Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Our First Donation!


  • 10 Crocheted & Knitted Blankets, 25 Mini Cards for a lock of hair to SW Washington Medical Center's Labor and Delivery Bereavement Dept.
  • 14 Crocheted Blankets, 10 Hats, 6 Memory Boxes, 25 Mini Cards for a lock of hair to Legacy Salmon Creek Labor and Delivery Bereavement Dept.
  • 26 Crocheted Blankets, 3 Hats, 8 Moon Rattles to Legacy Salmon Creek Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

We made special tags with our butterfly logo that read, "love and comfort to you, Remembering Rowan Project, MOMS Club of Camas, WA". The quilt we were given when Rowan was in the NICU read "Love and Comfort to You, from Franilou..." The rhyme was cute but I love the sentiment. After many hours of hand sewing on our tags with the help of my sister and my friend Carissa, we delivered our first donation to the hospitals today.

My friend Michelle has helped the project as our "Hospital Liaison", contacting the hospitals when I found it difficult to make those calls myself. As it turned out, her husband is doing his nursing internship at one of the hospitals, and she has a friend who is an L & D nurse at the other one. Michelle also lost a baby several years ago, and she wished there was something nicer than the little baggy for the treasured lock of her son's hair. She made 50 little cards to donate with our blankets with a tiny ziploc bag inside for holding a lock of the baby's hair.

Today we met to bag each of the blankets into extra large ziploc bags, and delivered the first box to Southwest Washington Medical Center. Michelle then took the other 3 large plastic totes full of blankets to deliver to her nurse friend for Legacy Salmon Creek.


On the way to the hospital my son Griffin was asking about the "dead babies" who were going to give our blankets to. He asked, "We made the blankets to remember our baby, right Mommy?" I tried to explain that most of the sick babies do not die, but he was clearly thinking about it all day. As we walked into the hospital my 3 1/2 year old talked with Michelle's 5 year old about how "some babies die and turn into angels." Later this evening he was playing a game where he was "taking the sick babies to the doctor." We all process grief in different ways. It might be easier to not talk about our loss, but by making the blankets and talking to others about this project we will always remember Rowan.

2 comments:

  1. Laurinda,

    What a wonderful thing you are doing here. My son is named Rowan. He was born 7/18/07 and required surgery at 5 months of age. During our 5 day stay in the hospital we received a handmade quilt from the Linus project. That quilt was such a large gift to us. It immensly helped us during our hospital stay (and helped to keep Rowan warm too) and is a reminder to us every time we see it of the love that strangers can show during a difficult time. I can't imagine what you must have gone through, and I'm glad you had the love of strangers to wrap your baby Rowan in too. My neighbor and I will get some fabric together. Where can I donate it?

    By the way, have you checked out The Dougy Center to help your family (especially your child) through the grief process?

    Thank you,
    Tia

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  2. Thanks Tia. Your Rowan's birthday is the day before my son Griffin's. When I looked into grief support programs for siblings, I found that most are not really for kids as young as mine. And he seems to be doing well expressing his feelings through play.

    We are definatly collecting fabric now. Especially neutral/tonal/brackground-type fabrics to compliment the lovely prints that were donated already. We have so many fun kids prints (mostly sets of 2 or 3 that coordinate), I'm not quite sure what to use with them. You can email me at laurinda 3 at yahoo dot com, and I'll send you my address to send fabric to, unless you are local and we could meet up.

    Thanks so much!

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