“His Life Was a Gift” — William, Loss, and the Story Behind Held Through

In this solo episode, Kristin Mundy reflects on the emotional weight of Mother’s Day after loss while sharing the story of her son William, whose life and passing deeply shaped the creation of Held Through. Through her own experiences with miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss, Kristin speaks openly about navigating loss within the medical system, the importance of informed choices, and the sacred moments we get with our babies.

We talk about:

•  Grief after Mother’s Day and Bereaved Mother’s Day 
•  Kristin’s pregnancy and loss with William 
•  Navigating a life-limiting diagnosis during pregnancy 
•  The difference between informed and unsupported loss experiences 
•  Advocacy, options, and decision making during pregnancy and loss 
•  Creating meaningful, sacred time with your baby 
•  The impact of birth and postpartum experiences on grief 
•  The gaps in care for women experiencing loss 
•  The creation and purpose behind Held Through
•  Supporting mothers, loved ones, and practitioners through loss 

This episode is a reminder that even in the most heartbreaking circumstances, there can be moments of connection, love, and meaning — and that no mother should have to walk through loss without support.

Get to know your Host:
This is a solo episode with Kristin Mundy — birth, postpartum, and bereavement doula, childbirth educator, and founder of The Doula Life. Based in Hamilton, Canada, Kristin supports women through pregnancy, loss, and motherhood after loss with a compassionate, trauma-informed approach. Her work is rooted in her own lived experience of loss and her mission to ensure no mother feels alone in any part of her journey.

Connect with Kristin:
📍 Website: thedoulalife.ca
🕊 The Held Through Series: thedoulalife.ca/held
🌸 Mother Like No Other: thedoulalife.ca/mother
📸 Instagram: @the.doula.life

If you enjoyed this episode, please don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review—it helps get these stories and resources into the hands of the women who need them most. And please share it with someone who could use this kind of support. Your support means so much.

Transcript

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When you're facing the potential of losing your baby, or you are losing your baby. There's not much that's gonna make that news better. But there are things that we can do. We do have options to soothe our hearts, to you know, honor our baby more, to help process our grief, to make the experience more informed, more loving, more comforting, more caring, and more sacred for the birthing mother. Welcome to the Rainbow Connection. This podcast was designed for mothers who are finding their way through life after loss. Whether you're grieving, trying to conceive again, newly pregnant, or holding hope in your heart for what's to come, this space is for you. Each week you'll hear real and tender stories. Stories of love, heartbreak, healing, and the babies who continue to shape us. I'm your host, Kristen Mundy, a mother, doula, and a woman who's walked this path too. May these conversations remind you that you are not alone, that your baby is never forgotten, and that hope and grief can live here together. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to tell you about Mother Like No Other, a special community for women who are navigating the tender season of life after loss. Inside Mother Like No Other, you'll find a warm, supportive space of moms who truly get it, plus practical tools to help you through the hard days. You'll have access to a private online community where you can connect with me, an experienced doula, and other moms navigating the same journey. Each month we gather for live workshops to connect and learn, covering topics like supporting your fertility journey, grounding strategies, self-advocacy, and ways to nurture your mind, body, and soul. We also bring in guest speakers to share their expertise and inspiration. The best part, it's only $22 a month. No long-term commitment, just real support when you need it most. If you're ready to feel more grounded, connected, and held through this season, come join us at thedoolalife.ca slash mother. You do not have to go through this journey alone. And by joining us inside Mother Like No Other, you won't have to. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Rainbow Connection. We are doing a solo episode today. I think this is our third solo episode, which is great. Episode 45, if you can believe it already, which is incredible. I shared this week that we are on episode 45 and we have 20,000 downloads already. Um, it's just remarkable. And I'm gonna start this episode off by just saying thank you for being here. Thank you for tuning in, thank you for listening and supporting the podcast. It means so much to have you here, and it means so much to me to be able to share these beautiful women's stories and their gifts. So, yes, just thank you again. I really wanted to start things off by saying that we are recording today off, you know, on the other side of Mother's Day and bereaved Mother's Day. How is everybody doing? We talk a lot in my community, um, in the Haven, in Mother Like No Weather, on social media about grief hangovers. And if there ever was a time to have a grief hangover, I really feel like it is after Mother's Day and Bereaved Mother's Day. It is a double whammy. And if you don't know what bereaved Mother's Day is, it was on May 3rd. It's a day to honor and acknowledge bereaved mothers and the babies that they have lost, and gives us as bereaved mothers an opportunity to share our babies with the world and their story. And you know what? It's such an amazing day and opportunity to be able to share our babies more. I know bereave Mother's Day, when I first heard about it, it really, really sucked. I hated that I knew what it was. I hated that I needed to be a part of it. It really did feel like a consolation prize to me for Mother's Day, for real Mother's Day. And I'm quoting if you can't see me. But with time, it did start to feel like another opportunity to talk about my babies and to celebrate the invisible mother that I am. I really hope that whoever's tuning into this episode today, that you really got that opportunity to share your motherhood, to share your babies, that you were able to tap into the glimmers of your love for them and, you know, be able to honor yourself and acknowledge your motherhood and be honored by those around you. That is my biggest hope. You are a beautiful mother, whether your baby is here or is in the sky, you're a beautiful mother. And I acknowledge that today. I know every woman listening to this is a beautiful mother. And I see you and I honor you, and I get the complexities that come with this day. And then, of course, after bereaved Mother's Day comes real quote, again, I'm quoting real Mother's Day. So I do hope as well, if you were acknowledged on bereaved Mother's Day, that you were also acknowledged on actual, you know, North American Mother's Day on May 10th, this last Sunday. Bereaved Mothers get double the celebration, and that's something that I'll always talk about. So I'm honoring you today, and I see you and I see your journey, and I'm just sending all my love to you. Now, it can be complex to know what to call yourself, you know, during these two holidays. Technically, this was my 14th bereaved Mother's Day and Mother's Day. This was my, I guess, fifth bereaved Mother's Day and Mother's Day since losing Vienna, my fourth since losing William, and my third with a living child in my arms. It is really complex. But I will tell you that, and we talk about this all the time too. My daughter, my earth side daughter, might be here. I might be a mother on earth, but she does not replace the babies that I lost. She does not replace Vienna William and the two other little angels that I lost. And they have just as big of a place in my heart as she does. And I think about them just as much, if not more, at this time of year. And I find it really interesting now that I do have an earth side daughter that, you know, saying happy Mother's Day to me comes a lot easier to people. And that can be really frustrating. But like most bereaved mothers do, trying to give people grace. But yeah, it could be a complex day. And I myself as well am feeling the aftermath of those two holidays. If you do follow me on social media, you'll know that I ran my 10K. I do it every Mother's Day. This is my third Mother's Day that I've done it. I run a 10K, you know, in honor of myself, in honor of my journey, in honor of Mother's Day. And I ran that on Sunday. And just like normal, it takes me kind of two business days to process. So that's why this podcast is coming out late because I really needed that space to just be in my feelings. And um a lot came up for me this year. And yeah, I was thinking about my race just in general, and I realized that I didn't even listen to music when I was running. And I've never done that before. Usually is music is what you know really fires me up. It's what propels me. But I literally ran purely with my thoughts. I was thinking about this journey. I was thinking about the last year specifically, and um that fueled me. And I actually hit a new PR. And I was pushing Senna this year too, which is incredible because I did not train to push a stroller. And somehow I just I did the damn thing, um, totally fueled off of my heart and my feelings and my reflections, which I feel was really needed and pretty incredible. Anyways, we are two days out and now we are recording. And I wanted to talk to you about a few things. I mean, we're already talking about Mother's Day. That was a really big one. I wanted to acknowledge. I wanted to acknowledge you being here, but I also wanted to acknowledge another huge milestone in my life, and that was the release of my offering held through last week. And this might be the first time that you're hearing about it, and I'm really excited to tell you more. I think it's one of the huge reasons why I was able to run on Sunday based on feelings alone, because there have been a lot of feelings over here. Okay. And sometimes as, you know, a bereavement dua, birth dua, postpartum duela, um, someone that is the person who is usually holding space. Um, there has been some billowings of my own feelings and not as much of an outlift for me to feel like I can share. But just like every mother, just like every bereaved mother, just like every human on this earth, I got my own struggles and things have been, there's been a lot of feelings. I'll just say that. So I released this beautiful offer last week. It's going to be one of pillars of my business moving forward. And I hope that you continue to listen because I'm going to tell you a little bit more about it and where it came from. And one of the big places that it came from is obviously my story. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that today. So it's called Held Through. It is, well, it's specifically called the Held Through series, and it consists of four different resources held through first trimester loss, held through second trimester loss, held through third trimester loss, and held through infant loss. Um, and I have been building this offering since I was pregnant with my daughter, Senna. So three years. I think it'll be three years in June. I was, you know, pregnant again after loss. So pregnant again after losing Fianna and losing William. And I became a bereavedula. And I knew that this support was so needed. It was so needed. And I thought to myself, you know, how can I actually reach the masses with this knowledge? How can I actually make a big difference? And in my mind, I thought, maybe doing something online, which was very new to me. You know, when I first became a doula, I was in people's homes every single day. I didn't know anything about technology or Instagram or websites. I didn't know any of that stuff. I did not know how to be a business owner. All I knew was to, I wanted to help people. So I was in people's homes. I was at the hospital. I was holding their hand. I was holding their babies, I was holding them. Like that is what I knew. So going into the virtual space was something that was really new for me. I was pregnant with Senna and I felt like I was a little bit more homebound. I had a little bit more time to invest. So that's what I did. I hired a coach. She brought me through learning, you know, how to make a course or make virtual offerings. And that's what I started. You know, I uh what did I want to make? I wanted to make something that was going to meet women at, you know, their need and in their loss. So if you've been here for a while, you'll have known a little bit about my story. And I'm not going to dig into it into too much depth, but I do want to talk about it a little bit because it's a huge reason why health through exists and why I felt it was so important to make this offering. Um, and this is all part of the story. So I've had four pregnancy losses, and all of them involved very, very different things. They were very unique in their own way. My first miscarriage was 13 years ago. Uh, I had no partner. I chose a DNC. I had very little to no support. My next loss, uh, we I was already a doula at this point. So at this point, I was informed with more information, but I was a very new doula, and this was, you know, my first pregnancy with a partner. And we found out we were miscarrying at just shy of 11 weeks. We ultimately decided to miscarry at home, and my body did not want to, was just not wanting to let go. Uh I ended up waiting four weeks before taking misopristol. I took misopristol at home with very, very little support from a care provider. Very, very horrible information being told to me. Um, he told me it was going to be like a period. And I went into full-blown labor at home. I labored in my tub for I think five hours and delivered a tiny baby into my hands. It was incredibly traumatic in its own way. I was not set up for pain management at all. Um, if you know me, I am kind of a glutton for punishment. So who knows what I would have chosen if I was given the option, but I felt really betrayed by my care provider for giving me such false information. And even afterwards, when I approached him about what I experienced and his lack of support, he was incredibly horrible. He he was absolutely not trauma-informed, he was not patient-centered. Uh, it really truly made me sick, to be honest. Um, and that was another part of my trauma when I was healing from that miscarriage. We got pregnant with Vienna uh shortly after that, and I've shared her story on here, in extent. Um, but we found out that her heart had stopped beating, and I delivered her at 31 weeks pregnant, um, silent. And obviously, that was the most traumatic moment of my life. Many, many traumatic moments, all tied into one. And then we got pregnant with my son, William. Um we, and maybe I'll talk about his story a little bit today, more in depth, because when I was creating this offering, I really, really thought about him a lot, a lot in this because for many, many different reasons. Um, but we did find out with him that at my 11-week scan, we confirmed that he had something called dictopia cortis, which is when the baby's diaphragm doesn't close, when they're forming and their heart is growing outside of their chest. Um, and because of this, he was not going to live after he was born. So that was an enormous blow to us because when we lost Vienna, we found out I had, you know, antiphospholipid syndrome, which is a blood clotting disorder. So to lose William Reed after her for something totally fluke and unrelated just felt like a knife to the chest. So those are my losses. I'm I'm telling them very, very quickly. They were all so incredibly unique, but they all had something so much in common. Well, not all of them. So my first one, I was an Adula. And I did the easy road up. No one told me about the wrists, no one told me how it would affect how I was going to process things afterwards. I didn't know how to advocate for myself. I didn't know that my grief was valid, and I felt so much shame and pain and for a really long time. And if you know anything about my health story, I actually developed something called transverse myitis a few months later, and I ended up being paralyzed from the belly button down. And one of the things, you know, hindsight's 2020, looking back, I feel like very much so that my grief was so internalized and it made me very sick. Um, very, very sick. And then with, you know, my second miscarriage in Vienna and William, I was a doula at this point. And I was able to make decisions for myself with the knowledge and experience that I had. So my second miscarriage, I was a new doula. There are things that my care provider did absolutely wrong. Um, but at that point, I was able to, you know, how to deal. I knew how to deal with the medical system. I knew how to deal with contractions at home. I knew what labor looked like. I knew what to do with my baby afterwards. I knew some things. And then with Vienna and William, I was a very different doula. And, you know, the things that we chose for them and how we, you know, supported my birth experience, supported, supported my postpartum, supported my grief, you know, their decisions that changed my entire life. They changed my grief, they changed the dool I am, they changed the woman I am. They are honestly the reason why I'm here and still standing. And I know I've talked about this before, but when Viana died, and before I even delivered her, I was already, you know, online in the support groups, talking to women, trying to support them as a doula for what they were going to experience. I knew that I had something here that I could, you know, share with the lost community that would make their experience better. And I'm going to elaborate a little bit. So obviously I can't make their experience better. I will say that. Like nothing is going to make this better when you find out that you are facing either a stillbirth or life-limiting diagnosis or early labor. There's so many different things, but what you're facing the potential of losing your baby, where you are losing your baby. There's not much that's going to make that news better. But there are things that we can do. We do have options to soothe our hearts, to, you know, honor our baby more, to help process our grief, to make the experience more informed, more loving, more comforting, more caring, and more sacred for the birthing mother. So when Vianna was born, like I said, I knew labor and delivery, I knew birth, I knew how to, you know, what induction would look like, what my body would go through, how to support myself through that. I knew that I had the I had options. I didn't have to stay at the hospital. I could go home. I knew to ask for a social worker. I knew to what to pack in my hospital bag. I knew how to support labor for progressing. I knew my options after she was born. There are so many things that I knew that made my birth as heartbreaking as it was, ultimately the most beautiful, one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. And I knew that I could share a lot of that wisdom in an offering that could meet women and hopefully change their experience as well. Because I do know that your birth, I'm going to quote again, satisfaction, or how you viewed your birth and how it was supported and how, you know, informed you felt and in control you felt really does affect your postpartum period. And ultimately it can affect your grief. And unfortunately, I come across so many women who didn't know they had options or they made decisions in a state of absolute shock and trauma, whose care providers didn't give them, you know, full informed consent of their options, that they didn't weigh out the benefits and their risks for them, that a lot of women chose what just seemed like the simple choice because their doctor said so, and they didn't realize that they had other options. And some of these choices, you know, they will change your life. And I really wanted to be able to meet women when they were making those choices. So they knew they had options and they could ultimately choose what would be most supportive for them. One huge part of this as well is the options that come after you have your baby. So there were things that we were able to do with Fianna that are so incredibly sacred. We knew that we could ask for a cuddle cot. We knew that, you know, I could catch her if that was, if I was medically stable, and I was, and I was able to catch her little head and have her placed on my chest. Scott was able to cut the cord. We were able to snuggle her and do skin to skin and have a quiet moment with just our family. We knew that we could get a photographer to come and take photos and take videos. We knew to take as much time as we needed. You know, a lot of, you know, families aren't told that. They're not told that they can spend time with their baby. They're not told that they can spend as much time with their baby and that they have options. You know, we spent 24 hours with Fienna. We dressed her, we sang to her, we read books to her, we danced with her, we took photos, as many photos as we could. We had someone come and dedicate her. We had, you know, some family come and meet her and hold her. We really did as much as we could. And I really attributed that to my knowledge as a birthday. And I just know that if I didn't have those opportunities with her, these were the only opportunities I would ever get with her for one. If I didn't have those opportunities, it would make my grief and my heartbreak and my time with her feel even more painful than it already was. Even though I only got 24 hours with her, I felt so lucky that, you know, we were able to spend those 24 hours the way we did. And, you know, for people listening, I'm gonna give you the other side of things because now that I have been a lost doula for four and a half years, you know, it's pretty exclusively. I talked, I've supported hundreds of women now. I often hear the story of the other side, the women that weren't given those opportunities, they weren't given the options, they didn't know they could hold their baby, they didn't know they could stay with their baby, they were making, you know, decisions in a state of absolute shock and trauma. And yeah, this is the reason why, you know, this is what's propelled me to making this. Now, also, since I went through it with Vienna, obviously, when we went to into William's pregnancy, I had a whole new repertoire of dualist skills. I had been a bereavement duel now. I officially I had gone through it firsthand with Vienna. Um I unfortunately knew loss. I knew how birthing a baby that has passed was going to look. I knew what it was gonna look afterwards, I knew all these things. I also knew that you know, I really gotta double check with my care providers and advocate in a total new way. And I knew how to do that. So with William, first off, going into that pregnancy, it was terrifying going into his pregnancy. You know, I knew that I probably couldn't handle losing another baby, and that's a decision you are risking every pregnancy. But I was really scared, but we had a different plan. I was going to be on blood thinners, I was with an MFM, like it was just going to be different, and I felt a lot more secure in that. And I developed a hematoma with him. I was bleeding in my early, you know, my early pregnancy. My hospital knew me at this point. So they're like, when any pregnancy moving forward, you're coming to us. So I was able to go to my hospital. And, you know, I figured I was miscarrying, found out I had a subcoronic hematoma. But it was so interesting because my care provider came up to me and she was like, Everything looks great. Baby looks great. It's a hematoma. Go home and rest. Everything looks great. You're gonna see your care provider in a few weeks, yada, yada, yada. And my husband and I left feeling like, who, you know, like thank God that our baby's okay. And now, because I've had gone through so much loss and I did not trust doctors more than I didn't trust them before. Here I go online to see my report. I knew now to read all my reports. And now I knew how to read my reports. A very skilled report reader now, especially when it came to ultrasounds. And I read my report and it said nothing that my care providers told me about, or this doctor that I saw at the hospital told me about. And what it did say was actually very terrifying. I was eight weeks at this point, and I was really confused. So here I am calling my care providers, trying to figure out what is going on. Finally got a hold of my care provider, and she confirmed that the report I was looking at online was correct, and that actually the care provider that was taking care of me when we went into the hospital read someone else's report to me. Yeah. And that's when we found out that my son William most likely had something called ectopiacortis, and that his heart, it looked like it was growing outside of his chest. But at this point, we weren't able, like you weren't able to confirm until 11 weeks, 12 weeks. So she's like, hang on tight, we'll confirm it. Um you can terminate right now. I probably wouldn't do that though, just because we aren't for sure. And obviously, I'd just gone through three pregnancy losses. I was like, no, we're not terminating my pregnancy. Like, let's be hopeful. I'm hopeful that this is wrong. And at this point, too, I'm like, I don't know if I trust anything that you guys say. Like, you've gone so many things wrong. That like, how am I gonna make this like obviously life or death decision for my baby without being able to fully trust you? So we made the decision to wait, and we waited three weeks to confirm. It was the longest three weeks. I was praying with every fiber of my being that this baby was gonna be okay. We had my 11-week ultrasound, and it was confirmed that he had Actopia cortous. Um, and they gave us the decision again. You know, what do you want to do? Do you want to terminate or do you want to see what happens, how this unfolds? Maybe it could correct itself. Maybe we aren't sure the severity, we aren't sure if there's anything genetic going on. We can gather more information. And for me, I was like, yes, let's gather more information. I can't make that choice. I still have hope. I still don't really believe anything a care provider says to me. So let's just move forward and get some more information. So at that point, I did something, it's called it's it's a placenta biopsy. So they had to go up through my cervix and get a tiny little biopsy of my placenta. I was too early to get amniocentesis, which is when they test your amniotic fluid. So we did this instead. And my we did the genetic testing, and he was perfectly perfect. He had no genetic issues. And at that point, I think we were 14 weeks along. And knowing that he had no genetic issues, and we didn't know the severity of his heart, it made the most sense to Scott and me to continue the pregnancy. So that's what we ultimately chose to continue and pray. And during at this point, this is when I was like researching like crazy. I met some other ectopia cortis mothers. Um, I knew that my son more than likely was not going to survive. And I did not feel personally like I was able to make that choice for him with, you know, the trauma I had experienced, with my distrust in the medical system. Um, I felt that, you know, I'm gonna let him choose what's best for him. And I'm gonna support whatever that is. Maybe I'll get to meet him one day and hold him in my arms and say goodbye. Maybe we'll go full term. I'm not sure. Maybe he'll be born still. We really had no idea what was going to happen, but I do remember letting it go and letting him lead the way. And because I knew he was going to die, this is where, you know, my experience with Vienna and him is so different. I didn't know Vienna was going to die. Uh, Vienna was really, when I'm looking back, she she really does feel like she was robbed from me, that she wasn't meant to die, that she had a beautiful life ahead of her. And William, with him, I knew that he wouldn't be able to. You know, Vienna showed me that like life is short and like losing your child is the most painful thing in the world. And if I could go back to Vienna's pregnancy, I would have spent every day, you know, I say I would spend every day differently, but I spent it very much in love with her. And I'm glad I knew that I had that ignorance of not knowing that she was gonna die and I could just enjoy it for what it was. But with William, because I knew he was gonna die and I knew our days were gonna be numbered, I really did wake up every single day just loving him so much, just relishing in my pregnancy, just like enjoying every single moment that I had with him. Um, and that was such a gift that I was able to have that. And we were able to really, you know, advocate for a lot of things in those, you know, the time that I was pregnant with him. And I'm just so thankful for that. And that I was able to have those days, you know. If I didn't know some things, if I didn't know what birthing a baby that is asleep looked like, or how beautiful it could actually be and healing it could be, maybe I would have chosen differently. Um, so it felt like a gift as well that I was able to have that extra time with him. It sounds wild. Even when I'm saying it out loud, I'm like, it is pretty wild, but it really was a gift. Every single day I had with him was such a gift. And we went in for an early anatomy scan with him, and I had just checked his heartbeat the day before with my home Doppler, and he had passed right before his ultrasound. And even for this, like Scott and I very much were, like I said, we wanted him to choose what was best for him. And I felt like he when I let go, when I was able to have those days with him and that time with him, know his name and know he was a boy. And I really felt like he gave me a gift by deciding to leave when he did. You know, maybe mentally. It was a lot carrying a baby that I knew was gonna pass. And his due date was actually in November. So who knows if I would have gotten pregnant with Senna when I did if he didn't pass at that time. Anyways, when we found out that he had died, we we knew he was going to die. We knew that it was our decision to continue the pregnancy. We knew what it was going to, the steps that were going to come next and that I was going to need to deliver. But this time we walked into things with, you know, it sounds really twisted, and we were making jokes at it at the hospitals if you're into dark humor at all. But we were talking about, you know, where's our frequent flyer mile? Because we had the same care providers, we had the same nurses, and we were doing the same thing. We were getting induced, we were birthing a baby that had died, and it was just like complete compounded trauma. Um, but the benefit, and if I can say benefit, is that we knew what to expect. We knew how to better advocate for ourselves, and we knew the hospital system, we knew all our care providers. It was just a level of familiarity and confidence and empowerment with him. And again, it felt like a gift. I was induced, and we spent time walking around the hospital. We were watching Stranger Things. Um really just made my labor really, really special. And, you know, cried about Vienna so much. We couldn't believe that we were doing this again. We couldn't believe this was our life. Like there were so many times that all we could really do was like kind of laugh just because we're like, what has happened the last year? Like, this was our third pregnancy loss in a year. This was the third baby we were saying goodbye to in a horribly traumatic way. And we just like couldn't believe it. My labor was beautiful. We had candles in our room, we had our music playing, and my water broke, like Hollywood style broke while we were watching Stranger Things. And shortly after that, I delivered him. It was just me, my nurse, and Scott, which was really nice because the doctor couldn't make it in time. And um we got to meet our little boy, and it's just so crazy because he looked so much like his sisters, and his heart was outside of his chest. And um, yeah, our son was born. And again, we spent 24 hours with him, cuddled him, danced with him, sang to him, read him stories, had our photographer come, we did all of the the same things. We had him dedicated. What a gift that time was. What a gift that time was. It sounds so crazy, even when I say it, but I can't imagine how hard it would be if I wasn't able to have that time and those decisions. We had the same nurse, she was so lovely, and I wonder if she'll listen to this one day. Her name's Vanessa, she works at the Master Hospital. She was our nurse for Vienna and for William. And with Vienna and William, we gave our babies to her to pass off to the funeral home because it was just something that I was not able to do. And um, we trusted her with that because we felt that she really like loved us and loved our babies and shared, you know, the hell that we went through. And um, we trusted her with that. And after that came the healing process. Um, another thing that we got to do with Vienna and William is, you know, because they went to the funeral home and that was the choice we made, we chose not to get an autopsy. That was something that we knew we didn't want to do. We chose to get placental pathology. We knew that we could get a lot of information from that. We did our genetic testing, like we knew how to navigate all of those horrible decisions. We didn't need to decide between, you know, burial or cremation. We knew we wanted to have him cremated just like his sister. Uh, we knew like how to make these horrible decisions, you know, with our baby that we never thought that we'd have to do because we had already done it before. But one thing that was really nice was that we got to visit him every single day between, you know, when he arrived at the funeral home and when he was cremated, and go and read him stories then too, and spend time with him because I know it might sound for some people that might sound like a lot. But for me, as you know, Vienna Williams' mother, the funeral home is only a few streets over. And knowing that when my babies were a few streets over and I was here and I couldn't see them, that was like excruciating for me. So I visited them both every day and we drove both of them to the crematorium and we said goodbye and we read them a letter and we made it really, really beautiful. And that was his story. And when he, you know, after we officially said goodbye to him and his body, we started our process of grieving again, grieving again both of our babies in such a short period of time. So Vianna died in September and William died in May. This is his month. He died on May 27th, and he was born on May 29th. And thinking about him a lot. Thinking about him so much. And he was one of the reasons that I really needed to make this offering held through. We got pregnant with Senna. I started creating it with all the grief I was feeling and all the love I was feeling for her, and started making it when I was pregnant. And then obviously there were times where it was too hard and I had to put it aside, and then I had a baby that was alive, um, and then picked it up again. So I have been building it on and off since after he died when I was pregnant with Senna until now. And really, every piece of my babies that I've lost their story and my experience has gone into making this. In the last four and a half years, I've support, like I've said, I've supported hundreds of mothers from all different walks of life, all different stories of loss. And I really try to capture how I support those women, what their choices are, how to make informed choices, what their birth and labor might look like, how to support them in that, how to support them with their care provider. I really try to cover every single avenue for every single type of loss. And that's why it took so long, because there is a lot. There is so much. And it's so individual. And I'm sure that there are so many people whose stories I don't even touch because there's just a thousand and one different scenarios. Um, but that's why Hellthrough is broken down into four different resources. So it can really meet you at the type of loss you are experiencing. If you're having a early miscarriage, you don't need to know about stillbirth. If you're having a stillbirth, you don't need to know about a life-limiting diagnosis and so on and so forth. So I really wanted to be able to capture women either in their acute loss. So when they found out the news whether their baby was going to die, that they were going to miscarry, or, you know, that their baby had passed, and be able to walk them through everything that would follow. And then for the women who had already known that their baby passed and maybe had already delivered and are still struggling with what happens, what are my choices that are next? What's my grief gonna look like? How am I ever gonna get my family to support me? How do I re-enter the world? What's my first period gonna look like? What's my lactation gonna look like? What are all of these things going to look like? And how the heck do I do this? How do I best support myself? That is all in there. So if you're having a miscarriage, whatever miscarriage type of miscarriage that you are having, there is, you know, information in that first trimester loss resource that's going to meet you through, you know, the acute loss, your actual process of birthing and everything that comes after, same as second trimester loss, it's going to, if you're having a later miscarriage, if you have a life-limiting diagnosis, if your baby, if you have a neonatal loss, if you have a second trimester stillbirth, it's going to walk you through that. In third trimester, it's going to walk you through stillbirth. That is a really huge module in that third trimester loss because obviously that is the most common third trimester loss. It's going to walk you through a neonatal loss in there, or losing your baby in the NECU, preterm labor, um many different, you know, scenarios where you lose your baby in the third trimester. And then we also have infant loss. So that's going to walk any parent who has lost their baby from SIDS, or maybe an intrapartum loss. So someone that lost their baby during delivery, or lost their baby in the NECU, or had a life-limiting diagnosis. All of the courses also do walk you through, you know, termination for medical reasons. Um, it really is meant to meet you at the type of loss that you are going through as gently as possible, as informed as possible. And it might not have all the information in there to support you specifically through your loss, but it teaches you how to get that information. It teaches you for, you know, to get the information about your baby so you can navigate next steps if you are, you know, considering getting pregnant again and what how this might affect your future and your future pregnancies. I really did try to, you know, capture all the scenarios and all your options and also all your options of what to do with your baby, because that's the most important, right? Those are the the moments that the only moments, the most precious and cherished moments that we get to share with our little one. And like how important are those? And I really try my best to walk you through how to make it as sacred and special as you can, how to cram an entire life of memories and smells and kisses and hugs and you know, those moments into such a small time span. We also really talk about, you know, honoring your baby over time. So your motherhood journey, it doesn't stop, you know, when you say goodbye to your baby. I would argue that you don't say goodbye. You say goodbye to your baby's body and your experience with them on earth in a tangible way. But there are so many ways that we can still continue to be our baby's mothers, obviously, in a very, very different way than we ever envisioned, but there are options for that too. And I really try to walk you through what that might look like. We also dig into mental health and the difference between, you know, what is postpartum, what is grief, and what is a more serious issue. We break that down, we talk about different types of grief just to become more grief literate and to better understand what you're actually experiencing and what's going on in your body and how we could show up for ourselves. And then we also have a module specifically for other loved ones. Now, this one was really, really important to me because obviously, being a lost mom myself, I have been on the receiving end of some really horrible support, just to be frank. And sometimes I can't even, you know, now that I'm five years out and I've gained a lot of compassion, I've gone through a lot of healing, I can have grace for the loved ones in my life that, you know, maybe didn't show up the way that I wanted them to, because we live in such a broken world, a grief, illiterate world, a world where people are so uncomfortable with being uncomfortable, a place where we don't talk about losing our babies or our pregnancies. And obviously, I have been working so tirelessly to fix that. Um, this shouldn't be a secret or something that you go through in isolation. We want our loved ones to be involved because this is the biggest thing, one of the biggest things you'll ever go through in your life. So, of course, you're gonna want to be able to lean on them and them to understand this part of you. So, we do have a module about how to show up for our loved ones, how to support them emotionally and physically and spiritually, and why milestones really matter, why our language really matters, how to be an ally for lost moms, especially one that you love. Um, that was really important. So when I made held through, I really tried my best to make it something that so many people could learn from. So the grieving parent, of course, themselves, and they can access health through whether it might be in acuity, like in the acuity of your loss when you are literally going through it, or in postpartum, and you are trying to make sense of what happened and how to support yourself. And, you know, sometimes, a lot of the time, having more information and being able to debrief what you just went through can really help with that grieving process. Uh, it's also meant for any loved one to get. So whether they want to get it for themselves and they want to better understand what you might have gone through and how to show up for you, they can get it for themselves, or they can gift it for a loved one. So maybe you know someone that is currently going through loss or is preparing to go through loss or saying goodbye to their baby, and you don't know how to show up. You want to be of support. You're gonna learn on your own, you know, on your side of the track, but you also want them to get the support too. And maybe you gift it to them. Um, and then they have access to that. And we also made it for those who are working with women. So maybe you are a dual listening, maybe you are a practitioner of some sort, you're a physiotherapist, a chiropractor, a naturopath, whatever it might be, a nurse, and you're just wanting to better show up for the women that you work with because statistics don't lie. A large majority of women go through pregnancy or infant loss. And if you are serving women, you gotta be informed. You need to be able to know what your patient or client is going through and how to show up for them. Now, I will say that even though you can take, you know, this resource held through right now, we are coming out with an official practitioner training in the fall. And if you really do want to go super in-depth of how to support your clients through loss and just become way more loss aware, we are going to offer that in the fall. But if you're wanting something in the meantime, you can access Hell Through now and join us in the fall as well. And, you know, have that to kind of support you in the in the meantime. So we really did try to think about all the different avenues of support that might be needed, all the type of people who might benefit from this information and have it all wrapped up in one resource, and that is held through. It is a really, really big project. So, in case you missed at the beginning, it is four resources. It's held through first trimester loss, held through second trimester loss, held through third trimester loss, and held through infant loss. Um, I really did make this from the depths of my soul, the bottom of my heart, with every bit of love and pain and desire to support women going through the worst moments of their life, that they don't have to go through it alone, that they have, that they know that they have options and that they are seen and can feel just a little bit more supported through those moments. Um, and have our loved ones be able to be those people. I know a huge secondary grief is our loved ones not knowing how to show up for us. And I really wanted this to bridge that gap, you know, for them to get some more information and to know how to better show up for the ones that they love and that relationship not have to fall apart, right? Yeah, it was a big, big, big dark night of the soul, um project of love. And I really know deep in my heart and in my soul that it is going to change lives. It's going to be around now all the time. It's going to be an offering that's always accessible. So anytime that you need it, it's going to be there. If you do purchase it, you'll have lifetime access and it will evolve with time. So the more feedback I get, the more I can change some things and improve some things, and you'll get all those improvements. It also comes with a mega workbook. It's beautiful. It walks you through the whole resource. It has, you know, nervous system support in there. It has a lot of like different journaling. It has a lot of information. If it depends what kind of reader or what kind of learner you are, if you rather learn on screen from videos like this, or if you rather read, it gives you both of those options, which is what I really love about it. Anyways, that's held through. I wanted to give you the lowdown of where it came from, why it why it came here, um, the story behind it, and a little bit more information about what it is. And, you know, I'm trying to be as clear as possible. Again, it's two days after Mother's Day, and you're meeting me in my grief hangover. Um, but if this is something that you would like more information about, if you want to access, if you know someone, you know, you're not sure which maybe which resource is best for you or your situation or your loved one, please know that you can always reach out to me. I would love to, you know, walk you through your options and find what is best for you. I would be, you know, so honored for you to get this support. And if you're not in the situation where you need this resource, please help me get the word out that this exists. Uh I don't want, you know, if I could think of my dream scenario, my dream world, it would be that, you know, when women go through pregnancy and infant loss and miscarriage and losing their baby, that they would be armed with all the information that they need, that they would make be able to make the best decisions for themselves and their situation and be able to make an impossible, horrible, heartbreaking situation feel a little bit more comfort, comforting and supported. So I need your help to make that happen. I need your help to get this into the hands of the women that need it. I need your help in learning and becoming a more grief-literate society. All right. I never know how to close these things because when I'm by myself, I can't really thank myself for, you know, sharing. But I'm gonna thank you again for tuning in and for listening and supporting this podcast. Uh, if you are one of the beautiful women that wants to get into the next season, we are going to be opening the wait list very soon for season two. We are gonna launch season two in the fall, and we are probably gonna record in the summer. Um, so if you did apply to the wait list, you'll hear from me soon. And if you want to be on, apply to that wait list, and um, we'll hopefully get you on here in the second season. Thank you everyone for showing up, uh, for holding this space, for always supporting me and my ventures. I love you all so much, and I will see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to connect more, Instagram is where I hang out most, so come join me in a beautiful community of lost moms for pregnancy after loss education, real life grief talk, and deep solidarity. You can find me at the dot doula dot life and at the Rainbow Connection Podcast. And remember, you are never alone. I'll see you in the next episode.