Thanks to Angel Kisses, there is a special room at the hospital for parents and family to spend quiet time after a baby dies.

The support group that donated the Berkley monument honoring children lost at birth and their loved ones’ mourning also will hold a fundraiser Feb. 25 at Woody’s Diner in Royal Oak…

4^th Annual Fundraiser

Saturday, February 25, 2012
2:00PM–8:00PM

Woody’s Diner • 208 Fifth Avenue, Royal Oak, MI

• Woody’s Diner will donate 20% of food & beverage sales from 2–8pm
• Silent auction & 50/50 raffle—over 100 items up for grabs
• Candle-lit moment of silence

Questions and donations may be directed to
angelkisses.org
PO Box 1061, Royal Oak, MI 48068-1061

Thank you all for coming out and running, volunteering and celebrating your angel babies with us!  Photos will be posted this week, but in the meantime, please check out the RACE RESULTS!

Angel Kisses is excited to announce that we will officially be hosting the 5K run during the Ferndale Fall Festival!

On October 22, 2011 at 9 am, we invite runners, walkers and families to participate in our first ever 5K Run for the Angels and the Hilton Fall Festival.  Please check our website and the Ferndale Area Chamber of Commerce website for more details as they become available.

All proceeds raised by the run will benefit Angel Kisses’ endeavors to support families who have experienced pregnancy loss.

As always, thank you so much for your support!

After a year of planning, months of anticipation, hundreds of decisions, hours and hours of meetings, the event this past Saturday, February 26, 2011 at Woody’s Diner in Royal Oak was a tremendous success. Though we cannot measure with a dollar sign the number of lives that you have touched with your generosity, please know that every single one of these contributions will go towards making a difference. There are no words to express the gratitude that we have for the support you have shown through the years. What we can tell you is that, together we are ensuring that the lives of these babies who have touched our hearts will forever be remembered lovingly and their legacy will live on. Thank you so much for making the 3rd Annual Angel Kisses Fundraiser such a beautiful event.

My close friend, Anna LaFountain, began Angel Kisses in honor of her daughter Scarlette Rose.  I was blessed to meet and hold Scarlette Rose when Anna gave birth.  I knew then that she was special, but I didn’t realize at that time just how much she would impact my life and the lives of so many people.

In February, 2010, my husband & I attended the 2nd annual Angel Kisses fundraiser.  As I perused the silent auction deciding what to bid on, I came across an item which included a 4D ultrasound.  Although we had just started trying for a baby, I knew I just had to have that ultrasound!   I bid and then was busy and forgot to check back before bid closing.  I was so sad that I had missed out on it.  But we won!  My husband knew how much I wanted it and he had gone up and out-bid at the last minute!  I was excited!  A few days later, I was even more excited when I learned that I was pregnant!!!

At my 20 week ultrasound, we were told that we were having a healthy baby boy!  Such great news!  We decided that at 30 weeks we would schedule our 4D ultrasound so we could have cool pictures of him when he was bigger!

At 30 weeks we went to have the 4D ultrasound.  We were strictly going for pictures & the cool video of course!  We didn’t expect any other information to come our way. Fortunately, the ultrasound tech was doing her job well & paying attention to more than his adorable face!  She told us that she kept going back over & looking at his heart.  Something was catching her eye there.  She said it looked like he may have a hole in his heart, or it could have just been a shadow. Apparently it is hard to get good detail when they are that size. She said it might not be a big deal, but if I were her patient, she would send me for further testing.  She contacted our doctor with her findings and they sent us to Beaumont to have a fetal echo performed.

The fetal echo confirmed that our baby boy did indeed have a heart defect.  He had Truncus Arteriosis and a large VSD.  He would need open heart surgery as an infant.  My husband and I immediately decided that we would transfer all of our care from that point on to the University of Michigan Hospital.  They are known to be one of the very best for heart surgeries.  We were so grateful to have found out about his condition and to be able to make arrangements to give him the very best care.

Grayson Jasper Conley was born, full term on November 12, 2010.  He was 7 lbs 5 oz, which according to doctors was big for a “Truncus baby”.  That was good news!

He was whisked away from us when he was born, but they did bring him back so I could take a peek at him.  He was stable!  He still spent the first couple of weeks of life in different ICU’s (NICU, PTCU and PICU).     He had open heart surgery at 4 days old!  When we finally got to see him, he was hooked up to more machines than I could have ever imagined. But he did great!  He is our little fighter!  After 23 days in the hospital, we were finally able to take him home!  He will need many future surgeries and procedures for his heart.  He also has DiGeorge Syndrome which has brought and will continue to bring another slew of challenges our way.  In our eyes though, Grayson is perfect!  And overall, he really is a handsome, happy, smiley boy.

We thank Scarlette Rose for our son.  Had he gone undiagnosed, who knows what would have happened.  I hate to even think about it.

If it weren’t for Scarlette Rose, Angel Kisses would not have been formed, that fundraiser would not have taken place, and I would not have won that 4D ultrasound that saved my son’s life. Scarlette Rose was watching out for Grayson!  She made sure that we knew he had an issue and she gave us the opportunity to make sure that we had time to arrange the proper care for him!

Thank you Scarlette Rose!  Although we wish you could be here with us, we realize that was not the plan for you.  Your purpose was to be an angel, watching out for others.  We thank you for inspiring so many people.  The bereavement room at Beaumont would not have happened without you.  It will bring comfort to so many families.  You have raised so much awareness and touched the lives of many people without ever stepping foot on this earth.  You are a wonderful work of God!

We thank you for watching out for Grayson and reminding us that angel babies are always here with us.  And even though we may not always see it, they are living out their purpose that God planned for them.

Mara’s story begins with joy and delight.  After just over a year of marriage we decided it was time to begin a family.  We were overjoyed and surprised when we conceived quickly.  I was a little late and it was the day before the fourth of July, we had a lot of plans coming up in the weeks ahead including the annual Monteith 4^th of July party, a 30^th birthday party for John’s best friend and a week get away with the extended Monteith family at Long Lake.  I decided to take a pregnancy test just to be safe and to my surprise it was positive.  John was out golfing and I called him to make sure he was going to be coming straight home afterwards.  Once he was home I greeted him with what must have been a massive smile and told him quietly that I was pregnant.  When I think about it even now I can’t help but smile with the pure happiness that existed in that moment.

We told our families the next week with cautious optimism, we had friends that suffered early miscarriages and didn’t want to get overly excited.  The next weeks passed and we were just overjoyed that we would become parents.  Our families were also very happy and excited, as our baby was to be the first Grandchild on both sides.  We went back and forth on whether we would find out the sex of our baby but ultimately decided we wanted to have the surprise, I remember thinking that it would be the ultimate surprise of a lifetime and I didn’t want to deny ourselves the experience, although I was pretty convinced that we would be having a little boy.

We were doing everything planning, hoping, dreaming, talking, laughing, and loving as we prepared to for the arrival of our bundle of joy.  The pregnancy went by without a hitch.  We never had an abnormal test, appointment, ultrasound or otherwise.

My 37-week appointment was scheduled for Friday Feb. 13^th, however I noticed on the Thursday before that the baby was not moving as much as normal.  To be safe I changed my appointment to that day. I left work early and headed to the doctors.  I was relieved to hear a strong 140 heartbeat and the doctor was very reassuring, saying that decreased movement is normal toward the end of a pregnancy and that I should not worry one bit, but for my own piece of mind I should go in the next morning to have an additional test done.  She said “If I really thought something was wrong I would send you to the hospital right now”.  How those words and that day haunt me now.  I was again relieved and went home, I took a nap and had dinner.

The next morning I woke up, had breakfast and chatted with my Mother in Law who had stayed the night to finish tiling the backsplash in our kitchen (which we were racing to remodel before the baby came).  My husband and I decided that he would go to work instead of coming with me because he wanted to save his time off for when the baby came, and after all this was no big deal.  I arrived at the hospital at 9AM, a woman in the elevator remarked how pregnant I looked and asked me if I was there to have my baby, I said “Not yet, but soon”.  She said “Good Luck”.  I remember thinking what a strange thing to say, I don’t need luck…

The NST room was full so they took me in Triage.  The nurse who was working to get me hooked up on the monitors was the same one who had given us a tour of the Labor and Delivery floors the week before.  She said she was having some trouble getting a signal from the baby and she was going to get the ultrasound machine, I said to her “Oh…my husband is going to be jealous” with a big grin on my face, we loved to see the baby in ultrasound.  While she went away to get the machine I calmly pulled out a book and began to read.

She came back with a couple other people and they all took a look at the ultrasound.  At this point I began to wonder what was going on.  Then the resident said to me “Is anyone with you?” I said “no” He said, “I’m very sorry to tell you this but there is no heartbeat, your baby is dead”.  I remember saying to him “your joking,” he said I would not joke about this” I looked around and saw all the faces staring at me with compassion. I grabbed the arm of the nurse standing next to me and said “am I dreaming?” She said, “No, I wish that you were. ”  I started to yell and they quickly put me into a wheel chair and moved me into a Delivery Room, I held my head in my hands as the wheeled me, praying out loud to God “Please let this baby be ok let this baby be ok.” A part of me felt that there was still a chance to save her, but once I was left in the room with the nurse I knew that nothing would be done.  In the next moments I called my husband screaming “The baby is dead”, he made his way to the hospital.  I called my dad and he let the rest of the family know.

I learned that we would go through labor and delivery to meet our baby.  I was started on medication to induce labor. After twenty hours of labor she was born.  She…a little girl.  Born on Valentines Day at 4:43 AM.  We named her Mara Louise.  She was the most beautiful baby in the world, a sweet little button nose, beautiful long blonde eyelashes, rosebud mouth, chubby cheeks, long fingers and toes, and strawberry blonde hair.  She was perfect only she was dead.  We spent the next 12 hours holding her, looking at her, crying over her, Family visited, and she was baptized.  As hard as all of this was it did not even begin to compare to the raw grief and longing that we faced so acutely when we were forced to go on living without her, and now living in a world where bad things not only happen they happened to us.

We still do not know for sure what caused her death.  She had a true knot in her cord right at her tummy and it was around her neck, but the doctors are not convinced that could of done it but it was a possibility. They also found that her blood count in me was very high, but again they do not know how that could of happened.

Almost two years later and I am still struck with grief so strongly that it will bring me to my knees; I think about and miss her everyday.  I kiss the air when I think of her and even sometimes smile.  Two years and we have been blessed with a living son, born healthy and screaming 20 months after we had to say goodbye to our daughter.  He has brought immeasurable joy into our lives.

Mara will always be our first.  She is always in our hearts and the fact that she isn’t with us will always break our hearts.  But because she was with us we love deeper and we understand how precious life is.

I am blessed with the mothers I have met who have had to endure this same heartache. They are now like my sisters.  I am blessed to be a part of Angel Kisses family that I joined in time to participate in the 2^nd Annual event.

We didn’t have to wait long wondering how many there were. Giddy, nervous jokes of “Dawn & T Plus Three” were thrown around continuously. 12 days later, we saw our two little peanuts for the first time. We even saw the pulsing of their hearts beating! We were thrilled beyond belief. We had thought that we would only be able to have one child and now we were going to be blessed with two. The news of twins was an unbelievably amazing gift!

The pregnancy was going relatively easy. I loved nesting, spending lots of time at home talking and dreaming of when our kids would finally arrive. We worried of course. Where in the heck would we put all the baby stuff times two, how would I nurse two babies, how would we afford putting them both through college at the same time? I regret that I spent even a second of that precious time worrying.

We went in for an amniocentesis at 16 weeks. We didn’t want to find out the sexes, believing that finding out at their births is the one true surprise in life. Twin #2 (turns out that was Dillen) was smaller and there was some concern about a small amount of fluid in his brain. It was a very scary wait for the amnio results. When we found out that both babies had perfect chromosomes, we were again thrilled, so relieved and grateful. Because Dillen was small, we would have extra ultrasounds, which we thought was great because we loved getting to see the progress of our active little ones in the womb. At several of our ultrasounds Twin #1 (that was Cole) looked like he was kicking Twin #2 in the head. We joked about having a smart aleck on our hands already and started calling Twin #2 “little scrapper” thinking he would be born ready to get back at his “big” brother.

For over five months, every sentence in our lives began with “when the babies get here…” We were so excited and impatient to have them with us. I was getting pretty big and I was so proud of my growing belly and our two babies thriving inside me.

I didn’t realize how tired I had been during the first trimester until I felt the surge of energy that came in the second trimester. After a particularly busy and energetic weekend, I had a backache Sunday night. At the time it seemed normal for how big I was getting. Now I know that I was probably in early labor. That night, we happily went to bed touching my stomach and talking to our kids. Monday morning, February 23, 2009, I woke up at around 4:30AM with cramps. I didn’t think much of it, went to the bathroom and went back to bed. I woke with cramps again at around 6. This time when I went to the bathroom, there was a little blood. I wasn’t too worried but I checked the book. It mentioned preterm labor. I remember thinking, “wow, how awful, but of course that couldn’t be happening to me.”

I decided to take a shower and then call the doctor. I was cramping again when I got out of the shower. This time when I tried to go to the bathroom, there was quite a bit of blood. That’s when I got scared. I woke up Theresa and called the doctor. She said it was probably nothing to worry about and that I could go to the hospital or I could wait a couple of hours and go to her office. We decided to go to the hospital. I was cramping again and right before we left, I tried to go to the bathroom one more time. I didn’t realize it at the time but I was basically pushing. I felt and heard something pop. It was my water breaking and then I could feel the first baby’s head starting to crown. I still couldn’t grasp what was happening but I was terrified. We got to the hospital as quickly as possible. During the whole ride there, fluid and blood were flowing out of me. An ultrasound in the triage area of labor and delivery confirmed that my water had broken and that baby #1 was obviously in distress. Baby #2’s heartbeat was still strong, but it was likely that they would both be born and die that day. My doctor arrived and explained that I had gone into preterm labor…that it just happens sometimes and that there was nothing that could be done to stop it.

24 weeks is the magic date for a baby’s viability. I was 21 weeks and 5 days along. If it had been 16 days later, there’s a chance that they would be with us today.

Every moment of that day is so surreally etched in my head with a heavy fog of shock and grief blurring it all together. I was so scared when the doctor told me to push. I wanted to keep my babies safely inside me. I didn’t know what to expect for the delivery or for the babies. Once I started pushing, it happened quickly. Cole Robert was born at 8:40AM. He weighed 12.5 ounces and was 10.5 inches long. His eyes were still sealed shut but he was a perfect and beautiful baby boy. He barely moved but his heart was beating. We held him and had him baptized. We loved him more than we had ever known it was possible to love.

After Cole was born, the cramping stopped for a while. Later, I heard Theresa tell someone that she had felt hope during that time that maybe the second baby would be ok. I don’t remember feeling hope. Since the moment that my water broke, it seemed that hope had been sucked out of my life.

The cramping started again and exactly an hour after his brother arrived, Dillen Andrew was born at 9:40AM. Just as perfect and gorgeous and loved as his brother, even tinier though. He weighed 6.8 ounces and was 8.76 inches long. Like his brother, he was mostly still but his heart was beating. We had the most amazing and kind nurse. She dressed our sons and took pictures of them and put them in my arms. I held them, overwhelmed with love and heartbreak and confusion. It was incredible to hold our sons together, alive. It was terrifying and awkward in a way but so sweet and tender. In those moments, I was almost like any other mom, sharing the first moments of her children’s lives.

Cole and Dillen were alive together outside the womb for 5 minutes. We think that Cole purposely lasted long enough to welcome his younger brother into the world and then went ahead to heaven so that he could welcome him there as well. We had Dillen baptized. Just as that was finishing, I started to feel faint. They took my boys and rushed me off to the OR for an emergency D&C. By the time I came back, both of our boys had passed. Not to be outdone by his older brother and living up to his ‘little scrapper” nickname, Dillen lived one hour and 10 minutes, 5 minutes longer than Cole had lived.

We were able to keep our guys with us through the night. The four of us lay together in my hospital bed. We held them and talked to them and kissed their faces and hands. My biggest regret is that I never unwrapped them to see their entire bodies up close; I never kissed their toes. We were in shock, scared and confused and nearly suffocating with sadness. We did the best we could but I will always wish we could go back and relive that time with them. We have eleven pictures of them. Most parents have that many photos of their children at their desk at work or in their phone or on one wall of their home. We have eleven total pictures of our two sons, forever.

We quickly planned a burial. We had no idea what we were doing and we were walking around in a fog of sadness and disbelief, but somehow it worked out beautifully. There are no words to describe what it was like to bury our children. Pulling into the cemetery with all of those cars waiting for us, that excruciating walk to their gravesite, sobbing and clinging to each other just to get through it. Unthinkable and horrific, yet somehow pure and beautiful…much like the day that they were born. The day of the burial, as hard as it was, has now become one of our treasured memories of our sons so it holds a precious place in my heart. Cole and Dillen’s place at the cemetery is the one place where I feel truly at peace. The pastor that spoke at the burial was so amazing. We were connected with him through the funeral home that was recommended by the hospital – a sheer stroke of luck. I now regularly attend his church, and I believe that my personal spiritual growth is a gift from Cole and Dillen.

There were so many dark days, weeks and months that followed. The pain and despair overwhelmed and consumed me for so long. Eventually, hope and joy found their way back into my life. One place where I found relief was the Bereaved Parent Support Group at Beaumont. That is where I met Anna, Tracy and Leah. Anna and Tracy, who were close to the one-year anniversaries of their losses when I met them, gave me hope for survival and new joy. Leah, who lost her daughter just weeks before we lost our boys, opened my heart. Seeing her sadness and grief moved me deeply. For the first time, I was able to see past my own pain and I wanted to reach out to help someone else. Leah and I tentatively became involved with Angel Kisses. Angel Kisses provided a place to do something positive in honor of Cole and Dillen. Meeting Amy, another founder of Angel Kisses, was yet another gift. The more I gave to Angel Kisses and these four amazing women, the more love and healing I received!

The second annual Angel Kisses fundraiser took place four days after Cole & Dillen’s first birthday. What an incredible week of love and celebration. We had a wonderful birthday memorial at the cemetery (with the same pastor of course) and then a gathering at our house. The day held only love and warmth and peace. Leah said to me later that the boys must have been sending us a sliver of what if feels like to be in heaven. I believe that!

The hope that we’ll one day have living children feels less feasible by the day but the desire never fades, nor does the longing to have our boys here with us. Time inevitably passes though and life somehow goes on. I’ll never get over the loss of my sons but I am learning to live with the hurt, even to live well. Feeling hope and joy and happiness again is such a tremendous gift. For this gift and so many others, I say thank you and I love you to Cole and Dillen.