable. And people, they have to feel what they feel.”
Rainbow baby
Hunter, now four-and-a-half weeks old, is happy and healthy. He’s what’s referred to as a “rainbow baby,” a child born after a family experiences a miscarriage or other loss.
Manvell was quick to notice a small white patch of hair on the back of his head.
“I like to think it was his brother giving him a little kiss on his way down,” she says.
To make a monetary donation to the Lions Gate Hospital memory box program, visit lghfoundation.com. To volunteer, email Sherry Moon at [email protected].
Support services
Examples of local options for families seeking support in the wake of a miscarriage or stillbirth include:
• Family Services of the North Shore, which offers grief counselling to parents regarding the loss of a child, among its host of services. familyservices.bc.ca
• Empty Cradle, which offers support for parents who have experienced the loss of an infant or failed pregnancy. emptycradle.bc.ca
• Still Life Canada, a stillbirth and neonatal death education research and support society. still-lifecanada.ca
• Pacific Post Partum Support Society, which supports mothers and their families experiencing postpartum/perinatal distress, depression and anxiety. postpartum.org
