Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette. Hey, girl.
And you are tuned in to Tweed Trends. It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Hey there, welcome back to Tweed Trends. Today is pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day.
Let's get started. For those of you that listen to the podcast regularly, you know and understand that I normally do my episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Well, if you're looking at your calendar right now, you're probably saying, well, then what are you doing on a Friday? Well, basically, bottom line is on Thursday, I was overcome by events.
My plate was too full. I had a lot of things to get done. And the podcast was the item that suffered. However, I think that it all worked out to my advantage because my content for Thursday's episode was actually a Friday observance.
So observance wise, I'm right on time. Episode wise, OK, I'm a little late. However, I thank you for the grace that you're granting and saying, you know what? I know you're supposed to do this on Thursday.
You're doing it on Friday. And I'm still going to support you and listen. So thank you. Now, before I get into the other parts of today's show, I do want to tell you a couple of stories, little short stories.
The first one dealing with the fact that when we lost our son, he was four months old. We were living in Jacksonville, Florida, and I needed help. I was losing it. I was a mess to put it plain and simple.
I was a mess. I ran across a support group that met at the Ronald McDonald House down there. And it was sponsored by Wolfson's Children's Hospital, a great group of families that met there. I learned about the awkward silence when you have people that are talking about grief and loss and type things.
That it's not unusual for there to be awkward silence in those conversations. And what we were taught was that you don't try to fill the silence by talking. You let the silence go. Let it be.
Let it last however long it needs to last. Because it's a thought process. It's an emotional experience. It's something.
But whatever it is, it deserves its own space. So you don't try to fill up all the gaps because you feel weird in the silence. You embrace the silence. And that was one thing that I really grew to appreciate.
Because a lot of times you will be in the middle of telling a story and you get choked up and then people automatically feel like they have to come up with something to say or come up with a way to console you. And it's like, no. OK, so yeah, this is a difficult conversation. This is a difficult topic for me to talk about.
However, it's OK. You're not making me cry. It's my own emotions, my feelings, my thoughts. It's all me.
It's not you. So don't try to feel like you have to fix it. So having said all of that, my husband and I, we had season tickets for the Jaguars. And we went to, it was a Monday night game.
We went to the game and we went to go to our seats. And one of the other support group members, her name is Erica. Her husband was there. And he was sitting at the end of our row.
So we had to squeeze past him to get to our seats. And that was one of the most amazing moments for me. Because he knew who we weren't. We knew who he was.
And as we get to your seat and you're like, OK, can we need to get down here, excuse us. And it's like we look each other in the face and we begin to cry. And it was crazy because for me, it was, this is Jaguar Stadium. It can fit up to 82,000 people in there.
And it just so happens that the person on the end of our row is someone like us who had experienced loss. And so for the rest of that game, I looked out at the sea of people in that stadium and thought to myself, how many other people out here have experienced a pregnancy loss or the loss of a child? It was mind-boggling to me because I could only imagine that it was probably a lot. But we would have never known.
We still don't know. But we knew the one guy at the end of our row did. And so that made three on our row that we knew of. That was amazing to me.
Now, another situation, I went and did the Disney Princess half-marathon. And at that half-marathon, while running down the street, once again, I ran into another person from the support group. And we took pictures together and we hugged and we laughed. And it was just like, oh my gosh, how crazy is it that I'm seeing somebody from my support group here?
And again, it took me to that place thinking of, how many runners are out here today? And then on top of that, how many of them have experienced what we have? Mind-boggling, I'm telling you. So I said all of that basically to say that you never know who you're going to run across this experienced pregnancy loss or the loss of a child.
You never know. Another situation just happened to, well, yesterday, not today. I was at the hotel that we're staying at. I started up a conversation with the young lady at the front desk.
Her name is Julie. And just so happens that Julie has lost two children. Now, granted, they were a lot older. They weren't infants or anything.
But then her daughter also has experienced child loss or pregnancy loss. And we had the longest conversation. We were all over the place with the conversation. We talked about grandkids and all sorts of stuff.
But bottom line was, here was this lady that I had walked past multiple times that morning. And I had no idea that pregnancy and infant loss had touched her life as well. So all of that to say, you never know who in your presence has been touched by pregnancy or infant loss. So to start up a conversation, it's OK to share your story.
That's OK, too. It should be OK for us to talk, tell our stories, and to say our children's names. OK, so I'm going to save the best for last, which are the messages from the families. And right now, I want to talk about four different organizations that support families who've experienced pregnancy and infant loss.
Before I go into the names of them, let's just say this. There are so many different organizations out there. Depending on what your needs are, that's going to be the way that you're going to determine which one is a better fit for you. Because there's some that offer support, some offer money.
It's just a wide range of services that are available for you. But you won't know about them unless you do the work and actually look for them. So if you happen to know a friend who is experiencing a child loss or pregnancy loss, then you may want to consider doing the work for them. Because quite often, people will say, hey, let me know what you want me to do.
And the unfortunate thing is people who have experienced loss, they don't have a laundry list of things and are ready to delegate things to people. It just doesn't work that way. So I think you would do your friends such a big favor by doing the research and then even offering to maybe go to a support group with them or do something. And don't try to force them necessarily to go right away.
Just let them know, hey, when you're ready, I've already got this information set aside for you. Read through it when you can. We can talk about it when I come back to visit you. And let's see if we can't work through this together.
So having said that, the first organization that I'm going to highlight is probably one of the most recognized names in pregnancy and infant loss. And that's the March of Dimes. And you can go to their website and give in honor of a loved one whose experienced loss. You can pick your own dollar amount or you can pick one of their predetermined amounts.
But once again, they are one of the ones they've been in the business for quite some time. So if you want to try it in true name, then March of Dimes is the way to go. Now, I also found a jewelry website is called LaBelle Dame. And they carry miscarriage jewelry as well as infant loss and baby loss jewelry.
They also carry sympathy cards for miscarriage. So that's not something you're just going to see on the shelf in your typical grocery store aisle card section. You're just not going to see those types of greeting cards. So here you can go and get specialty cards made just for miscarriage and loss of children.
And they also have other memorial types of not just for people, but for pets and other things like that. So if you're interested in that, you can find them on IG at LaBelle Dame, that's L-A-B-E-L-L-E-D-A-M-E. And from there, you can get their website and actually go and check out what they have. Another website is stillstandingmag.com.
And it's an online magazine. You can also find them on Twitter at STLstanding-underscore-mag. And basically, still standing magazine, they share stories from around the world of writers who've survived loss and fertility. And then also, they have articles on how others can help.
And I think those are the really, really helpful articles, because so often people just really don't have a clue what to do. And rather than doing anything, they'll kind of like slink away and do nothing. So this online magazine is here to help you to be able to help your friends cope yourselves, if you're the one that's going through it. And so once again, you can find them on Twitter at STLstanding-underscore-mag.
Now the last one is a local one for us. And it's called Kennedy's Angel Gowns. Now just because it's local for where I live, you can still donate to them and help out their cause. Because basically what they do is they provide angel gowns for the babies who've passed away.
And if you're not really sure what that means, is that when you're in the hospital and your baby passes, there are a lot of times parents don't necessarily want to go look for a gown for the babies. And so this particular organization provides gowns for your babies to be feudalized in. And so it's really tough. But yeah, so that's a service that they provide.
And then as one of their fundraisers, they have a 5K angel run. And you can become a volunteer, or you can even be a social media ambassador for Kennedy's Angel Gowns. So you can find them on Twitter at Kennedy's Angel. That's K-E-N-N-E-D-Y-S-A-N-G-E-L.
So check them out as well. So the four, once again, March of Dimes, LaBelle, Dane Jewelry, Still Standing magazine, and Kennedy's Angel Gowns. I'm thinking of Evanston. And David, and Winston, and Rhea.
Love, Nana. This is for my sweet baby boy, Ethan Alexander Dusse. We think about you every single day. We love you.
We love you. We miss you deeply. Your mom and I, your siblings, your grandparents, aunts and uncles, family, friends, all of us. We're touched by your time here on Earth with us.
Again, Evanston, we long for the day in which we can hold you in our arms again. We just did a tribute to you on your birthday, the retirement ceremony. Always, always in our thoughts, always in our hearts. Rest well, son.
We love you. Thank you so much for listening. That was today's episode of Tweet Trends. And for the families and friends that left their messages, thank you, thank you, and thank you.
I am so appreciative of the fact that you thought it, not robbery, to actually join in in the conversation and leave a message. And honestly, I think what I'm going to do is that this is going to be an annual thing. Whether it falls on a Tuesday and Thursday or not, I think I want to expand this some more, get some more families involved, and turn it into just one big episode of messages from the families. In the meanwhile, what I'd like for you guys to do is find a way to celebrate and remember those pregnancies and the infants that were lost.
One thing I want to point out to you as well is if you know of a female who has lost a pregnancy or lost a child, and that was the only child that they had, think of them on Mother's Day. Because that is a really tough time for them, because they know, especially if they gave birth to a stillborn, they know that they gave birth to a baby, which makes them a mother. But that baby is not there, and people tend not to recognize them as mothers. So that's my request.
You got a long time for Mother's Day. But in the meanwhile, find some way to either donate to a cause that focuses on pregnancy and infant loss, or do something like the 5K that the Kennedy's Angel Gowne's group is sponsoring. Find something like that in your area. It's not hard to find, and these groups really need our help.
Not only do they need the help, but the families that they serve need the help as well. So that's my ask for today's episode. Have a great weekend, and I look forward to seeing you back here on Tuesday.