Project Heal, Hope & Love

Hi everyone, my name is Monica and my husband's name is Gary.  We're a loving young couple who've been married for 5 years now.  In early August 2011, we found out I was pregnant.  Of course my husband and I were over the moon, and so excitedly planning to welcome the new life in our family.  The pregnancy went really well until it hits 20 weeks, all of a sudden I got a call from my OB about my blood screening results.  Make the long story short, my baby was born sleeping in my womb on Nov 23, 2011 due to multiple severe deformities, and was naturally delivered on Nov 28, 2011.  Needless to say, I was crying days and nights, but not only that, I was diagnosed with moderate to severe depression and anxiety disorder.  It took me almost a year of intense counselling and reproductive mental health training sessions to get over all the intrusive thoughts, and slowly start my "new normal" life.

During this journey of grief, I've met many bereaved parents through local and online support groups.  As I'm residing in Canada, I'm one of the lucky bereaved mothers who receive free healthcare.  Unfortunately many of my bereaved parent friends reside in the States and other countries, not only do they have to bear the heartbreak of losing their children, they also get haunted by hundreds of thousands dollar bill from hospitals afterwards! So one of my fundraising goals is to relief some of the hospital bills for a few bereaved parent friends.

Through the loss of my angel boy Acacius, I've also learnt a lot of new things about myself and reaffirmed callings.  Years before getting married, my dream have always been having two biological children and two more adopted kids from other countries. After losing my baby, this calling has been stronger than ever. The only difference is that I yearn to have more adopted children, especially adopting physically and/or mentally disabled kids.  Although I don't have my husband fully on board with me with the whole adoption idea yet, I will definitely keep on talking and praying for him to open his heart to love other children in need.  Once he agrees and when we proceed with adoption, the other fundraising goal will be used towards to the extremely expensive adoption fee.

Thank you for reading my sharing.  It'll be greatly appreciated if you can help with "Project Heal, Hope & Love".  Please also help spreading the words out to your friends and family, because besides raising funds for my bereaved parent friends and my future adoption plan, I'd also like to raise awareness for pregnancy & infant loss.  Miscarriages, stillbirth and infant loss are sadly very common across the world, unfortunately, it still remains to be one of the taboo topic in the society.  If you can't donate to this project, that's fine, but please donate your love and care to other bereaved parents.