Honoring Kreedence Irene,
July 22, 2014
Brad and I met in April 2011. It didn’t take us long to decide that we wanted to build our lives together. I was pregnant by mid-October with our sunshine baby, Liv. In July 2012 she was born happy, healthy and more beautiful than we could have ever imagined. Life was great! Brad was starting a great new job and we were beyond ready to start our new journey. Very appreciative of the things we had, we didn’t live in complete ignorance of how blessed we were but the future held something for us that would change our perspectives beyond anything we could have imagined before. Our appreciation for love and life would be changed forever.
In November 2013 we were expecting our second baby girl. Throughout my pregnancy there were no major concerns for the health of our baby or myself. Two days after my due date in July 2014, we decided to induce labor and our sweet baby, Kreedence, was born just a few hours later. The first few moments of her life seemed normal. Brad and I each held her for a moment while we called our families. About twenty minutes after Kree’s birth I started to try nursing her and that’s when I felt something was not right. The nurse took her and things went downhill rather quickly from there. Four hours after her birth she was gone. Kree’s cause of death was determined to be a subdural hematoma with associated cerebral hemorrhage.
Before Kree’s passing I didn’t know about milk donation but later that evening while talking about grief with my midwife, she mentioned that it was something I could consider doing. It was an easy choice to make and I knew I had to try even though I had never pumped before. It took a few days before I started to get a handle on pumping but once I figured it out the entire process was healing. My body started to feel better, I felt closer to Kree, and her precious milk was going to help other babies in need.
I am so proud to have been able to donate breast milk in Kree’s name. As I work toward keeping her memory alive, I will be promoting breastfeeding and milk donation with every opportunity I get. I am beyond thankful to MMBNE for simply being there as an option for me to donate my breast milk as that was one of the largest parts of my healing after loss. There was no better way to honor my daughter and have something good come from her passing.
