The following resources can provide support during the birth of your baby:
Types of Loss Experiences including:
- every kind of miscarriage
- fatal diagnosis, carrying to term
- elective abortion & alternatives
- stillbirth (home, hospital)
- loss after ART/medically assisted conception
- multiple losses
- ending fertility in loss
- getting pregnant again
~See Photos of Babies
~Birth Methods, including, for example:
- D&C
- medicinal induction
- vaginal delivery
- Cesarean birth
~Birth Plans
Real, printable birth plans for every kind of loss, including bonding with your baby, how to bathe a stillborn baby, and more. There is a very helpful PDF file you can print and offer to your hospital in our description page of what an SBD doula is and does.
~Get support around you:
- Find Doulas/Photographers (including certified SBD doulas) This link also connects to birth plans and is a very important link.
- Birth Education & Preparation
- Birth, NICU & Bereavement Resources by location
- What an SBD Doula can offer
How To:
- How to photograph
- How to bathe
- How to doula
- How to find an SBD doula and other immediate support
- How to offer lactation support (approximately 20 weeks on)
~Immediate Postpartum:
The Welcoming:
M0m-Specific:
- General Postpartum Health resources
- lactation professionals, facing lactation decisions and more
Baby & Family Specific:
- questions about baby’s skin, physical condition or appearance
- holding, swaddling, photographing baby and family (including siblings)
- bathing a stillborn baby
- placenta keepsakes
- hand and foot prints, molds, other keepsakes
The Farewell:
- deciding between your farewell options during labor or immediately postpartum can feel jarring and traumatic. Having a supportive team who has relationships within the community and who speak with validating language is important.
- one of the hardest experiences for the family is the actual time the baby’s physical form is carried away by a provider affiliated with the farewell: this could be a nurse bringing the baby to the hospital morgue, or a funeral home staff member placing baby in a box, or the couple leaving the birthing room with the baby’s physical form still there. Being aware of this is the only way to even begin to soften such trauma. Having the option to hold one of the blankets that once touched baby, or clothing that has, or a teddy bear, may be a way to brave through such an impossible transition.
You might plan ahead and look at the information for After the Birth, including planning your Farewell Celebrations (resources, laws, and information for ways to say goodbye). Making decisions such as burial and funeral planning can seem necessary to make even during the mother’s labor – but truly, the family can go slow in these things, spending time Welcoming their baby before anything else is officially decided.
Farewell Celebrations (resources, laws, and information for ways to say goodbye, keepsakes, jewelry and more)
Read stories from others (and share yours) – just visit the right sidebar, and see them labeled by week and by additional circumstances.
~More information and support:
- Baby Names
- Love Cupboard (physical needs such as clothing for mom or baby)
- NICU – specific support prior to, during and after birth
- Emotional/Spiritual Support (including for the dad & surviving children)
- Crisis Lines, Books, Websites (some by country)
- Information – and guidance – for your Friends/Family
- Let your providers know that stillbirthday has resources for them (there are wonderful printable resources for them in our About SBD Doulas page).
