Crucial resource to help thousands of grieving families after baby loss
On the back of Meghan Markle revealing she suffered a miscarriage, grieving families are being helped by a unique concept.
As Meghan Markle bravely highlighted, the statistics are confronting.
In revealing her own miscarriage, the Duchess of Sussex said she and Prince Harry discovered that in a room of 100 women, 10 to 20 of them will have suffered from miscarriage.
“Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning,” she wrote in the New York Times last week.
In Australia a miscarriage occurs every 3.5 minutes.
Further to that, every day six babies are still born, three die within 12 hours of birth and 1439 babies die before 28 days of age.
But it’s not just parents who grieve - support is needed for the entire family at this devastating time.
That’s where a new book for parents and bereaved siblings comes in.
The Children’s Hospital at Westmead’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the Grace Centre for Newborn Care, have developed a first-of-its-kind colouring book to help parents and children work through the loss of a baby.
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My Brave Journey aims to help parents answer difficult questions that may come from their children and also provides a space for children to express their feelings after the loss of their brother or sister.
Clinical nurse consultant Nadine Griffiths said the resource could not take away the loss for the family and it might not have all the answers.
“We instead see it as a starting point to discuss what is a difficult and confronting topic for adults - especially when faced with questions from children,” she said.
“The book was designed in consultation with psychologists, bereaved families, clinicians, and bereavement specialists.”
The book was created in partnership with Life’s Little Treasures Foundation, a specialist neonatal family support group based in Victoria, and was led by three NICU nurses who masquerade as an artist, graphic designer, and wordsmith.
It is the second in a series of colouring in books they have developed to help support siblings of NICU patients who often experience vicarious trauma and subsequent disruption in life for their family.
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Jillian Lotoaniu, clinical nurse educator, illustrated the book by using Australian flora and fauna.
“I hope that every family, their babies and their siblings have a unique resource for information, restfulness and comfort ensuring families in the NICU are holistically cared for,” she said.
Belinda Jacmenjak, clinical nurse specialist, was the graphic designer and said she hoped the book could help just one family navigate their way through this difficult time.
“It is extremely difficult for small children to express their feelings so I hope this book can help them do that and allow them to heal,” she said.
“It is so important because there is nothing like it out there and siblings of babies in the NICU are often forgotten. They are just as important and this resource was developed just for them.”
The book has been allocated funding so it can be provided to bereaved families for free across Australia.
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