Nora Madelyn

Support Nora's Fund with Sharing Spree

If you receive shopping/deal offers from Sharing Spree, you can now choose to have a portion of all of your purchases benefit the Nora Madelyn Fund.

Simply log into your Sharing Spree account, access your account, and choose "Providence Health Foundation Nora Madelyn Fund" as the beneficiary of your Sharing Spree purchases.

Funds received from Sharing Spree will be directed to the Nora Madelyn Fund and will be used to assist families in our community in keeping with the goals of the fund.

Thank you for your support!

Remembrance Ceremony

On July 24, 2011, the Nora Madelyn Fund for Infant and Child Loss and the Providence Newberg Medical Center's Perinatal Loss Committee hosted the 3rd annual remembrance ceremony for families who have lost a child or children in pregnancy or as an infant.

The ceremony was held in the Providence Newberg Medical Center's Healing Garden. Families were able to release a monarch butterfly in memory of their child or children.

• View a photo album of the ceremony.
  
• View a slideshow of the ceremony with music (106 MB).
  

Ceremony photos courtesy of Darci VandenHoek, Kazuri Images.

If you would like to attend the 2012 ceremony, please contact us.

Lending Library

The Nora Madelyn Fund has created a lending library of resources for parents and caregivers focusing on perinatal loss and grief issues. The lending library is located outside of the Creation Chapel on the second floor of the Providence Newberg Medical Center.

Please feel free to borrow any materials that you may find of use and comfort. We ask that you return them to the bookshelf when you are finished with them.

The following materials are a partial list of books in the lending library (availability may vary):

• About What Was Lost: 20 Writers on Miscarriage, Healing and Hope edited by Jessica Berger Gross
• After The Death of A Child: Living with Loss Through the Years by Ann K. Finkbeiner
• Assessing Spiritual Needs by George Fitchett
• The Bereaved Parent by Harriet Sarnoff Schiff
• The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed: A Mother’s Story of Loss and Hope by Kathleen Willis Morton
• Companioning at a Time of Perinatal Loss by Jane Heustis and Marcia Jenkins
• Empty Arms: Coping after Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Infant Death edited by Sherokee Ilse
• Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby by Deborah L. Davis
• An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagniation by Elizabeth McCracken
• A Gift of Time: Continuing Your Pregnancy When Your Baby’s Life is Expected to Be Brief by Amy Kuebelbeck, Deborah L. Davis
• The Goldfish Went on Vacation: A Memoir of Loss (and Learning to Tell the Truth About It) by Patty Dann, Sallie Sanborn
• The Good Grief Club by Monica Novak
• A Grandparent’s Sorrow by Pat Schwiebert
• Grieving the Child I Never Knew by Kathe Wunnenberg
• Help, Comfort and Hope After Losing Your Baby in Pregnancy or the First Year by Hannah Lothrop
• Life Touches Life: A Mother’s Story of Stillbirth and Healing by Christiane Northrup MD
• Miscarriage: Women Sharing from the Heart by Marie Allen
• Naming the Child: Hope-Filled Reflections on Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Infant Death by Jenny Schroedel
• Prayers & Rituals at a Time of Illness & Dying by Pat Fosarelli
• Pregnancy After a Loss: A Guide to Pregnancy After a Miscarriage,Stillbirth or Infant Death by Carol Cirulli Lanham
• A Silent Love: Personal Stories of Coming to Terms with Miscarriage by Adrienne Ryan
• A Silent Sorrow: Pregnancy Loss—Guidance and Support for You and Your Family by Ingrid Kohn, et al
• Something Happened: For Children and Parents Who Have Experienced Pregnancy Loss by Cathy Blanford
• Strong and Tender by Pat Schwiebert (for fathers)
• Tear Soup by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen
• Trying Again: A Guide to Pregnancy After Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Infant Loss by Ann Douglas, et al
• Water Bugs & Dragonflies: Explaining Death to Young Children by Doris Stickney
• We Were Gonna Have a Baby, But We Had an Angel Instead by Pat Schwiebert (for children)
• What Do I Say: Talking with Patients About Spirituality by Elizabeth Johnston Taylor
• When the Bough Breaks: Forever After the Death of a Son or Daughter by Judith R. Bernstein
• When Your Friend’s Child Dies: A Guide to Being a Thoughtful and Caring Friend by Julane Grant

Several of these titles have also been donated by the Nora Madelyn Fund to the Newberg Public Library and Sherwood Public Library.

 

How Nora's Fund Helps Bereaved Families

Remembrance Ceremony: July 2012

Nora's Fund and the Providence Newberg Medical Center's Perinatal Loss Committee will host the fourth annual remembrance ceremony in July 2012.

The ceremony is for families in our community who have lost a child at any age or stage of pregnancy. The ceremony will include a butterfly release in the Healing Garden, site of the Nora Madelyn Fund memorial. 

If you would like to attend the 2012 ceremony, please contact us.

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Resources for Patients of the Providence Newberg Birth Center

A founding goal of the Nora Madelyn Fund for Infant and Child Loss is to provide funding for the resources and comfort items used by the Providence Newberg Hospital Birth Center staff in caring for bereaved parents. The hospital's Perinatal Loss Committee oversees these resources. Nora's Fund provides to families who experience a loss in the Providence Newberg Birth Center:

• the book An Empty Cradle, a Full Heart: Reflections for Mothers and Fathers After Miscarriage, Stillbirth, or Infant Death as well as a journal, which can be used as a safe place to express your thoughts and feelings
• a memory box for items such as your baby's footprints, a lock of hair and other items
• comfort items such as remembering hearts and Comfee dolls
• a loss packet which includes a list of support resources, including referral to the Portland-based pregnancy loss support group, Brief Encounters
• pamphlets for family members, including grandparents and fathers
• Spanish language booklets for parents and grandparents
• the children's book We Were Gonna Have a Baby, But We Had an Angel Instead, which can be given to siblings to help comfort them in a confusing and sad time
• other books on pregnancy loss, grief and healing, made available to families through the Birth Center's perinatal loss lending library
• assistance with funeral, burial or cremation costs is available in cases of financial need

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Memorial in the Providence Newberg Medical Center Healing Garden

One of the founding goals of the Nora Madelyn Fund for Infant and Child Loss was to construct a memorial in Providence Newberg Medical Center's healing garden to provide a place of reflection, comfort and hope for parents who have lost a child at any age or stage of pregnancy.

Portland artist Greg Lewis created the glass butterfly sculpture. A memorial plaque has been placed with the artwork.

A dedication ceremony led by hospital chaplain Rev. Gregg Selander was held July 22, 2006. View photos of the memorial and dedication ceremony. We are so grateful to everyone who has supported Nora's Fund; because of you, the community has a permanent memorial to remember our children. We hope that it provides comfort and hope to families for many years to come.

For those who wish to view the memorial in person, Providence Newberg Medical Center is located just off Hwy. 99W at 1001 Providence Drive in Newberg, Oregon. Enter the healing garden through Ruth's Cafe. The memorial is on the eastern edge of the garden. The landscaping includes a pink dogwood and Love roses, one of the parent roses of Fire and Ice (or "Nora's Rose").

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Brief Encounters

The Nora Madelyn Fund donated two dopplers to the Brief Encounters pregnancy loss support group. Brief Encounters is a non-profit, non-sectarian support group for parents whose babies have died before, during, or after birth.

At informal, mutually supportive meetings in the Portland, Oregon area, bereaved parents and their families share their stores, discuss issues that arise from pregnancy and infant loss, and remember their children.

There are support groups for pregnancy loss and miscarriage, pregnancy interruption for medical reasons, subsequent pregnancy, fertility and adoption.

The dopplers will be used by members of the subsequent pregnancy group to help to ease their concerns about their babies. For more information about Brief Encounters, to receive a newsletter or for a schedule of support group meetings, visit their Web site.

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Newberg Public Library

The Nora Madelyn Fund donated funds to the Newberg Public Library for the purchase of grief and loss resources specifically for children. The grief tote includes books, CDs, DVDs and a cuddly teddy bear. The materials cover the concepts of death and grief, including sibling loss and pet loss. The materials are for preschool through elementary school age children; older children and parents will also find the materials helpful.

Nora's Fund also donated  funds to the Newberg Public Library to purchase books on grief, bereavement, pregnancy loss and subsequent pregnancy for their adult collection.

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Sherwood Public Library

The Nora Madelyn Fund donated funds to the Sherwood Public Library for the purchase of grief and loss resources for their adult and childrens' collections.

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Newberg Ministerial Association

The Nora Madelyn Fund donated copies of the book, Pastoral Care in Pregnancy Loss, to members of the Newberg Ministerial Association and to the Providence Newberg Hospital volunteer chaplains to aid them in their care of bereaved families in our community. If you are a member of the spiritual care community who would like to receive this book courtesy of Nora's Fund, please contact us.

Grieving Your Baby: Now and Through the Years

By Pat Schwiebert, RN
Founder of Brief Encounters support groups for parents who have experienced pregnancy and infant loss

I see you coming through the door to attend support group. Some of you are still numb and have not quite grasped the finality of your baby’s death. Some of you are barely able to breathe. You are preoccupied with your baby’s death, not caring about anything else, afraid to really allow yourself to grieve deeply for fear of going crazy. You are hypersensitive to others’ superficial remarks. You are edgy, irrational and self absorbed, clutching your baby’s memory in your arms, not believing that things could ever get better, and at the same time possibly afraid that things might get better. 

Then you meet someone who also experienced the death of their baby—three years ago—and your worst fear is realized: You don’t get over this kind of grief.

To get over grief assumes that at some point your baby’s death will no longer affect you. Wrong. You may also wrongly assume, because this parent who has been grieving for three years and still needs to come to a support group, that things will NEVER get better. What many grieving parents have discovered is that, though life may or may not get “better,” it will be different. Many parents will choose to come to a group yearly at anniversary times because they have learned about safe places to grieve.

You don’t get over grief. You get used to it. As you reenter life it will at first feel like walking through land mines. An innocent comment or question from a friend, a TV show or commercial, an advertisement in the mail, a song on the radio, or the mere presence of a baby, will throw you back into the pit of grief. Though it may seem like it sometimes, however, you don’t ever go all the way back to the beginning of grief to start from scratch again, and gradually recovery from these setbacks takes less time. 

At first, you may find yourself wanting to avoid anything that intensifies your longing for your baby. But as you begin to trust yourself and your own grief process you can use those times to look back and remember, yet not relive. You will find that you can’t both love and regret your baby’s life.

You will become acutely aware that grief lasts longer than sympathy. No matter how much you want others to miss your baby and to feel your pain, they will be unable to do so as deeply or as long as you will. This is your baby, not theirs. They didn’t have a relationship with your baby in the way that you did. What’s more, you most likely would feel a bit resentful if they carried as much sorrow as you.

You will accept that bereaved persons are very poor company. It may be hard to engage in superficial conversation or to care about what’s going on in other’s lives. Family and friends will want you to quickly return to your old self, not realizing there is no way for such a loss to leave you the way you were. Over time, you will learn that others mean well. You will find that relationships will change. And you will learn who you can count on for emotional support and who is unable provide this.

You will have to confront issues like:

•     How will you acknowledge your baby’s birth and death days?

•     Will you include their memory in holiday celebrations? You may find there is not agreement within the family. The need to acknowledge publicly often becomes private after the first few years.

Some of the other issues you will face are:

•     When will you consider trying to conceive again?

•     How will you keep your baby’s memory alive?

•     How will you talk with your children about this baby?

•     How will you and your partner accept each other’s unique way of grieving for the same baby?

•     To whom will you tell this secret?

Our English language is inadequate. When you try to tell others what it was like to have your baby die, you will find that words will fail to describe the true experience, and you will learn to be satisfied with that.

You’ll feel better in time, but your baby will still be dead. You will learn to trust that you do not have to hold on to the pain of grief in order to remember your baby.

You will be able to say to your baby, “Wherever I am, there you are also.”

How Nora's Fund Helps Medical Staff & Community Care Providers

Education & Support for Medical Staff & Community Care Providers

A founding goal of the Nora Madelyn Fund is to provide funding for perinatal loss education for Providence Newberg Medical Center staff and community care providers, including clergy and emergency response personnel. The fund allocates resources for PNMC Birth Center nurses, including the hospital's perinatal loss coordinator, to attend education sessions. We are currently working on educational offerings for 2011.

In June 2009, Nora's Fund provided financial support for the June OB/Peds meeting which focused on perinatal loss issues. Pat Schwiebert, RN spoke to the provider's role in caring for patients who are experiencing pregnancy loss and their babies.

In February 2007, RTS Bereavement Services presented their nationally recognized perinatal loss conference in Portland. Participants studied the grieving process and learned interventions, guidelines, and communication skills to provide consistent and mindful care to bereaved families.In addition, the perinatal loss coordinator attended training on how to develop and implement a perinatal bereavement program, with emphasis on conflict management, teaching strategies and leadership self-assessment. This training allowed the perinatal loss coordinator to recommend refinements to the excellent perinatal loss program currently in place at Providence Newberg Medical Center. Nora's mother, Raina, participated in a parents' panel during the conference, an invitation she was honored to accept in Nora's memory. Four bereaved parents shared stories of their babies and their experiences with medical professionals.

In April 2006, Nora's Fund sponsored two half-day workshops on perinatal loss and grief care issues. These well-received sessions were led by Pat Schwiebert RN and Jillian Romm RN LCSW. Over 50 nurses, hospital and medical clinic staff, and community care providers, including clergy and emergency response personnel, attended the workshops.

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Perinatal Loss & Grief Care Workshop: DVD Available

In April 2006, Nora's Fund sponsored two half-day workshops on perinatal loss and grief care issues. These well-received sessions were led by Pat Schwiebert RN and Jillian Romm RN LCSW. Over 50 nurses, hospital and medical clinic staff, and community care providers, including clergy and emergency response personnel, attended the workshops.

A DVD of this workshop is available to medical professionals and care providers upon request. A donation to Nora's Fund is appreciated but not required. Please contact the Providence Newberg Hospital Birth Center at (503) 537-1555.

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Birth Center Retreat

The Nora Madelyn Fund for Infant and Child Loss provides education and resources to the Providence Newberg Hospital's Birth Center staff to support them not only in their care of bereaved parents, but also in their "self-care," as they experience their own emotional responses to these losses.

In April 2006, Nora's Fund provided support for a retreat for Birth Center staff. The retreat focused on "self-care" for the nurses, as well as other issues relating to care for bereaved families and babies who have died before, during or after birth. The retreat was led by two recognized experts in the field of perinatal loss and grief: Pat Schwiebert RN and Jillian Romm RN, LCSW.

Ms. Schwiebert is a founder of the Portland-based Metanoia Peace Community, the umbrella organization which houses Brief Encounters, a local support organization for bereaved parents of pregnancy and infant loss. She is the author of several books on grief, including Someone Came Before You, We Were Gonna Have a Baby But We Had an Angel Instead, When Hello Means Goodbye and Tear Soup. Copresenting with Ms. Schwiebert was Jillian Romm RN, LCSW, an assistant professor in ObGyn at OHSU. Among her special interests are counseling and caring for grieving families, including those experiencing perinatal losses. Ms. Romm is the former president of the North American Society for Psychosocial Obstetrics & Gynecology.