This week my local SHARE group has sponsored Cathi Lammert, the Executive Director of SHARE, to visit from St. Louis. She will be holding three sessions for local birth professionals (doctors, midwives, nurses, etc) to speak about caring for the bereaved patient, whether it’s a miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal loss. Sessions like these are beyond important. It helps the people who care for those of us going through losses to understand what we are going through and to guide them in what to do and say. I am sure for any professional it must be extremely overwhelming to suddenly be faced with a newly bereaved parent, for not only are we going through grief but we also are giving birth. What a huge responsibility.

I have volunteered to be a very important part of Cathi’s presentation: the parent panel. I, like the other parents on the panel, will speak a short piece about who we are, what we experienced, what helped us in our journey and what could be improved upon. I volunteered because I think it is important, I want to help, and I am happy to speak about my experiences.

Until today I’ve just been thinking about what I’m going to say. For some reason the picture in my head was sitting in the conference room like the support meetings, taking turns speaking. Tonight I realized that is probably not very accurate. In fact, I doubt it’s accurate at all. It’s going to be a room full of doctors and midwives and nurses. With a microphone at the front. And I will get up and make a short presentation.

Suddenly I’m feeling a little jittery.