In October of 2011 I became pregnant with my 4th baby. After three uneventful pregnancies, I was naive to the fact that I would ever have a loss. I was healthy and active and just thought that would never happen to me. This pregnancy seemed very much like the others. I was nauseated in the beginning just like usual. We heard the baby's heartbeat around 12 weeks, just like usual. I felt the first signs of movement around week 16, just like usual. Everything was progressing normally. We went on vacation in March and the day after we returned I had my 20 week prenatal appointment. My midwife and I chatted and she did the standard blood pressure and measuring my growing belly. She then took out the doppler to listen to the baby. She could not find a heartbeat. Shock and panic rushed over me. I immediatly went for an emergency ultrasound and we discovered right away that my precious baby had passed away. The next couple of days were a blur as my husband and I tried to figure out what to do. We went and saw my midwife's back up OB and with his blessing decided to go ahead with our original plans and have our baby at home. Two weeks later on April 3, 2012 our beautiful 4th daughter, Hannah Claire was born into my hands. She was born quietly and calmly. For the next three days we kept her with us. We dressed her and loved her. Her sisters got to hold her. On April 6, 2012 we said our good-byes and buried her. 

I trained as an encapsulator about three months before I became pregnant with Hannah. I had planned on encapsulating her placenta. Due to the grief surrounding her birth I could not bring myself to encapsulate it. To this day her placenta resides in my freezer. I can't bear to think about getting rid of it. During that time I wish I had known someone that could have encapsulated it for me. Even though I did not have a baby to take care of I still had to go through the regular postpartum period, just like you do when you give birth to a live baby. I still had to deal with the hormonal fluctuations on top of the emotional trauma of dealing with the death of my daughter. I believe the placenta capsules would have helped at least some with what I was going through.

There was nothing obviously wrong with Hannah. We do not know why she died. I did not have an infection and my placenta looked very healthy.

This experience has prompted me to offer my services free of charge for any mother that has experienced a loss but would still like to have her placenta encapsulated. I am also able to make a keepsake out of the umbilical cord if the mother would like to have something special from her baby but does not want to do encapsulation or can not have her placenta encapsulated due to infection etc.