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🌀While ‘birth’ and ‘death’ may feel very distant from one another, they are in fact so close together that life would not occur without them. As a birth keeper myself, I am completely compelled to learn more about death, and the more I connect the richer the tapestry of my life becomes. I start to weave life with a brighter thread. I become aware and open and increasingly more accepting of the death path. So, when I connected with Amy from Little Silk Wings, I felt so connected to the work she was and is doing. Amy is supporting Doula’s to support death, and in turn reaching out to the wider community to bring birth and death back into awareness. This work is imperative for the processing of grief; its important that we talk about death because, like birth, death is a right of passage. Death is becoming one of my favourite subjects and I just loved this story with Amy. In this story, we speak closely about Amy’s own experience, with her son being very close to the death path, and how Amy navigated this experience. 🌿
I am not going to apply any trigger warnings here because this story shares the gifts and the potions of how we can come together and support the death path. Please share this and check out the event Let Me See My Baby in the resources below.
So, we begin the journey with Amy heading into her three birth stories. Amy describes her first pregnancy as being the entry into the world of birth and advocacy for women. The pregnancies, as Amy describes, were rather straight forward and from in between the first and second pregnancy, Little Silk Wings was born.
Amy talks about her doula journey and supporting families for the best outcome possible. During the unfolding of her journey, Amy found a lack of understanding and support for when baby is unwell; it’s not the issue of people not wanting to support the mother and family, it’s simply the lack of understanding on how to provide support. Amy trained with Still Birthday in Canada and then, indirectly, came into a support role for doula’s called into bereavement.
Amy in her first birth with her doula.
We then talk about her third birth, when Amy would have liked to give birth at home but homebirth was unaffordable. Amy and her doula jokingly talked about a freebirth on the road, and what happened? A freebirth on the side of the road! Amy talks about the whole event and the quick birth that just did not quite make it to the hospital. Everyone felt calm and OK about the situation, an ambulance was called and Amy was in hospital for a few hours then back home again. Amy describes that she never could visualise her birth in a hospital.
Happy roadside family!
From here the journey took a change of direction. Amy describes heading home and having a beautiful dinner and then sleep. The next day Amy started to feel that something was ‘not right’ with her son, Gabriel. She found him to be limp and just not quite right and, having been there twice before with her daughters, knew that something was different. On day 3 Gabriel started to vomit a little, the colour seemed not quite right and Amy says she was advised to try to be positive. An ambulance was called and then they left not long after saying, “He is fine.” Amy was still concerned and took him straight to hospital and her concerns were right; little Gabriel had mal-rotation of the bowel.
Recovery after the surgery – Amy describes – “His face was swollen and he had a machine breathing for him. He had cords coming out of him in numerous places and had a big, red slice across his tummy. They had put his little white beanie back on, I was thankful for that.”
The surgery process was massive: Amy describes being left in the surgery waiting area covered in newborn vomit and completely tired, not really understanding what was happening. Surgery went well and Gabriel recovered quickly; Amy describes the emotional journey throughout this time. We talk again about supporting people in this journey, terminal illness and thus how Little Silk Wings turned into bereavement support and the event Let Me See My Baby.
Amy with the amazing Vickie Hingston-Jones (stay tuned for her story soon!) She will be guest speaker at Let Me See Baby Event.
Musings from Amy
“It felt like utter defeat, that I could not protect my newborn during the surgery.”
“In an energetic sense, I still felt connected to my baby while he was in surgery; this helped me communicate with him.”
“It was a situation where I really needed to trust how I was feeling.”
“To feel like you’re back into that mother role and connected physically is a very special feeling.”
“From my own experience I can now understand how situations can occur when mothers are encouraged to go against their intuition and feelings.”
“Everyone’s gut instinct is unique to them and that never should be dismissed.”
“It’s not that people don’t want to be there during death, it’s the lack of understanding of what that woman is feeling, needing and going though.”
“In miscarriage or loss I see a lot of the use of words such as ‘only’ or ‘at least’. This language, I feel, is very dismissive to the woman and can impact on how her grief journey plays out.“
Resources:
Still Birthday Doula Traning – https://stillbirthday.com/sbd-doula-registration/
Let Me See My Baby Event Canberra 4th December 2017 – http://www.littlesilkwings.com.au/let-me-see-my-baby-canberra/
Birth Story in Amy’s Words – http://www.littlesilkwings.com.au/a-mothers-instinct-pays-off/
About Amy
I’m a mum myself to 3 little people – Elsie-Rose, Anastasia and Gabriel. I’m also Mum to our children who aren’t so lucky, being that stranger trying to hold pieces together in the name of foster care.
Over the years I’ve enjoyed setting myself personal challenges. These started out as long-distance walks. My first walk, many moons ago, was from Brisbane to Canberra. It was called Walk With a Rose, and it became a national awareness raising event about Acquired Brain Injury and the lack of respite care available in Australia. It raised an amount of $50,000 and received extensive national coverage. You can see the episode of Australian Story here. And you can read over the blog I kept here.
My second initiative was called Strength to Speak. It was aimed at raising awareness of depression and anxiety. With strong local and national support I created the Strength to Speak program which was placed in 425 schools across Australia. To promote the program, I completed a four month walk from Perth to Canberra in. You can take a look at the program here. And you can read over the long and dusty blog I kept here.
I went on to do some uni work, travelled, and began working with disadvantaged youth and in a program for young sex offenders – I stayed with these programs for about 5 years.
In 2006, I won the Young Person of the Year Award through the Foundation for Young Australians, have become the ACT Youth Advocate for Drug Free Australia, have established the Walk With a Rose Foundation for people in the ACT with acquired brain injury to access respite care, and became the 2008 recipient of the Young Canberra Citizen of the Year award.
I then become a certified Simplicity Parenting coach and had my first daughter Elsie. So I started to talk to parents a lot and ran group gatherings and workshops to childcare providers, foster parents, grandparents, social workers, educators, counsellors and other care professionals who work with children and families in order to guide them in reconnecting with their own values through layers of simplicity that can be incorporated into their family lives.
For the past seven years, I have worked as a foster carer for high risk adolescents, mentoring and supporting while they live with me in my home.
I have since become double certified as a birth doula after my second daughter was born and started up a business as a placenta encapsulator…this is a beautiful service for happy birth outcomes and you can find a list of verified placenta encapsulators available by state here.
During the time I was spending journeying with birthing women as a doula, I always felt there was more of a pull towards being with the women who devastatingly learn of their baby’s death or learn of their baby’s fatal diagnosis…yet I felt unequipped. There were questions I needed answers to and things I felt I needed to learn before I continued to step into those spaces.
I found some bereavement doula training which was detailed and confronting – it was just what I needed – however, it was based overseas, which came with differences in systems and legalities. Nevertheless, the content was what I needed at the time.
I gave birth to my son, and decided to then focus on my role as a bereavement doula to only be available for these women. I felt like I was being true to my passion and gift. Then, over a period of time, I was contacted by families in other states in Australia, asking if I could find a bereavement doula to help a mother there who is experiencing the death of her child. More often than not, I had no luck. There is an abundance of doulas, yet the training to be a bereavement doula is different. For example, there is specific knowledge about how labour can work differently (and not in the mother’s favour) if the baby is sick or has died.
However, I’ve now ‘worked’ from afar with mothers experiencing the death of their baby for long enough to know that it shouldn’t be me being with them .. I never does feel quite right. Instinctively, I know the person to best serve that mother was someone already in her tribe. So I then began to change the way I worked and would instead train them, the bereaved mother’s sister, over the phone and online, so that they would be the one able to offer support and have knowledge regarding options for that woman. Which felt so much better, as it meant there were no shift needed to the already established tribe around that woman.
Working forward to improve things from there I knew what was needed and am developing my business Little Silk Wings. This is an Australian bereavement doula training platform and resource centre. It will provide both immediate, free information about what to expect when supporting a mother whose baby had died or will die, as well as the option to be a part of extensive, detailed training to be certified as a Little Silk Wings Practitioner and be called upon to support other mums in your community.
I feel strongly about continuing to connect with young people in my community and am passionate about working with families for best outcomes particularly for children and will continue to do this through Little Silk Wings with the intention of supporting, guiding and informing young people about grief and death.
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