This is the second post in our For the Love series! This is a guest post by Amy.

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After losing Asher, the only time my husband and I weren’t crying was when we were doing something for him or in honor of him. Immediately following our loss we learned that we had to stay busy and productive or we wouldn’t make it. The day after I was discharged from the hospital, we made cookies for all the nurses. We took the time to make butterfly sugar cookies and really get fancy with decorating them. It was a two day process where I hand cut each cookie with a knife (because I didn’t have a butterfly cookie cutter and we couldn’t wait to try and find one) and then iced them the second day.

We also bought special gifts for each one of our nurses as a thank you for all they did for us. We wanted them to know how grateful we were and how important they are to our family. Four days after losing Asher, we went back to that same hospital and gave our cookies and gifts in honor of Asher. Walking back in there was gut-wrenching (a saw a mother leave with her newborn and cried), but it felt good to do something for others in honor of him.

Our nurses told us, when we left the hospital, that they would be giving us a butterfly bush for Asher’s due date. That prompted us to make a small section of garden dedicated just to Asher. We planted the butterfly bush and the other potted plants we received after his passing, along with some other flowers that I thought were fun and happy. We ordered a memorial stone to note that the garden is in honor of our butterfly. Making this garden really helped my husband. Up until that point, he felt like he hadn’t done much in Asher’s memory. He complained about the 4 hours he spent digging up grass to make the garden, but the sense of satisfaction and pride he had afterward was worth it.

When we left the hospital, I was given a teddy bear to hold so I wasn’t leaving with empty arms. My husband and I wanted to donate something to the hospital in honor of Asher. The hospital told us they were looking to start giving out Comfort Cubs, weighted teddy bears to loss parents. We donated several boxes of these bears in honor of Asher. Each teddy bear was furnished with a note sharing Asher and our story. It felt wonderful to not only help fill the arms of other loss families, but to also share our son with others.

As a loss mother, I have this compulsion to share Asher with everyone. I want his short life to be known and I want something good to come out of the excruciating loss of him. These are just a few small ways that I have tried to make that happen.

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Author: Amy

Hey there! My name is Amy and I have been through it all; infertility, miscarriage, and most recently the birth of my stillborn son, Asher, in February. Our journey can be found on my blog, Doggie Bags Not Diaper Bags.