Ron Reigns:
Welcome and thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption with Kelly Rourke and me, Ron Reigns, where we delve into the issues of adoption from every angle of the adoption triad. If you are homeless and pregnant needing help, AZ Pregnancy Help is always here to offer assistance and available 24/7.
Speaker 2:
Do what’s best for your kid and for yourself, because if you can’t take care of yourself, you’re definitely not going to be able to take care of that kid, and that’s not fair.
Speaker 3:
And I know that my daughter would be well taken care of with them.
Speaker 5:
All I could think about was needing to save my son.
Kelly Rourke:
My name is Kelly Rourke. I’m the Executive Director, President, and co-founder of Building Arizona Families Adoption Agency, The Donna K. Evans Foundation, and creator of the You Before Me Campaign. I have a bachelor’s degree in family studies in human development, and a master’s degree in education, with an emphasis in school counseling.
Kelly Rourke:
I was adopted at the age of three days born to a teen birth mother, raised in a closed adoption, and reunited with my birth mother in 2007. I have worked in the adoption field for over 15 years.
Ron Reigns:
And I’m Ron Reigns. I’ve worked in radio since 1999. I was the co-host of two successful morning shows in Prescott, Arizona. Now I work for my wife who’s an adoption attorney, and I’m able to combine these two great passions and share them on this podcast.
Ron Reigns:
It’s not just mamas missing their babies. In their hearts, but not in their arms, daddies do also. We remember you. We see you. We stand with you.
Kelly Rourke:
We’re going to be lighting a candle in the International Wave of Light campaign to help spread awareness for October being Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.
Kelly Rourke:
Today, we’re going to talk about a documentary film that really goes into details and talks with families and lets them share their story. This is so important for society because it affects pretty much everybody, including adoptive families and birth families, because the statistics are showing one in four, and the one in four is across the board, and that’s including birth families and adoptive families. And you’ve got two sets of families that are grieving the loss of one baby. So we think that this awareness foundation and campaign is so important, and that’s why we’re taking two podcasts to discuss it.
Kelly Rourke:
So this documentary film, Don’t Talk About the Baby. When I first saw the name, I thought, “Okay, that’s an interesting title for a documentary about miscarriage and stillbirth.” And in watching the documentary, they talk about angel moms and angel dads and how important it is for you to talk about the baby. They want to talk about the baby. They want to acknowledge the loss of their child. They want to say the name of their child.
Kelly Rourke:
So in watching the documentary, there was one part of it that really got me. The mom had delivered her baby at 39 weeks, and the baby had the cord wrapped around the neck twice, and the baby had passed away. And when the mom had had the baby, the nurse said, “Your baby’s beautiful, just beautiful. Would you like to see the baby?” And the mom was hysterical and upset because she had known that the baby had passed away right before she delivered the baby. And she said, “Yes, please bring me my baby.” And the nurse brought the baby to her, and she said the minute she saw the baby, she stopped crying. She looked at the baby, and the baby’s skin was perfect and rosy, and she had beautiful red lips and red hair and was gorgeous. She was perfect in every way.
Kelly Rourke:
And she said the most meaningful thing that somebody had done for her was the nurse leaned over and said, “Your baby’s beautiful. Can I hold her?” And she said the fact that somebody acknowledged that this was her child… Yes, the baby had passed away, but this was her child… And thought her baby was so beautiful that she still wanted to hold her dead baby, that meant the world to her.
Kelly Rourke:
And that made me realize, okay, we need to step up and support these mamas and daddies that are struggling with this and recognize how hard it is for them and acknowledge it and acknowledge those babies, because they matter.
Kelly Rourke:
Ron, you and I have talked since the beginning of the podcast that we believe a baby is a baby at conception. And that being said, whether you lose a baby at five weeks, or 10 weeks, or 20 weeks, or 30 weeks, or 39 weeks, or 40 weeks, that baby matters. And that scene in that video, I would say, changed more for my line of thinking than anything has in a very long time.
Ron Reigns:
I can absolutely see that. That is powerful, and it’s heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. It’s so bittersweet.
Kelly Rourke:
Yeah. That’s a good way to say it, bittersweet.
Kelly Rourke:
So these mamas and daddies are saying that when they have a loss, they do want you to reach out. They do want you to show up. They want you to be present. Give them a gift. Talk about the baby. Sometimes when… I think maybe it was the old school of thought, we didn’t talk about miscarriages and stillbirths, and moms that have experienced it… And I never really thought about talking about the miscarriages. Again, I felt like a failure, and so I didn’t want to talk about where I felt I had failed. I thought I had failed my baby, my husband, the siblings, everybody.
Kelly Rourke:
And so, in reading this and in listening to other moms, I see where they’re coming from and I agree. So there are lots of things to not say, but… Well, actually let’s go through that first. Saying, and this is… And again, in talking with adoptive moms and adoptive parents, we’re referring to you as well. Do not say things like, “I know how you feel”, because you don’t know how they feel.
Kelly Rourke:
Even if you’ve had a miscarriage or a stillbirth, it’s a different family, a different situation, different thoughts, different feelings. Telling them, “It could be worse,” is just adding insult to injury in my mind. “Well, at least you still have other children.” That doesn’t mean that it’s okay to lose one because you have other children. “It happened for a reason,” is another thing you do not say, or “It was God’s will,” or “God’s plan.” These are not things that are helpful. That doesn’t make a grieving parent feel better. Saying, “You can always have another one,” or “Lots of women miscarry.” Those things, again, just hurt the heart of those that are experiencing loss. They’re not helping.
Kelly Rourke:
Things that do help would be, “I’m listening.” “I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault.” And I can tell you, if somebody had said those three words to me, “Not your fault,” there would’ve been no better words to say. Another thing to say would be, “This is so difficult. You’re not alone.” Or saying, “Talk to me. Tell me about the baby. What did you name the baby?”
Kelly Rourke:
Another scene from the documentary that I thought was so beautiful. One of the mom’s who’d also lost a baby, I don’t remember if it was the same mom or not, but that lost a baby I think at 39 weeks or maybe a little bit sooner, she said, “We had a funeral.” I didn’t know that you could do that. I didn’t know that you could have a celebration of life, but you can. Whether it’s something small and private you do in your home or whether you decide to have a regular female service, you can do that.
Kelly Rourke:
Don’t wait too long to reach out to somebody you know that has experienced a loss. Don’t wait longer than a month. They need you and they need you now. And if you reach out and they say, “I’m not ready yet,” then acknowledge that, accept that, but reach out again. Don’t take it as rejection, just take it as they’re processing grief.
Kelly Rourke:
Birth parents and adoptive parents may feel very depressed, lonely, and isolated. And with birth moms, not only have they lost the baby, but they feel that they have failed the adoptive family and the baby. They have this compounded guilt, which is why when we started the Donna K. Evans Foundation, we made a decision that if a birth mother had an adoption plan. The baby passed away, whether through miscarriage or stillbirth, they would still have the same access to all of the services at the Donna K. Evans Foundation, because their plan was adoption. Just because it didn’t happen-
Ron Reigns:
Come to fruition, right.
Kelly Rourke:
…doesn’t mean that they still don’t have that same opportunity as everybody else to receive the same services, because their heart was adoption and they were making a beautiful choice, and it wasn’t their fault that it didn’t happen. And so we do have women in the Donna K. Evans Foundation that have lost a baby due to miscarriage or stillbirth, and we stand beside them as well.
Kelly Rourke:
In our culture as a nation, pregnancy loss and infant death has kind of been thought as a taboo subject. It’s something that we have been told… and maybe that’s why for so long, I didn’t talk about my losses, because I didn’t want to make other people feel uncomfortable, or I didn’t want to make them uneasy talking about a dead baby. I don’t know. When you experienced your loss, Ron, how did you… What did you do?
Ron Reigns:
I’m a very private person anyway, so it is hard for me to talk about personal issues with almost anybody. Obviously Lisa and I talked about it and we went through the grieving process together, but in a way we were alone in that, because we really didn’t share it with people other than people who knew she was pregnant and knew that we were very excited and anxious for this to come to pass. I mean, this would’ve been our child together, whereas John is both of our child, we both consider him our son, but we were anxious to continue building our family.
Ron Reigns:
And yeah, so I didn’t really talk to… I mean, I would tell people that knew that she had had a miscarriage, but I didn’t discuss it. And I thought it was so rare. Again, we talked in the last episode about how it’s one in four, and that shocked me. At least one in four, it could be as high as 50%. But I thought this doesn’t happen to everybody, this is because of something I did wrong. We talked about that as well. And it was hard to process without support. And now being older and hearing these things and hearing that October is an awareness month for this entire situation, it does make me wish I had known back then.
Kelly Rourke:
Yeah, me too.
Ron Reigns:
And I would’ve been more willing to reach out and get counseling or talk to somebody who’d been through it or… But I didn’t. None of that.
Kelly Rourke:
Yeah. My husband had, as I did, an exceedingly hard time with the two miscarriages that we had together. And he… To this day, it’s a very raw, raw topic. Because you’re right, it’s something that we were so excited about and we were so looking forward to our creation together because we have a blended family, so it would’ve been our first together as well. And so I can relate and that’s very hard.
Kelly Rourke:
I will forever wonder what the baby would’ve looked like and the temperament. And I think the unknown is what makes it so difficult, because you’re left wondering. Wondering why? How? What would it have been like for the two of us raising a biological child together? So it’s hard.
Kelly Rourke:
I think the fact that birth parents, adoptive families, angel mommies and dads go through a shock and disbelief period. I think the shock and disbelief is such a good term that is used when we’re talking about miscarriages and still birth, because I can tell you that I think part of me years later is still in shock and in disbelief. Sometimes when I bring it up, it almost doesn’t seem real. And then you go back and you count how old would the baby have been now? And you start thinking, your mind starts to wander…
Ron Reigns:
About what they would be like in school at this moment, or, yeah.
Kelly Rourke:
And had the pregnancy gone easy, would there have been another one? Would you have stopped at one? Would you have continued? What would the household look like? And I think that that’s hard. I think anytime you look at your future, and it’s different than you had expected it to be, and that’s true with people dealing with fertility issues or failed adoption, when you are thinking ahead, oh well, this is what I thought my life was going to look like, and it’s not that at all, and it’s taken a fork in the other direction, I think it’s hard. And that’s why I think that this campaign is so important to spread the awareness because I agree with you. Had I realized that it was one and four…
Kelly Rourke:
I, too, didn’t realize it was that high, and I’ve been working with pregnant women for a long time. I’d heard numbers, but I don’t think I really poured myself into the numbers in the sense that I could personally resonate with them. Because sometimes in social work you have to almost distance yourself in certain areas so that you don’t become too emotionally involved or enmeshed with clients. And so I think sometimes the longer you’re in social work, the more you can start putting up that wall in your head to protect yourself. And I think that’s what I had started doing.
Kelly Rourke:
So there are a lot of foundations out there to help after a miscarriage or still birth. Everyone knows, I’m sure, about the March of Dimes. There’s a really cool foundation called the MISS foundation, and what they do is they’re a volunteer based organization providing counseling, advocacy, research, and education services to families experiencing the death of a child.
Kelly Rourke:
There is another foundation called the Shared Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, and what they do is they’re a community for anyone who’s experienced the tragic death of a baby. They serve parents, grandparents, siblings, and others in the family unit, as well as professionals who care for grieving families. It’s a national organization with over 75 chapters in 29 states. Their services include bedside companions, phone support, face to face support group meetings, resource packets, private online communities, memorial events, training for caregivers and so much more.
Kelly Rourke:
There’s another organization called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, and this one is beautiful as well. What they do is they recruit, train, and mobilize professional photographers to go in and take beautiful pictures of moms and dads and their deceased babies so that they have those pictures to hang onto for forever.
Kelly Rourke:
My oldest daughter is 24, and at the time I had had… Right after I had had her, her godmother was pregnant at the same time as me, but I’d had the baby, and then she had her baby, and her baby died right at birth. It was a total surprise and she had taken pictures of the baby. And back then, they didn’t have the professional photographers. So what they did is she and her family members, her mom and her husband’s mom and her husband, they went into the… There was a hospital room and they would pass the baby around so that they could all see the baby, and they took pictures of the baby. And when I went over to see her, she brought out a stack of pictures. I mean, this was 24 years ago. And she handed them to me and she said, “This is the baby.”
Kelly Rourke:
And I didn’t know how to respond. I was speechless. So I looked through the pictures and I told her how beautiful he was, because he was. He was beautiful. And in the video, the documentary that we were talking about earlier, they said people don’t realize… They’re expecting the baby not to look like a newborn baby, but the baby looks like a newborn baby. It doesn’t… It’s just still. It was just still.
Kelly Rourke:
When I was talking with my friend who lost the baby, and I said, “Was that hard? Was that hard to hold the baby and to pass the baby around?” And the one thing, and this is 24 years later, that I can’t ever forget was… Because it was like day two, I think, after the baby had died, she said, “It was just kind of hard because the baby was so cold.” And that was hard to hear.
Kelly Rourke:
But I think this foundation is absolutely phenomenal. The fact that for no fee, they will go in and take pictures of these mamas and daddies and babies so that they will have these for the rest of their life, and they will be able to see their beautiful baby. So Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep is the name of that organization.
Kelly Rourke:
There’s also an organization called String of Pearls, and that was created to provide a nurturing and safe place for families as they navigate the path following a fatal prenatal diagnosis that will result in the death of a baby prior to, or shortly after, birth. And so they believe that each life has a story worth telling, and they’re there for support as stories are lovingly written.
Kelly Rourke:
So there is help out there. There are foundations that care. If you’re an adoptive family, if you’re a birth family, you matter. Your loss is every bit as important as somebody who is not in an adoption situation. Your loss and your grief are real and raw, and I hope that everybody partakes in lighting a candle if they’ve had a loss and we will never forget.
Ron Reigns:
Thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters In Adoption. If you’re listening and you’re homeless and pregnant and need help, find more information about adoption with Building Arizona Families, a local Arizona adoption agency and available 24/7 by phone or text at (623) 695-4112. That’s (623) 695-4112. We can make an immediate appointment with you to get started on creating an Arizona adoption plan or just get you more information. You can also find out more information about Building Arizona Families on their website at azpregnancyhelp.com.
Ron Reigns:
Thanks also go out to Grapes for allowing us to use their song I Dunno as our theme song.
Ron Reigns:
Birth Mother Matters In Adoption was written and produced by Kelly Rourke and edited by me. Please rate and review this podcast wherever you’re listening to us. We’d really appreciate it. We also now have a website at birthmothermatterspodcast.com.
Ron Reigns:
Tune in next time on Birth Mother Matters In Adoption. For Kelly Rourke, I’m Ron Reigns.