{"id":514662,"date":"2016-11-04T15:01:52","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T20:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countthekicks.org\/2016\/11\/grace-taught-us\/"},"modified":"2021-01-27T13:09:15","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T19:09:15","slug":"grace-taught-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/countthekicks.org\/2016\/11\/grace-taught-us\/","title":{"rendered":"What Grace Has Taught Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like most people who live in the Midwest, the green of spring makes me excited to finally say goodbye to winter and hello to some color and fresh air. But spring also brings painful memories, memories that always lie just below the surface, into sharper focus.<\/p>\n

Eleven years ago my husband and I were expecting our first child. It was springtime – the flowers were blooming and everything was pretty and fresh. As a speech pathologist in an elementary school building, I found myself outside for recess duty.\u00a0 The baby would kick when she would hear the children\u2019s laughter and squeals of delight.<\/p>\n

With springtime came spring-cleaning, coupled with the \u201cnesting\u201d every pregnant woman seems compelled to do.\u00a0 We had washed every little onesie, tucked every newborn diaper neatly into its bin, and hung every tiny outfit on matching hangers. The nursery was finished; the baby shower was a week away. Everything was planned. Everything was perfect.<\/p>\n

But the baby stopped moving.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t going to be THAT mom – the mom that called the doctor to question, complain, and worry about every little thing. After all, I had read all the books, followed all the rules. I had planned for everything \u2026 except this.<\/p>\n

On a beautiful, Sunday afternoon, my mother encouraged me to call the doctor.\u00a0 He told me to go to the hospital to be monitored. I was excited about the possibility of seeing my baby on an ultrasound again. We headed to the hospital with naive anticipation.<\/p>\n

The nurses couldn\u2019t find a heartbeat.<\/p>\n

They reassured me, and still I didn\u2019t worry. They phoned the ultrasound tech on call that weekend. I hated to bother the tech by making her coming into work on that beautiful day to look at our baby, just to tell us she was \u201cjust sleepy.\u201d\u00a0 But she came.<\/p>\n

She delivered the news almost instantly. \u201cI can tell you right now there is no heartbeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy baby!\u201d I screamed. My husband put his head on my chest and cried.<\/p>\n

Grace Biondi was stillborn at 32 weeks on a rainy Monday morning. I felt like the sky\u2019s tears couldn\u2019t match my own. We baptized Grace, crammed a lifetime of stories into a few hours, kissed her and said goodbye. Tests would later reveal that I had a large, undetected blood clot in my placenta.\u00a0 And with that, a lifetime\u2019s journey and mission began.<\/p>\n

I wanted to turn back time; but time moved forward anyway, taking me with it.<\/p>\n

I returned home from the hospital, still wearing maternity clothes, waiting for my milk to come in, and clutching a box with a few pictures and mementos \u2026 but no baby.\u00a0 My arms ached to hold her. The empty nursery caused a pain in my heart each time I walked by.<\/p>\n

I worried that there was something wrong with me, that I wasn\u2019t \u201cnormal.\u201d\u00a0 My feelings turned to guilt and anger, emotions foreign to the \u201cme\u201d I had been before Grace.\u00a0 The emotions became so intensely negative that I wondered if I was becoming a bad person. I wondered if I was being punished because I actually was a bad person.<\/p>\n

But time continued to march on.\u00a0 It always does. The pain changed.\u00a0 It changed me, strangely, for the better.<\/p>\n

We went on to have three healthy children. We even found our way to happiness again, yet a portion of that pain is always there. A certain sound, a certain time of year, or a certain smell can bring an onset of tears that are hastily wiped away. Even eleven years later, I can still close my eyes and replay my entire hospital stay, from beginning to end, in my mind like a movie. I can tell you what the doctors wore; I can tell you what picture hung in the room.\u00a0 I can tell you what was said, who said it, and where they were standing in the room. When you come home from the hospital with empty arms, you have nothing but time to replay those images over and over again until they become cemented in your mind. It\u2019s like a bad movie.\u00a0 Ironically, I don\u2019t recall near the detail of my subsequent and happier birth experiences.<\/p>\n

The feelings of despair and helplessness can be overwhelming and lonely. But my story \u2013 OUR story – does not end there. The sadness was just the beginning.<\/p>\n

In my journey I met four other incredible women who all lost daughters to stillbirth or infant death within months of each other and within months of me. The birth of our friendship was the birth of a cause.<\/p>\n

We met in coffee shops around our hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, at first just sharing our stories of grief. While I wished this type of grief on no one else, the presence of these moms was what reminded me I was not alone.\u00a0 Others were surviving, and I would, too.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long before those stories turned into a mission and the nonprofit, Healthy Birth Day, Inc.<\/a>, was born. Our mission is to prevent stillbirth and infant death through education, advocacy and support. Our efforts have included passing legislation to create a stillbirth registry in the state of Iowa. The registry collects and analyzes information on each stillbirth in the state to help determine the causes of stillbirth.<\/p>\n

Our primary initiative, Count the Kicks<\/em><\/a>, is a public health campaign that teaches expectant parents about monitoring their baby\u2019s movements in the last trimester of pregnancy. Count the Kicks<\/em> was inspired by research done in Norway where they educated expecting mothers to monitor their baby\u2019s movements and reduced the overall stillbirth rate by one-third. Hearing Count the Kicks<\/em> success stories like these never gets old:<\/p>\n

“At 37 weeks I noticed a decrease in my baby’s movements. I mentioned it to my OB at my check up that day and (after several tests) ended up delivering our baby the same day. Our sweet little boy had a true knot in his cord! If I didn\u2019t know about Count the Kicks, I don’t know if I would have been as aware of my baby’s movements as I was, and who knows what could have happened. Count the Kicks is a wonderful program that truly saves lives!” – Beth, Theo\u2019s mom<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI was told that our little Cooper James would not have made it through the day had I not be counting the kicks and paying attention to his movement.\u201d – Tracie, Cooper\u2019s mom<\/em><\/p>\n

“Because of your campaign I was more aware of her movement and able to bring attention to a problem, which saved her life!” – Erica, Chesney\u2019s mom<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFriends and family tried to reassure me that it was normal to experience less movement at the end of pregnancy. This isn’t true! Kick counting saved my son.\u201d – Amanda, Preston\u2019s Mom<\/em><\/p>\n

Focusing on stillbirth and infant death prevention has helped me heal.\u00a0 It helped me turn the powerful feelings of grief, into passion and action. In addition, the time and efforts that I put into this organization is when I get to be Grace\u2019s mother. There is something very healing and empowering in that. But underlying our organization, creating the foundation for its programs and mission, is a deep and powerful friendship. Jan Caruthers, Janet Petersen, Kate Safris and Tiffan Yamen have helped make me who I am today.\u00a0 Our friendship gave me hope in a time when I felt none.\u00a0 This friendship is a gift given to us by our daughters, and in turn, Health Birth Day, Inc.<\/em> is their legacy.<\/p>\n

We invite you along for this incredible journey. You will get to know us, our programs and our mission. You will read stories of hope, strength and miracles.\u00a0 We want every mother to know about Count the Kicks. We want this knowledge to be as universal as taking prenatal vitamins and putting a baby \u201cback to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grace has given me so many gifts it\u2019s hard to name them all:\u00a0 a wonderful marriage, awareness of the kindness of others, appreciation for old friends, the joy of new friends, the ability to revel in simply joys, to awe at beauty, to truly see the important things in life and the great gift of three healthy children; each specially hand-picked just for us by their big sister. I know Grace made me a better person and a better mother\u2026and I know that spring will always be bittersweet.<\/p>\n

This is a story about the power of women, of friendship, and of a coffee shop \u2026 Join us.<\/p>\n

Kerry Biondi-Morlan is one of the five original founding moms of Healthy Birth Day Inc., the 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that created the Count the Kicks campaign.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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