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Showing posts from June, 2011

In Memory of Vivian

Every baby deserves human milk and every grieving parent deserves to heal. I’m paraphrasing words that Kim Updegrove, the Executive Director of the Mothers’ Milk Bank at Austin spoke to me during a conversation we had in the first days that I met her. Those words still echo loudly when I think about the wonderful stories of selfless giving that so many grieving mothers have shared with me over the last few years. It is the story of my wife, my daughter, and the hundreds of donors I have met along my journey, which began the evening of August 8, 2008. The nurse blamed a faulty monitor and rushed out of the room, but the realization that something was seriously wrong came when the doctor stormed into the room frantically searching for a heartbeat inside of my wife’s tummy. But there wasn’t one to be found. Our daughter, Vivian, just days away from her arrival, had not survived an undetected infection. Our dream of having our third daughter was over in just a few moments. My wife’s milk