Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day

• Report rights infringement
• published: 15 Oct 2015
• views: 333

Mayor Michael B. Coleman & other city leaders joined with bereaved families to present central Ohio hospitals with a donation that will help families cope with infant loss. October 15 is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. In recognition of the day and in remembrance of their children being stillborn, the Strader and Welliver families have come together to outfit five Central Ohio delivery hospitals with equipment to help ease the challenges families face in saying goodbye to their stillborn babies. Dean Strader and Lydia Welliver share similar stories, each being stillborn at 34 weeks gestation. Stillbirth occurs in about 1 in 160 pregnancies in the United States. A stillbirth is considered the death of a fetus at 20 or more weeks of pregnancy. Approximately 24,000 pregnancies ended in stillbirth in the United States during 2013. To provide support to those having a similar experience as theirs, each family launched their own fundraiser to purchase and donate Cuddle Cots. Cuddle Cots are devices that can be used by hospitals to discretely keep a baby cool at the mother’s bedside following a stillbirth or other infant loss. This device provides a gift of time for parents to properly say goodbye to a child without witnessing post-mortem changes. Over $16,000 has been raised collectively to date. Donations continue to be accepted to further this important work at GoFundMe.com/Strader. Enduring labor and delivery while grieving is traumatic, and helping parents cope is an important role hospitals play. As Columbus mobilizes through CelebrateOne to assure positive birth outcomes for all pregnant women and assure more babies reach their first birthday, Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman encourages other Ohio cities to provide support for families experiencing a loss.