Saying Goodbye........

Memories of your pregnancy, birth and time with your child are precious. Before saying good bye you may want to:

• Take photos
• Bathe your child
• Wash them in a special scented soap
• Put a nappy on them and dress them
• Take your child outside
• Have family and friends visit
• Take hand and foot prints, hand and feet castings
• Collect a lock of hair
• Place items of clothing, blankets/wraps that your child wore in a snap lock bag to retain their smell

You can keep hospital bracelets, name cards and other hospital items used for your child and place them within your journal. Just ask the hospital staff to keep them aside for you.


It might help you to create a scrapbook of your memories including items from your pregnancy like pregnancy tests, ultrasound pictures, belly photos and other keepsakes from your pregnancy and birth.

12 reasons to smile

January - Zach starts Kindergarten!
February - My husband opens his Dojo
March - Yasminah's 4th Birthday, My 12 year Wedding Anniversary, The Jackson's Concert!
April - End of my 12WBT
May - Mother's Day
June - Journals For June
July - Zach turns 6
August - Pink Concert!
September - Time with my family
October - Pregnancy and Infant Loss Month
November - World Prematurity Month
December - Aisha and Aaliyah turn 4

HALEY BRACKEN BECOMES AMBASSADOR FOR YASMINAH’S GIFT OF HOPE

Yasminah’s Gift of Hope will celebrate its second birthday as a registered charity today 26th May. The charity was founded to support families who experience the miscarriage, premature birth, neonatal loss, stillbirth or infant loss of their child or diagnosis of a congenital abnormality during pregnancy. One in four pregnancies ends in loss and premature birth is the leading cause of new-born deaths. In the two years since it was founded the charity has provided over 6000 Gifts Of Hope to families and many more with support.

We are very excited that Haley Bracken has accepted the role of Ambassador for Yasminah’s Gift of Hope. Haley has experienced premature birth and knows the struggle that parents go through at that time. With her help and her passion for the cause, we can reach many more families who would otherwise have to suffer through this difficult time with little or no support.

As the mother of Yasminah who was stillborn and of twins who were born prematurely, my experiences have made me realise how important it is to have something by which to remember each child and their special birth journey. The tragedy is that some families have nothing: no photos, no record, nothing to hold.

Yasminah's Gift of Hope Journals allows families to keep ultrasound images, photos, cot cards, arm bands, and foot and hand prints as a cherished keepsake of a precious life. The journals are donated to hospitals, neonatal intensive care wards and to families struggling with loss or the worry of premature births.

 

As Ambassador, Haley Bracken will help promote awareness of the high rate of premature and stillbirths in this country and the ongoing support and understanding available from Yasminah's Gift of Hope. 44,000 babies are admitted to neonatal and special care units across Australia each year. That is an incredible amount of families we need to reach. We will hold our first Fundraising Ball on August 11th with Haley Bracken as MC and Ambassador, to raise funds and help us achieve our goals.

Yasminah’s Gift of Hope has achieved a lot in two short years and with Haley Bracken as Ambassador, we intend to achieve a lot more.

 

Anniversaries remind us to count our blessings. I would like to personally thank all of our amazing, dedicated and passionate volunteers who pour their hearts and souls into providing Gifts Of Hope to families and continueing Yasminah's memory. Thank you seems so small compared to all you've done, but know that your kindness and support doesn't go unnoticed. It is appreciated by families who receive a Gift Of Hope and support when needed most.
 

How to write a child's obituary

An obituary is meant to be a celebration of a life and one last chance to highlight a person's accomplishments. This, of course, is not possible when a child has passed away. There are no accomplishments to celebrate, only the heartbreaking pain of a precious child that has been taken away far too soon. Your child's obituary should honour and and celebrate their life and inform the community of your heartbreaking loss.


Below I have put together some things to help you write an obituary for your child. If you are finding it overwhelming, most funeral directors provide an obituary writing service. However they will still require most of the information from you.

Contact your local newspaper and request the costs involved for placing an obituary. Ask how many words or lines are included, if you can include a photo and any other restrictions.

Begin the obituary with your child's name and date of death. Some words you may like to use include; "passed away," "left this world," "left footprints on our hearts", "playing with the angels", or "earned his/her angel wings", "bud on Earth, to bloom in Heaven". They are much kinder terms and more appropriate for a small child than "died". Some families like to include phrases like, "forever loved", "beloved child of" or "much wanted baby".

Decide what other information you want to include. Do you want to mention when your child passed away, why your child passed away, or where they passed away. This is a very personal decision. Talk about your child, the time you spent with them, how your child looked. Let people know that you will always think of your child, and that they shouldn't be afraid to mention their name.


Include family member's in your child's obituary that will live on, to honour and remember your child's life. Parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and other close family member's. You may also want to include any family member's that have passed away before your child. Some common phrases you can use include "preceded by", or "Joining Heaven with".

Include details regarding the funeral or memorial service. Date, time, location, and any special requests. You may request people attending wear a particular colour "We kindly request all attending the funeral to wear blue in memory of our sweet boy". You may also like to nominate a charity if you would prefer to receive donations in lieu of funeral flowers, or to have donations made in his/her memory. This is especially important if your child died of an illness or congenital abnormality and you want to help other children with the same condition or support an organisation that has provided you with support following your loss.

Yasminah's 3rd Birthday Memorial March

On Monday 26 March 2012, Yasminah should be turning 3. Her family should be celebrating the life she had lived. Instead, they will be reflecting on the impact she has had on so many people’s lives.

On 26 March, we will be holding the inaugural Yasminah’s 3^rd Birthday Memorial March. The concept is simple, we want to raise awareness about pregnancy and infant loss, stillbirth, congenital abnormalities and premature birth. In Yasminah’s memory, we will work to educate more people about the heart ache that so many families across the world suffer.

Through the March, we will attempt to show people some of the pages who support the work that Yasminah’s Gift of Hope does, make them aware of why we do the work we do, and hope that they will in turn, share this information with their friends and family.

If it was up to us, Yasminah’s Gift of Hope wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t be doing the work that we do. But while families suffer through the loss of their child, struggle through the diagnosis of a congenital abnormality, or ride the rollercoaster of the NICU after premature birth, we will work to break the silence, raise awareness and provide support so no family has to go through it alone.

Each year in Australia approximately 58,000 couples experience reproductive loss:
About 55,000 experience early pregnancy loss, 1,750 babies are stillborn and about 900 babies die in the first twenty-eight days after birth – how are you going to make a difference?

Here is a complete run down of the details:

Start Date and Time - 10am AEST Monday 26 March 2012
End Date and Time - 10am AEST Thursday 29 March 2012

To complete the March:
1. You must be a liker of Yasminah's Gift of Hope.
2. You need to go to the Yasminah's Gift of Hope Facebook page and go to the 'Yasminah's 3rd Birthday Memorial March Album'.
3. From the album, you need to visit each participating business in turn and 'like' their page.
4. Marchers will need to like the status about Yasminah as they visit each page.
5. Marchers must then search through the albums on each page to find the picture with a statistic or information about Yasminah on it.
7. You need to "collect" each of these statistics and enter them into the following link - https://promotion.binkd.com/Enter.aspx?id=2993
8. Once you have visited each page and liked all the statuses, you can submit your answers.
9. Whoever collects all the statistics and submits them in the required time (before 10am Thursday) will then be in the running to win the big prize. The big prize will be chosen through random.org. Everyone will be assigned a number based on when we receive their submission and this number will then decide the winner.
10. When you have completed Yasminah's 3rd Birthday Memorial March, please share this status "Today I am celebrating the life of Yasminah with Yasminah's Gift Of Hope. Will you help to break the silence? Visit Yasminah's Gift of Hope to find out how" tagging 'Yasminah's Gift Of Hope' Facebook Page.

OMG I'm Pregnant!

We found out we were pregnant for the third time, 9 weeks after losing our second child, our first daughter Yasminah Ann. It was in my mind, a natural miracle. A gift of hope, born from love and great loss.

I still remember my husband looking at my belly and asking me If I could be pregnant. I immediately dismissed the suggestion replying that I was still 'just fat'. Placing my hands on my wobbly belly, staring at the marks permanently etched into my skin. Marks of love, honour and growth. A part of my body that once held so many dreams and nurtured two precious babies. The crushing weight of knowing I'd only ever get to hold one of my babies in my arms lived with me each time I saw my scarred body.

The doubt, fear and excitement set in. Could I be pregnant? Would this baby die too? What would people think? Yasminah just died! Are we ready to have another child? Who cares what they think! OMG we might be pregnant! There could be a baby growing inside me right this very moment.

Then I was late........So I did a test, but I was so busy that I didn't wait the three minutes for the lines to appear. I saw one faint line appear on the test and put it aside on the bathroom vanity and went on with the day. Perhaps it wasn't being too busy to stop, it was the fear that held me back from waiting any longer after seeing that one faint negative line appear. My body had failed me, it had failed my child only a few short months beforehand. How could I believe that anything positive could happen after the devastating loss of my one and only daughter.

How on earth could I be trusted to deliver another healthy, living, breathing child into this world? How could I be trusted with growing another child? How could I trust my body growing a new child? A million and one questions and doubts ran through my mind. There was this little glimmer of hope and I grasped it with both hands and held onto it tight! How beautiful would it be to have the opportunity to grow our family, to bring another child into this world, to give my son the sibling he so desperately wanted. To feel that moment of happiness when you hold your newborn child in your arms.

It wasn't until after lunch, cleaning the ensuite I realized the test was still sitting on the bathroom vanity. When I picked it up, holding it in my hands, I couldn't believe my eyes! There staring back at me were two pink lines!! Two pink lines. A positive pregnancy test. I was pregnant. Right in this moment there was a child growing inside my broken womb. A new child. We were going to have another child. I started shaking and crying and staring at these two pink lines that appeared on the test in my hands. Something to hope for.......