Female Voices: Life and Loss

Anne & Patti from the National Share Office are two amazingly compassionate women that will work diligently with their staff to find you the support you need after a loss. A tremendous number of resources can be found through their office and online at http://nationalshare.org/ There are free brochures for early loss, stillborn, newborn loss, couples, fathers, grandparents grieving, lactation...

Roxy Jenkins is the mom of 1 daughter and 4 angels, and their journey is not over. Even though she was diagnosed with PCOS in high school she did not know that the infertility thing would happen to them. When they were given the diagnosis of infertility, they knew it would be difficult, but they knew they could still have kids. Their journey started with a doctor that believed in just keep doing t...

Stacy Williams is a woman who has touched and changed the lives of hundreds of children in the St. Louis Area. She knew when she was 11 or 12 years old that she was called to adopt children. The women in her life were great role models and showed her from a very young age to help those in need. Even though she knew she wanted to adopt children she also wanted to have her own biological child befor...

Robyn thought it would be easy to have children since she and her husband Matt both came from large families.  We tried clomid for 19 months and I had some severe reactions the first month. How do you become intimate with your spouse when you have gained 40 lbs. from a drug that is supposed to help you become pregnant? Matt used testosterone cream to hopeful increase his sperm count and his count...

Connie said we were the first to get married of our friends and last to have children. We struggled with infertility due to PCOS, but once we started to discover the problems, I was happy we moved pretty fast because my husband was in the medical field. We became pregnant with IVF and thought the worst was behind us. I was not aware of the statistic of pregnancy loss. When it happened to us, I was...

  Shannon is an inspiration for all women who are struggling with having a live birth.  With all six pregnancies, she has endured painful cramping and bleeding and is working to get as healthy as she can to have a family to love. She talks about having to decide to deliver at 20 weeks to save her life. She was told the decision was one funeral or two because her health was declining rapidly. She w...

Cassie & Mike knew that their desire to have a family was not going to be easy due to Cassie having severe PCOS.  After talking with their doctor and trying months of pharmaceutical medications they were told their choices to have a family was either to try IVF or adoption.  Having to make this difficult decision they decided to take a 21-day cruise to talk about what to do and to make sure th...

Dawn describes herself as a train wreck during her pregnancy with Zoey who was diagnosed with Trisomy 18. Listen to how she navigated through such devastating news and continued to have hope along the way. She held her breath at every doctor’s appointment until they could hear Zoey's heartbeat because she could have passed away at any time during the pregnancy.  Dawn was hoping the entire preg...

Ann-Marie had so much trauma on her journey to have a family. She experienced severe Hyperemesis Gravidarum in several of her pregnancy and was hospitalized.  During her first pregnancy she lost so much weight and was down to 82lbs due to the hyperemesis. She had extreme bleeding during pregnancy which you would have thought she was miscarrying but did not. Her oldest daughter called the hospital...

Carol said our mindset needs to be shifted from the expectation that every women that becomes pregnant is going to have a 40-week healthy baby. That in itself is a miracle! That healthy 40-week pregnancy is not the norm . Carol and Jon had an 18-week ultrasound scheduled on their daughter's birthday. She was going to see her little brother or sister for the first time. Something was not right...

Candace and her husband experienced a very early miscarriage that they did not completely heal from until they lost their little girl at 21 weeks. They then needed to grieve both losses. They started out with a support group connected to The Share Organization, some individual counseling, reading, and journaling also helped. Candace researched books to read but unfortunately her library did not ha...

Derlene is a dear friend and personal development success coach that had a few questions about supporting friends through infertility struggles and loss. We had a great conversation about a few do's and don'ts but of course not enough time to talk about all of them, but I think the most common came up in our conversation. Things like what to say or do and what not to say or do. The number...

Nichole and her husbands journey started in 2011. They had no idea that they would have to experience so many losses, test, procedures, surgeries, IUI's and IVF's. She had family, friends and work clients that wanted to help support them with the financial expenses that they were enduring so they donated through a Go-Fund-Me Account. She just kept thinking we are not getting any younger. A...

Amanda shares her journey through some very tough years of anxiety . I remember when I was told, I am sorry your baby passed away 4 weeks ago. There are moments in life when you remember things but sometimes not as vividly as others.  I remember this experience like it was yesterday. I can see it in my mind like a movie. Every part of it was extremely traumatic. I walked in the office thinking I w...

Joann Michalik is a Certified Grief Coach with Ouch It's Grief . She shared her story of the loss of her 4-year-old son and then a miscarriage that put her through deep grief. No one asked how I was doing. They did not know how to help me. I had to move forward for my 2 living sons. I had to work through grief and then decided I wanted to help others move from Tragedy to Triumph as I had done....

Megan and her husband struggled for 4 years to have a family. She said it felt like a chore to try to conceive while on fertility drugs. They looked at everything and decided to step back and just live their lives and see where things would go. They still wanted to be parents and investigated private adoption. Besides the expense, they felt like it was a transaction, like buying a car. It just did...

During her residence to become a physician Dr. Molina started struggling with infertility and loss.  After 3 miscarriages she then experienced not being able to get pregnant at all.  She had specialized in infertility and that was exactly what she was experiencing.   She knew 50% of infertility is unexplained but it was still difficult. With all her knowledge about infertility, knowing that normal...

Tameika went to the doctor to have a procedure done to find out that she was pregnant. This was devastating and shocking news for a single woman who was about to end the relationship she was in.  I was in total denial about the pregnancy so I did not go back to the doctor for several months and when I finally went I was told I was pregnant with twins. WOW I was scheduled for an ultrasound at 26 we...

Dr. Kristan Wilson is a board-certified chiropractic physician in both Missouri and Illinois. With having hormonal struggles at a very young age she has a passion to help women overcome hormonal imbalances like PCOS and infertility so that they can finally live in optimal health and luminous vitality. She uses conservative care to either get your body healthy enough to conceive on its own or use i...

Have you been given the awful diagnosis of infertility?  It seems to be given frequently and is very devastating to receive.  Brittany and her husband wanted a family but after a year of trying was diagnosed with infertility.  The blame and shame began. Infertility is a very heavy word to hear and to deal with. She avoided the medical field for the next year even though she had trem...

Denise and her husband lost their beautiful daughter Molly Rose days after delivery, due to a heart condition. She was just born before the advance in technology that could have saved her life.  Babies born today with heart conditions either have the heart repaired in utero or shortly after birth.  We had some very difficult decisions to make and were so young. I do not think I even realized the d...

Barb is a nurse at Anderson Hospital in Maryville, IL, and manages the Share Organization at the hospital. She is a woman who has many years of experience on the job and training through the National Share Organization. She and the staff are very professional in helping families during the most difficult time of their lives. Barb and the staff at the hospital have been trained to come to the needs...

Jeff and his wife decided while dating that they would need to start a family right away after getting married due to their age. Well, they started a little earlier because they had no trouble getting pregnant. They wanted two children. "One to replace him and one to replace her". The first two trimesters of the pregnancy were great but during the third trimester, problems started. Jeff...

When Joey and her husband married, they did not want to have children and their pastor had done an assessment of their compatibility. They did awesome in every area except raising children. They said no problem we are not planning on having any children. Well that changed, they had a little boy and then a surprise pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage. Even though they did not want another child t...

Jamie and DJ had a beautiful blended family, but they wanted a baby together.     The first challenge was to reverse a vasectomy that DJ had 13 years earlier.  Dealing with unexplained infertility. Jamie was willing to try anything, more blood work, ultrasounds, fertility drugs that made her very sick which forced her to take a couple months off to heal her body.  It felt like a dagger in my heart...