Memory-making ideas for Loss Advisors™/Loss Doulas® and Parents 

Parents need to have their time to 'Parent' their baby.  Kind nurses  may act as guides on the side helping parents/family to create their own memories and rituals. Well prepared Baby Loss Family Advisors™/Loss Doulas® are excellent care providers helping families to  Minimize Regrets and Maximize Memories,,  Here are some ideas that mom, dad, children and family may be able to do with baby.  This is a start to get you thinking.  There is much more that can be done!
We welcome your additions to this list:

When meeting baby  

• Hand and footprints - 3 dimensional if possible 
• River stones with baby foot prints (only need paint and the stones and a few people to help position baby while the painting and foot printing goes on
• Baby hair snips
• Paint baby's nails  
• Diaper and dress (while capturing photos and videos)
• Bathe baby - a nice role for dads who have had not done much parenting yet.  Siblings might like to help, too
• Wrap miscarried baby in a small blanket you can cut from your night gown, a bigger baby blanket or any piece of clothing that fits around either the baby's remains or the plastic jar/container
• Anoint baby with oil - choose a special smell (for ex. lemon, lavender, orange..), put some in a little pill cup, then take a Q tip to dip in the oil then put anywhere on baby.  Children seem to enjoy this idea - a way to love up and do something for baby
• Skin-to-skin contact with both parents (see Nicole and Estlil meeting Shepard in picture to the right)
• Make copies of the baby's footprints, write name and date and share with all family members including children.  Can even be a coloring page for the kids
• Take pictures of miscarried baby's remains in the container, in the toilet, on a piece of cloth, in your hands...
• Take many family pictures.  If a multiple, do everything you can to get pictures of all the babies together - the only ones they will ever have.  consider a generational picture such as Grandma, Mama and Baby Girl or other family pictures. 
• Take pictures of the baby with clothing and without clothing, in many positions, close ups and whole body shots. Use props like stuffed animals, jewelry like a charm, necklace, baby ring or footprints, or parents wedding rings 
• Check with professional photographers, especially programs such as Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (www.nilmdts.org) who offer free photography
• Make belly prints,  belly molds, or belly painting  (Thank you, Yuan for your 'Nora' belly painting). 
  
• Start a 'Grateful' or 'Joy' Journal (or jar) where you the careprovider and/or the parents capture moments of joy and gratefulness in the process, the birth, the welcoming and the goodbye time (and beyond).  This can serve to show that not all was sad, hard, dark, and painful.  And these blessings of gratefulness and joy become positive reminders for later when times get tough or darkness comes
• Pierce baby's ears and put in sweet earrings
• Draw an outline of baby's body  - roll up paper and tie with ribbon - sweet gift for family members)
• Take your finger/thumb print and draw a finger/thumb print or a hand the size of your baby or baby's hand next to it on a piece of paper.  Show the size as you see it now (or as you remember it)
• Bring special music and smells (baby products, lavender or other oils...) which will be reminders in the days ahead.  These senses can be beautiful reminders in the days and years that follow
• Sing to baby (Family favorites, lullabies, popular songs, love songs...) 
• Blessing, naming, baptizing ceremonies (with or without a certificate to give to parents
• Skin-to-skin time for both parents can be a very special time
• Rock baby in rocking chair (good for all family members) - take videos or pictures
• Parents tell us they loved dancing with their baby to special music (or even picking a song that might be used for father/daughter or mother/son wedding song)  
• Bring baby outside into the garden, the sunshine, the parking lot, near a tree... to experience sun, rain, or snow
• Use battery operated candles, lower the lights, and spend some quiet time with baby
• Bead boxes with lettered beads can be offered to parents or family members to make things for others.  Recently an uncle made a little bracelet for baby Jonah, then one for mom that had hearts and said, 'mommy' and did the same for daddy.  A nice opportunity to 'give and do' something for the family while getting some personal satisfaction, too
• Find or create a baby bathing kit (donate to hospitals or bring with you) that could include small washcloth, comb, shampoo, lotion, powder...
• Build-A-Bear or other stuffed animals can be used for the cremains of baby or a recording of babies heart-beat if you got one before she/he died
• Comfort Cubs® are bears with weight to them.  Given in some hospitals, by Loss Advisors/Loss Doulas and others at the time of the loss ideally or soon afterwards.   Walking out of the hospital with a weighed bear in arms seems helpful to many moms
• VIdeo tape some time with baby and family, with music in the background if parents wish.  Encourage them to use their camera phones to get some video footage of the baby, people meeting baby, children with baby...
• Have an arts/craft box and/or bead box.  This allows family and children to 'do' something while there that could be for baby, siblings, family members and nurses/staff.  One idea is to have stickers and paint markers to decorate stones. These river, smooth stones of all sizes could then be put at the grave site when the children visitt, used as paper weights, room decorations, etc.
• Lipstick on mom's (Grandma's) lips - kiss the container baby is put in to be buried (if possible).  Rebekah said, "Kiss up the entire container."
• Write a 'kissy' love letter - see the right column
• Use paint, lipstick, or ink on babies' lips (at end of time together maybe?) then pick something like the heart in Build-a-Bear or stones or piece of paper so the baby's lips are left as reminders.  If on paper, many copies can be made and given as inexpensive but precious gifts to family members.
•  Put hand/foot prints or lip prints on a clear Christmas ball.  Can decorate it and put special items inside, eg. baby/mom's bracelet, personal notes...
• Have a birthday celebration with cake/cupcakes, battery candles, It's a BOY or GIRL balloons and sing Happy Birthday.  One family who did this recently videotaped the family singing.  What a great memory/ceremony to watch later. 
• Tell your baby about God and your faith
• Tell family stories, secrets, and your hopes and dreams and plans for baby's life
• Baby wearing - in addition to holding and rocking baby in arms as well as sleeping with baby in your bed, baby wraps and carriers can be used to 'wear' your baby.  This is a way of being close during the time you have him or her in the hospital and at home if you choose.
• Bring in special items from home for picture-taking and to have in your hospital room with baby (family memento, one of the cute baby decorations, blanket, picture frame, baby bank, etc
• Take baby for a walk or to a nearby park (be sure you have a note from hospital that you are out on a 'pass' so no one thinks you have stolen someone's baby. or there has been foul play. 
• Drive baby home or to the funeral home.  Allowed in all states but may require some collaboration with funeral directors to accomplish it in 9 states.  Sometimes hospital rules (based on fears and litigation worries) become roadblocks.  Find out early who you need to talk with to open up this option.  Sometimes, a funeral director needs to be called to help this happen -keep calling until you find one who is willing.  They are out there. 

Some of the above ideas can be used/adapted even if there is a birth through D&C or D&E (where there will be no whole baby's body to see and honor).  Other ideas include:

• Bring flowers, soft items like baby pillow, teddy bear, stuffed animals, prayer shawl to wrap around mom/partner during birth procedure
•  Bring memento ideas:
  • ​Worry stone; heart stone; message stone like Hope/Love/Dreams
  • Take pictures of mom's belly prior to birth procedure, family pictures, belly casts...
  • Drawings, pictures, gifts from other children and/or grandparents, other relatives
  • Messages, poems, sayings of faith-strength-wisdom
  • Jewelry (cross, footprint, heart, baby...)
  • Make bracelets, put beads on a diaper pin...
  • Embroider graphic, name, or inspirational words on items such as wash cloth, blanket, wrap to put around the plastic container of baby's remains
  • Have cake/cupcakes and sing or at least wish baby 'Happy Birthday'
  • Bring special items in from home such as: picture frame, river stone, baby memento box/book.  Helps create a connection and then those items go home as ongoing mementos

Afterwards

• Dry some of the flowers and use them in special items such as putting them in a glass Christmas ornament, or a shadow box with other baby items, or in a dried floral arrangements
• Find or make jewelry for mom or other  family members
• Create pictures with baby foot/hand prints (paint, with graphic on computer, draw...)  Then frame it or put in baby book
• Tattoos are becoming quite common as reminders of baby
• Create ornaments of baby (with picture, foot prints or other depictions) Salt dough with cinnamon is a nice way to do it
• Check into jewelry for holding cremains of baby or even mom's breast milk. Sites can be found online.
• Buy ornaments each year for the tree or your home.  Or other collectibles like angels or other Hallmark style items
• Write a message in a bottle to baby then find a place to put it or share it
• The Smallest Gift will embroider baby's name on a small blanket (www.smallestgift.org). There are other such ministries/individuals/organizations who will help make other mementos.  Etsy has lots of ideas
• Seek out  a souvenir birth certificate, even for the little miscarried babies.  Sherokee offers to calligraphy one at www.babiesremembered.org/shop
• Buy a candle that becomes baby's candle.  (Bring to holiday events and light whenever you are thinking of baby or want your partner to know you've had a hard day)
• Glass ornaments with baby foot prints and name inside.  There are places online that offer this service.  
• Have some of the cremains put in a necklace or into a piece of blown glass.  Many options for this online
• Sew or make a scented sachet with baby's name on it
• Memory gardens, give bulbs or plants to family members (in hopes that when they blossom the baby will be vividly remembered)
• One mom was upset she did not keep the remains of her baby who was cremated.  A wise Baby Loss Family Advisor suggested she could make copies of any paperwork or records of the birth, baby clothing or other items and have a ceremonial burning of them - then she took the ashes and kept them in a special place

Rainbow baby pregnancy

• Bring a photo, blanket, stuffed animal,  or mementos to the hospital for birth of rainbow baby).
• Take a picture of mom, dad, rainbow baby and a picture of angel baby in the hospital or later.
• Make a T-shirt or other clothing with their angel baby  (see picture of Knut with his sister Charlie's name on it).

Rainbow babies Knut and Daniel.  Connected with their siblings who died before they arrived -
​ Charlie and JohnCarl