Mother of Stillborn Baby Helps Others Like Her Memorialize Children

By Sandy Cohen
Daily Breeze
January 16, 2004

“You’re pregnant.” Carrie Fisher-Pascual and her husband knew they’d have children one day. They picked names five years ago. But this pregnancy came as a surprise.

“We were immediately ecstatic,” Carrie said. “From that moment, we knew we were going to have another life coming into this world.”

Carrie and her husband, Jon Pascual, planned doctor’s appointments and looked into Lamaze classes. She jotted a list of women she’d invite to the baby shower.

Then something went wrong. Twenty weeks and two days into her pregnancy, Carrie went to Torrance Memorial Medical Center and delivered a stillborn daughter.

The Torrance couple was dazed. Their child was gone and everything hurt. Then Carrie heard relatives and hospital workers saying her baby’s name — Elena.

“Even though this was such a tragic moment, I realized she had a life. She had her own name,” Carrie said. “She was really real.”

Nurses sent the couple away with a photo of Elena, along with her tiny handprints and footprints inked on paper. They buried their daughter in Babyland at Green Hills Memorial Park.

In the days that followed, Carrie immersed herself in a long forgotten hobby, jewelry making. When she came across some peridot stones — Elena’s birthstone — she made a special bracelet for herself.

“It caused me to pause,” she said. “And I thought it would be nice and comforting to have something that was her birthstone that was really representative of her, something I can keep with me all the time.

“It was my little secret memorial for her.”

Now Carrie hopes to comfort other women in her position with bracelets made from their lost child’s birthstone. She gives away her Mother’s Bracelets to anyone in need.

“Having something tangible makes it a little more real for people,” she said. “Some mothers don’t want to make it more real, but some do, and they want people around them to realize that this is a life and it deserves to be honored and remembered.”

Mothers of stillborn babies grieve for children they never had a chance to know, said Gale Gould, clinical director of women’s services at Torrance Memorial.

“Their grief is more protracted than those who lose an older child because they didn’t have the chance to bond with the baby, to see what their hair was like or who they looked like,” she said. “If you can give them things to give a physical presence to the baby, they do better.”

Torrance Memorial gives “memory boxes” to parents following a stillbirth or miscarriage. Inside is a photo, tiny medical bracelet and hospital gown and prints of little hands and feet.

“All those things help validate for her that yes, she was pregnant, she has a child and she has a right to her grief,” Gould said.

Ours is a grief-avoidant society, said hospice chaplain Brad De Ford.

“Miscarriages and stillbirth are losses that tend not to be talked about or recognized,” he said. “It’s helpful to let a mother know that she suffered a real loss, that she’s not the first. And she too can claim this child, even far less than term, as a real loss.

“It wasn’t a dream that this happened. It wasn’t a figment of her imagination. Mothers need to know this. It makes it real, which is very helpful to claiming the grief that they feel.”

Having a tangible reminder, such as a bracelet, helps them accept the loss and begin healing, De Ford said.

Raquel Schieldge, who recently suffered a miscarriage, said the bracelet makes her feel as though she’s not alone in her loss. Carrie gave her a bracelet after hearing the woman’s story at church.

“I felt so special because here was somebody who knew exactly the pain I was going through,” Schieldge said. “Every time I wear the bracelet, I know it was something special and we shared something, we shared the same pain and the same experience.”

Carrie hopes to distribute her bracelets through Torrance Memorial hospital and the National Stillbirth Society. She named her company Elena’s Inspiration.

“It doesn’t matter if you have a life that lasts 20 weeks, 20 years or 120 years,” she said. “It’s still life.”

Last Updated 07/20/2006     Design donated by Web-Writer