Remembering - Support group reaches out to grieving families

It doesn't matter whether the loss was yesterday, 20 years ago or 50 years ago, women and families who have suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth still grieve for their babies.

Southeast Missouri Hospital is inviting women and families who have experienced such a loss to a "Walk to Remember" Saturday at Capaha Park. The SHARE walk is the first ever to be held in the community. The event begins at 9 a.m. with registration; the walk is at 10. National SHARE president Cathi Lammert will speak at the walk and again at 10:30 in the Harrison Room at the hospital.

SHARE is a national support group that reaches out to women who have lost a baby because of miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth or neonatal death. The name comes from an acronym for Source of Help for Airing and Resolving Experiences with pregnancy and infant loss.

More than 120 people are expected to attend the event, including one woman who lost an infant nearly 25 years ago.

"You never forget when you lose a child," said Gayle Unverferth, a nurse at Southeast Missouri Hospital and co-coordinator of the local SHARE chapter.

"It's like a cut -- eventually it heals, but it leaves a scar. It will always be with you."

SHARE offers a range of support to parents when they lose a baby. Unverferth said the group uses the motto that "a person is a person no matter how small."

It doesn't matter when a woman loses a baby, "because every baby is special and parents want to remember," she said.

When Danna Bruns walks Saturday at the park, it will be to remember her baby, Abby, and to raise awareness about SHARE.

The group has had a support network in Cape Girardeau since 1984, but few women know it exists unless they suffer a loss. Organizers of the walk are hoping to form a support group as well.

Bruns found out about the services that SHARE offers in January after her daughter was stillborn at 34 weeks. A normal pregnancy is 40 weeks.

"They do a lot to help you feel like you're not the only one going through this," Bruns said.

Nurses at Southeast Missouri Hospital made castings of the baby's feet, took pictures and provided Bruns and her husband, Alan, with support.

"They tell you that a lot of people have made it through this OK, and you can too," Bruns said. "That's very important."

For parents who lose a baby after 20 weeks, the hospital staff allow them to see and hold the baby and take photographs. Nurses talk to them about how to make funeral arrangements as well.

Similar offerings are available for parents who lose a baby prior to 20 weeks, though a burial isn't required. For parents who do want a burial, SHARE has a common grave at Memorial Park.

"Sometimes you have these young couples who haven't ever been to a funeral and now they're burying their child," Unverferth said.

Grieving parents are in shock initially. "They never think it is going to happen to them," she said.

And because early ultrasounds and technology have advanced, parents can easily see their baby by 10 or 11 weeks gestation. However, if a miscarriage is to happen, statistics show that it will most often be before the 12th week.

One in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage and one in 100 will be a stillbirth. When pregnancies end that way, parents are "just devastated," Unverferth said. "They've seen pictures and sometimes heard a heartbeat."

Society often makes little of the family's loss in early miscarriages because there is no burial. But even when there is a burial, people don't know how to react.

The SHARE walk helps increase the public's awareness of infant loss, Unverferth said. "They are reminded that the baby was very real and loved," she said.

Bruns got involved with the memorial walk because she realized how important SHARE's resources were for her family. Few people talk about losing a baby through miscarriage or infant deaths, and health-care workers often aren't available for women who suffer miscarriages at home.

"We didn't know what we wanted people to say or how to deal with this," she said. But holding a wake for Abby let the family have some closure."

Today, Bruns is expecting another baby. But nothing can take away the loss she still feels. "It doesn't matter when you lose a baby," she said. "It's hard."

Her aunt and uncle who lost an infant child nearly 30 years ago also will walk.

It took support from SHARE and a network of friends and family helping her and her husband to get through the grief of losing a child. "That support made it easier," she said.

People told Bruns that perhaps God needed her daughter right away or that she was spared something worse that might have happened to her had she lived. Those words brought her some comfort. "You have to have something to believe in," she said.

Survival took support and prayers from "everybody we knew and a very strong faith in God," she said.

ljohnston@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126