Zuri Nzilani Foundation
As part of the Zuri Nzilani Foundation’s #BreakingTheSilence campaign, they have allowed us to share stories that honor these parents and the babies they hold dear. Please watch the first of a four part series of Auntie Jemimah’s story. Her brave recount of experiencing stillbirth is a profound reminder of the emotional toll of infant loss. Please consider donating to ISA so we can continue to support women across the globe like Auntie Jemimah.
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Parent led activities
ISA former Board chair Zan Leisher published this Op Ed about her experience of her son Wilder’s stillbirth plus a call for recognition, answers, support, collaboration, and action on stillbirth!
Adam Sanford is an artist and illustrator. He is a dad who lost a baby boy in March of 2020. Through his grief journey he made a couple of projects based on the son he lost and wants to share them with you as a resource. Samuel Shootingstar is a short, illustrated story about his arrival into heaven. https://www.jumpmasterpress.com/product-page/samuel-shootingstar
Parent Support Organizations
The Living with Loss program has been co-developed by a team of bereaved parents and health professionals, including GPs, psychologists, social workers, and midwives. This interactive program shares evidence-based strategies and covers a broad range of topics including differences in grief, managing intense feelings, facing difficult situations and conversations, strengthening relationships, and navigating the future. The Stillbirth CRE are leading a research study to determine the effectiveness of this program. We’d like to invite bereaved parents to visit https://stillbirthcre.org.au/about-us/our-work/living-with-loss/ to find out more about the study and register to participate. Your participation and feedback will help us to evaluate the effectiveness of this program and improve grief support options for parents in the future.
The Still Born project was initiated by artist Adinda van’t Klooster to help raise awareness of stillbirth. Learn about the Still Born exhibition at: https://www.stillbornproject.org.uk/
Name your stillborn baby; join the Each Egg A World project.
Books
(Disclaimer: ISA does not actively promote the sale of any products and does not benefit from any sales)
Carta desde el cielo. Abrazar la muerte cuando se espera la vida by María Jesús Blázquez. Tercera edición de esta doble joya de María Jesús Blázquez que quiere seguir sirviendo de alivio y consuelo al compartir su propia experiencia, por dos veces dio a luz a la muerte cuando esperaba una nueva vida.
Emotivo, cálido y directo. Un abrazo en forma de libro.
Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby is a guide book to support you through your grief journey. It is full of information and practical suggestions and can help you accept the variety and depth of your emotions; find answers to questions such as “What’s normal?” and “Why me?”; make sense of your grief and mourning; cultivate mutual understanding with your partner; tap into sources of support; and adopt mindfulness-based coping strategies. By hearing from mothers and fathers who have walked this path, you can establish realistic expectations for grieving, find reassurance, and truly understand that you are not alone. The book was written by Deborah L. Davis, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist and writer who specializes in the emotional aspects of coping with crisis during pregnancy and infancy.
Dr. Claudia Figueroa Ibarra completed “Maternaje en la ausencia“, a book that details the experience of receiving care in public hospitals when a child dies during pregnancy. It also shows an analysis of how motherhood is experienced in the absence of a child within the Mexican culture. This book aims to make visible a little of what is experienced, in relation to fetal deaths, in a small place in Latin America.
“Maternaje en la ausencia” es un libro que detalla la vivencia de la atención recibida en hospitales públicos cuando fallece un hijo durante el embarazo, además se muestra un análisis de cómo se vive la maternidad ante la ausencia de un hijo dentro de la cultura mexicana. Este libro pretende visibilizar un poco de lo que se vive, en relación a las muertes fetales, en un pequeño lugar de América Latina.
One of our long-term ISA members just had her book published (02/2024). Still His Mama was inspired by the author’s lived experience with stillbirth. In the fall of 2018, Dr. Terrell Hatzilias was nine months pregnant when her baby’s heart suddenly stopped beating in utero. Her son, Kegan Christopher Hatzilias, was stillborn mere days before his due date. Still His Mama spans the worlds of fiction, memoir, medical literature review, and journaling assistant. It draws both on the author’s personal experience as a bereaved mother and her professional experience as a neuroscientist and medical writer to explore the world of baby loss and its subsequent heartbreak
For Children:
For Parents/Families:
For Fathers:
New understandings of fathers’ experiences of grief and loss following stillbirth and neonatal death: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31493675/