Introduction

"The personal anguish is great, but more often it is of the sort that most of us experience during the course of simply living fully. The key lies not in our suffering, but in our ability to use it to connect with the pain of others. Held poorly, our torment seals us off from others or disables us; held well, awareness of our own pain enables us to resonate with that of others and work toward the healing of the whole community. " -The Power of One (www.yesmagazine.org)

On February 19, 2005 our daughter, Catherine Bailey Czajkowski, was born silently into this world when Jill was 40 weeks, 2 days into her pregnancy. She was our firstborn and her eyes never saw this world. She was 6 pounds, 2 ounces, 19.5 inches long, and absolutely beautiful. She also had her father Andy's eyes and Jill's nose--she was a perfect "merger" of the two of us. After an autopsy and genetic testing, her official cause of death is unknown.

That day, our lives changed significantly. We were devastated. Instead of calling family and friends to announce the joyous arrival of our daughter, we repeatedly had to deliver the tragic news that she had passed away. We ached to have our little girl with us.

As we continued to grieve and try to heal our wounds, we talked about preserving Catherine's memory. We wanted to do something positive to honor her instead of dwelling in despair. Our focus turned towards helping other parents who go through the same tragedy. We wanted to provide them some comfort. We contacted the hospital where Jill delivered Catherine and told them how we wanted to help. Then, we changed the theme of our annual Christmas party to a charitable event. We asked guests to donate to the hospital's Perinatal & Infant Loss Fund in Catherine's memory or to the MISS Foundation (Mothers in Sympathy and Support). We raised over $2500 that night!

Next, we worked with a wonderful hospital representative to designate how the money raised in Catherine's memory should be used and came up with the idea for memory boxes. We located a company to make the boxes and presented 25 boxes to the Labor & Delivery ward in May 2006. These boxes are decorated in beautiful white padded satiny fabric and contain a hat, gown, blanket, baby ring/necklace, hand/foot imprint kit, and more. Each box also contains a card that states that "This memory box was donated by the parents of Catherine Bailey Czajkowski". This past year, our second annual charitible Christmas Party, we raised over $3500! We used that money to order 36 more boxes for the hospital, as only two remained from our initial donation.

Every one in 115 pregnancies results in stillbirth and yet we do not hear much about it। We hear all about SIDS, but more children die from stillbirth each year than SIDS! So many families are going through the worst experience of their life-losing a child and not much is being done to help them through difficult times. It means so much to us to be able to provide some comfort to them during their darkest hour.

It's been over two years now since Catherine passed away. We've established a "new normal" because we recognize that the old normal will never return. We've learned that the pain of losing a child will never go away, instead we've learned how to live through it. This past September, we were blessed with the birth of our second-born, a son named AJ. He is such a joy in our lives, however there isn't a day that goes by where we do not think about Catherine. We miss our little girl and love her dearly and we wish she were here to grow up together with her little brother.

Our goal this year is to create a foundation in Catherine's memory called "Catherine's Light". Our mission is to provide comfort to parents who lose a child to stillbirth. We want to show them that there can be light in the midst of darkness. We will continue to fundraise and provide memory boxes, but there are many other things that we'd like to do including creating and dedicating a memorial garden at the hospital, providing teddy bears to parents, working to provide professional pictures of their child, remembering their children during the holidays and anniversaries, and working with funeral homes to donate funeral costs for their children. We will also continue to bring stillbirth awareness and will post updates to this blog regularly.