A memory to hold

MAT-SU — One Monday in December, Cari Lester’s unborn son’s heart stopped beating. Four months before he was to be delivered, the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck five times, causing his heart failure. Only three days after Lester found out she was having a boy, which her family named Hunter, he was dead.

Sitting in her doctor’s office at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center  that Monday afternoon, Lester tried to listen to her doctors explain why she would have to deliver her dead baby, but suddenly, the room went black.

“I passed out right there on the floor,” Lester remembered. “It was very hard thing to deal with right at Christmas time. My world came crashing down, like the walls were caving in. I’m not a weak person, but I was broken.”

As her mother comforted her in the hospital during her three-day stay, Lester received a blue box from the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center staff with several keepsakes they had collected: a lock of her son’s hair, his footprints stamped on a card, a fabric heart and grief support pamphlets. Lester said the gesture was heartfelt, but there was nothing in the box to help her with the pain she felt leaving the hospital empty-handed.

“My arms ached because I had nothing to hold,” she said. “My heart’s broken and arms numb. I found out later these are common side effects to losing a child early.”

At home, Lester tried holding the family together. Her 15-year-old daughter, Heather, tried to get her to participate in day-to-day life while her youngest, Haley, 2, offered her blanket for support.

“Haley didn’t understand why mommy was broken,” she said. “It affected her in a different way than it did with Heather.”

Lester said she eventually was able to rise from her grief and focus on her blurry world. Her two daughters needed a mother; her husband, a wife. She decided to focus on Hunter’s  life in a way that might help her heal — by helping other mothers with their perinatal losses.

While surfing the Web, Lester located the Angel Teddy Bear Foundation, a nonprofit group that donated small stuffed teddy bears to hospitals around the United States for parents of stillborn children, miscarriages and neonatal loss.

The idea made sense: Give the mother of a stillborn infant something to hold, and leave the hospital with.

“There are a lot of moms out there going through this,” she said. “I had hoped this would be the way I could give back and have Hunter live on in our memory.”

In April, Lester began Hunter’s Hugs and started looking for stuffed bears.

The Angel Teddy Bear Foundation sent 15 plush teddy bears to kick off her campaign. Next, Lester went straight to the teddy bear manufacturers at Russ Berrie. The company sent her boxes more.

The teddy bears, Lester said, are not meant to be a replacement, but a sympathetic gesture letting the parents and grieving families know they are not alone in their journey.

“I just thought the teddy bears would be more personal,” she said. “Going through this, you want to hit, throw and cuddle something all at once.”

Lester then sat down with Mayor Dianne Keller, who experienced a premature death 12 years earlier.

“My unborn daughter, Erin, had heart problems and we didn’t even know it,” Keller said. “Three weeks before the due date, I went to my midwife, who was concerned because she wasn’t growing. After we got to Providence, the neonatal specialist examined me and told me she was gone.”

Keller said she knew something was amiss the evening before the visit to her midwife.

“I think she passed at two o’clock in the morning because that’s when I woke up and felt something was wrong,” Keller said. “It was like God woke me up to prepare me for what I had to face.”

Keller said Lester came to her office to talk about Hunter’s Hugs and to share her story.

“It’s amazing how we find each other,” Keller said.

Keller said after Erin died, a flood of medical bills came her way from the funeral home and hospital. She said she hopes the federal government will eventually offer a tax deduction for families of lost unborn children, adding that she is working with congressional delegates to change the current system.

“With a stillborn child, you still need to harbor the burial or cremation costs,” she said. “There are a lot of unexpected expenses.”

Keller said the meeting helped her relate to what she went through in 1996.

“I think it’s great what she’s doing,” Keller said. “She expressed to me the same feelings I experienced. The one thing that I found that surprised me was that her arms ached, too. A teddy bear is not a baby, but at least it can help someone through the tragedy.”

In April, teddy bear in arm, Lester arranged a meeting with Pat Smith, director of the Mat-Su Regional’s Family Birthing Center, hoping her bears could be distributed to others like her at the Birthing Center.

Smith has seen a lot of babies in her day,  assisting mothers-to-be in the Mat-Su Valley for the past 10 years.

“Oddly enough, I had been contacted by various other groups that wanted to donate other items for perinatal loss support as well,” Smith said. “They seemed to all be operating independently. I was looking at the different resources and how they could all be complemented.”

Smith and Lester decided it was time to organize a community resource luncheon to see how they could improve the process. Invited were Cat Bullington from Sacred Beading Circle, Megan Kolendo from Newborns in Need, Nancy Alberly from Alaskan Minutes of Gold, and a member from Parents Reaching Out.

Lester couldn’t attend that first meeting. Try after try, she couldn’t walk back through the doors of the Birthing Center.

“It was too much,” she said. “I needed a friend to come with me the second time.”

“The first thing we did was make a needs list,” Smith said. “What we’re working on is a community networking group, to continue and improve support to families of infant loss.”

Megan Kolendo, a representative from Newborns in Need, said she was glad to jump on board. Newborns in Needs helps newborns who are sick or in crisis.

“It speaks volumes when women come together to share their grief and come out of it with support,” Kolendo said.

Cat Bullington, a member of Sacred Beading Circle, a social group of bead artists, experienced perinatal loss first hand earlier this year. Her unborn son was also named Hunter.

“Cari and I didn’t know each other before Pat brought us together,” Bullington said.

Together with the 13 other Sacred Heart beading circle members, Bullington crafted numerous “tear bottles,” small multi-colored memory keepsakes designed to help mothers deal with their loss.

“It’s a really touchy subject,” Bullington said. “Some mothers are told to get over it and move on, like I was. The fact is, everyone in the family is affected by the loss and it’s not so easy to get over.”

Smith said Mat-Su Regional has a bereavement program, including issuing mothers a blue or pink memory box, meetings with a trained grief counselor and supportive medical staff on hand.

“On average, there are two to four perinatal losses a month through Mat-Su Regional’s obstetrician care,” Smith said. “That doesn’t not include all the ER cases.”

Smith said the majority of stillborn and fetal demise cases occur in the hospital’s emergency room, where support is less visible.

Eileen Buzek, director of social services at the Birthing Center, said the Valley has few support groups, but it just takes two people to get the fire started.

“The whole goal to get us all in one room and do a needs assessment and see how we can accomplish our goals, but not overwhelm the families,” Buzek said.

Smith said it is important for families experiencing perinatal loss to be allowed to mourn.

“People can be insensitive to early losses,” Smith said. “They’ll say, ‘At least it happened early,’ or ‘You’ll have another one.’ The fact is it still impacts women hugely.”

Smith said the group plans to add additional keepsakes and support to mothers through Mat-Su Regional’s Birthing Center.

Sacred Beading Circle will contribute beaded memory bottles; Hunter’s Hugs,the teddy bears; Newborns In Need’s homemade memory boxes; Alaskans Minutes of Gold want to provide bereavements layettes.

“We also have a church group that wants to make little gowns, caps and blankets that the fetus can be dressed in for presentation, all homemade and from the heart,” Smith said.

On May 21, the day Hunter was supposed to be born, Lester and her family planted a small tree in the back of their home in his honor. It was a day, she said, that was both emotional and uplifting.

Lester said her message to other mothers is that while infant loss is very hard, better days are coming.

“This story does have a happy ending,” Lester said. “I found out I’m pregnant again. It doesn’t erase Hunter’s memory, nothing will. But it does give my family something new to appreciate.”

Contact J.J. Harrier at valleylife@frontiersman.com, or 352-2269.