From a sadness, gifts to others

Posted in Mom Stuff
by besttech

Heather Wheeler knows the loneliness and devastation too well. With the stillbirth of her second son, Grant Kelton Wheeler, on Feb. 4, 2007, she entered a sorority no one would choose, a motherhood united in loss.

Now she wants to help other families whose babies have died before, during or just after birth.

“I wanted to make something good out of something bad,” says Wheeler, 34. “I remember saying that to one of my nurses. He will not be forgotten. But you have a tremendous amount of grief to get through first.

“I came home, and I longed for that blanket he’d been wrapped in. I cried myself to sleep at night longing for something he’d touched. It was a huge regret that I hadn’t asked for it.”

With Grant’s Gift, Wheeler and her husband, Kevin, 36, a school psychologist, have donated almost 300 baby blankets to hospitals in California and Oregon so that stillborn babies can be cradled in them. The Wheelers intend the blankets as keepsakes for grieving parents.

A VIRAL INFECTION

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in every 115 American pregnancies ends in stillbirth — defined as naturally occurring fetal death after 20 weeks’ gestation.

The Wheelers, who live in Rocklin, Calif., have two other sons — 5-year-old Gavin and baby Graden, who was born in June.

“My second pregnancy, up until the point he died, was perfect,” says Wheeler, a communications specialist for Adventist Health.

When she was 25 weeks along, Grant stopped moving. At Sutter Roseville Medical Center, doctors discovered he’d contracted a viral infection, with no hope for survival. He died hours later and was delivered the next day.

“Sometimes, the husbands are overlooked,” says Wheeler, “but my husband has been profoundly affected. He was there. He gave our child his first and last bath. This affects the whole family.”

She put together a Web site in Grant’s memory — www.grantsgift.org — and in December began asking her co-workers and family members to help her collect nice, new receiving blankets to donate, expecting only a handful. Soon, anonymous donations were arriving in the mail, too, including a boxful of blankets someone sent from Maine.

We don’t much like to talk about stillbirth, it seems, but when people have been touched by it, they understand what it means to help other people going through the same thing.

‘SUCH A SPECIAL THING’

In early February, just in time for Grant’s birthday, Wheeler distributed the washed and neatly packaged Grant’s Gift blankets to eight hospitals in the Adventist Health chain, as well as Sutter Roseville.

“We haven’t had to give them out yet, thankfully,” says Debbie Shoro, a labor and delivery nurse at Sutter Roseville. “But these blankets are such a special thing.

“It’s always heartbreaking when someone loses a baby. It comes on so unexpectedly. Parents had hopes and dreams for their baby. Having something soft and special like this blanket is such a human thing, a mommy thing.”

For Heather Wheeler, the blankets are a way of finding purpose in the loss of her son.

“I wish my son was here,” she says. “I wish that every day, but he’s made me a better person.

“All your kids teach you something. I’ve probably learned the most from the son I don’t get to spend this life with.

“I want to wrap my arms around people in the same situation, because I know how hard it is. There are no words.”

—By Anita Creamer, McClatchy Newspapers