Story Published:
Jul 6, 2009 at 1:51 PM CST
Story Updated:
Jul 7, 2009 at 8:06 AM CST
SPRINGFIELD -- Hopes and dreams of expectant mothers are dashed every day by miscarriage. Several years ago, a woman in Missouri decided a simple gift for grieving mothers would help some of them heal. Maureen Day, who lives near St. Louis, founded the Heaven Born Project to reach out to other women, stitch by stitch.
Day is not a professional seamstress; she might get a stitch out of place, and all her lines might not be straight.
“I just kind of wing it,” said Day recently as she worked at a sewing machine.
Day sews up comfort for others -- in the form of soft pillows.
“That way, you have something tangible that you can hug, cry on,” she said.
Comfort is something that Day could have used about seven years ago. She had a miscarriage 12 weeks into her pregnancy.
“The experience was very clinical,” she said. “I vividly remember the word ‘scraping.’
“I was just really amazed at how deep the pain was and the sense of loss.”
Day struggled to find a way to cope. She's an artist, so she decided to put her artistic talents to work to help herself. She just needed a little nudge from her son, who saw her crying.
“’Mom, you know why I think this happened?’,” she recalled her son asking. “I said, ‘No, why?’ ‘I think this happened so you could help other people.’ I got the goosebumps. I felt like God had spoken directly to me through my son.”
She launched the project to provide comfort to women in a hospital in St. Louis. A Divine hand may have helped the idea spread to Springfield.
Sister Diane Frederick at St. John's wanted something -- anything -- to give parents a consoling memory.
“They don't want to forget this little baby,” said Frederick. “This gives them something to say ‘I won't forget.’”
It's also soothing those who volunteer to stitch up pillows – people like Beverly Trantham. She sews in honor of her sister's baby lost to miscarriage.
“This is something to help you get through your grief and to hug and to love since you can't have that baby there to do that,” said Trantham.
Heaven Born pillows are handed out now in eight hospitals. It’s a thread that connects Day's Katie to hundreds of others.
“I think my Katie has a lot of friends in heaven,” said Day.
Each pillow comes with a booklet. It gives insight on how a woman might be feeling after the loss, how to talk to a spouse about her pain and suggestions on how to honor the baby.
If you'd like to volunteer or donate to the program, you can call Heaven Born at 636-329-1557 or send an e-mail message to Day at maureen@heavenborn.com
To learn more about the HeavenBorn project, click here
