Photo offer sent to Mother/WTF

[ls317]

http://www.local6.com/money/9193878/detail.html

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. -- A company's apparent coding error mistakenly sent a Central Florida mother a solicitation to buy a photograph of her stillborn son, according to a Problem Solvers investigation.
The report featured Fawn Martin-Hall, who clings to the memories of her stillborn son, Dylan.
Martin-Hall told Local 6 News that she treasures a gown and hat for Dylan and the ashes from his cremation last March.
Later, Hall received a letter from a Pennsylvania company called Cherished Memories. She said the company tried to sell her a photo of Dylan.

[RagingInMiami]

1. I hope they at least offered double prints

[IndyJones]

2. I'm sorry for her loss. Not something to joke about.

:-(

[pansypoo53219]

3. of course

but it was still funny.

damned double prints.

[RagingInMiami]

4. It is a sad situation

Sometimes humor can be used to deal with tragedy. I would never say anything like that to the mother's face.

[IndyJones]

5. Funny as cancer, I guess.

[RagingInMiami]

6. When I was a newspaper reporter covering the night police beat

in Southern California and in Phoenix, I would deal with tragedy almost every night. Murders, suicides, child drownings, people getting killed by stray bullets, house fires, etc. In one case, a brother running into another brother at a traffic light -- just a random accident -- resulting in both of them getting killed.

And I would see the same cops at the scenes every night. We all developed a certain black humor that helped us detach ourselves from the tragedies.

Otherwise, we would have gone insane.

[Maddy McCall]

7. I understand gallows humor.

I'm a firefighter and first responder. I understand it perfectly. But I wouldn't use gallows humor around anyone who has not already been exposed to it.

(I do really understand where you're coming from. Hell, you should be at the fire house with us after we work a bad wreck. But I don't think many other people at DU understand it.)

:hi:

[RagingInMiami]

9. Yep, firefighters definitely have the same humor

I had a lot of firefighter friends when I working the night beat, given that they are much more friendlier than cops. I tend to forget that other people don't quite understand gallows humor.

I even used it to some extent in my thread about Soraya with that crack about illegally downloading her music. But I made myself laugh when I was actually sad. So it can't be all that bad.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2276312

[Maddy McCall]

13. LOL.

You know, probably some of the heartiest laughs I've ever had have been at the station after a wreck. There's so much tension and adrenaline in the air, and all of the sudden someone cracks what would be a very sick joke in any other context, and then suddenly the tension dissipates and everyone kind of lets out their anxiety.

You know exactly what I'm talking about. :D

[Clark2008]

17. That's where reporters who cover emergency services

pick it up - from the emergency services personnel, themselves. Helps one to deal with the tragedy.

I also covered the cop shop for eight of my 12 years reporting. :hi:

[Horse with no Name]

8. This isn't as cold-hearted as it sounds

I had a friend who lost her baby when he was 5-weeks old.
She was a young, poor, single mother already when she had the baby.
Her new baby died of SIDS. Because she didn't have much money, she only had a couple of pictures--both were very poor quality snapshots.
I called the hospital HOPING that they had taken newborn pictures so that she could get one--but they didn't. All she has to remember her precious baby boy were poor quality, blurry pictures.
So, while it seems like this was a terrible thing, many many other mothers in this woman's position would give just about anything for a picture memory of their child.


On edit: Just to finish the story--she asked me to go to the funeral home and take pictures of the baby after his autopsy and after he was embalmed.
It was ALL she had and she was grateful. She clung to these pictures.
However, the pictures were difficult for others to look at. Most things that make us uncomfortable are.

[Hekate]

10. I've read of hospitals offering this service to parents of stillborns

I read it with interest -- my own mother miscarried several babies, one of whom was a full-term boy who died in utero. Since I was only 4 or 5 years old my memories are hazy, but I do know some part of her grieves to this day. She says she knew him already, and as a mother myself, I understand that now.

Over a century ago, when photography was just becoming available to the average person and infant mortality was still high, it became fairly common for bereaved parents to have a photo taken of their child before burial. Not in the coffin, mind you, but laid out "as if only sleeping," perhaps in the arms of its mother.

This is what is being offered by some hospitals to parents today -- a quiet room to say goodbye in, baby clothes and blanket, the little one made as presentable as possible, and if they desire it, a photo.

I hope your friend is doing better. It's very hard.

Hekate

[Horse with no Name]

11. Understandably this mother is still grieving

and perhaps isn't ready yet. I cannot in my wildest dreams imagine that the photo company did this maliciously.
When my granddaughter was born, she was very sick. Spent the first few days on high doses of antibiotics--took her 2 weeks to even open her eyes.
Her color was bad. She didn't move much. She didn't eat much. She didn't cry much. She was two weeks early, however, the amniotic fluid was very low and she was breech. They had already stopped labor twice on my daughter, so the third time they decided to go ahead and deliver by c-section.
At the time, all I saw was a beautiful baby girl, however, I showed her newborn pictures to one of my nurse friends and she looked at me...very funny.
My granddaughters newborn picture--because of the condition she was in--looks like a picture of a stillborn infant. It is very unnerving to look at now.
We all grieve differently...and I am sympathetic to your mom grieving--I can't imagine that is something that ever would go away. I'm not even sure it is something you would want to go away.
My friend didn't do so well after her baby died. She basically went off the deep end. She had gone through a prolonged custody battle with the father of her first child before her second child was born.
After the death, she was basically afraid to be a mother. Afraid she did something wrong, so she signed custody of her first child to her ex.
She started drinking heavily and doing drugs.
She moved off and I have no idea at all what happened to her.
At one point, she was distraught that her baby didn't have a headstone, so I gave her the money to buy one. But when I went to the cemetary on the baby's birthday to lay flowers, there wasn't a headstone and the gravesite had not been tended to at all.:(
One of my friends and I spent a Saturday cleaning up the site, made a small wooden cross with his name and birthdate on it (broke my heart that his grave was unmarked). I try to go once a year and lay out flowers, but by the looks of things, she hasn't been there in several years.
We all deal differently I suppose.

[SoCalDem]

14. I saw something on tv once about a nurse who did this

Parents whose baby was stillborn, would get to go to a quiet area and hold the baby. The nurse would take a photo of them with the baby, and put it and the hospital band and other hospital related stuff in a small album and give it to a family member of the couple, so it could be given to them later on. (if they wanted it)

[RagingInMiami]

12. I guess it's no coincidence this story broke the day after this story

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/parenting/05/08/mothers.index/index.html

[Hekate]

15. Where's the shame and outrage at our turning into a Third World Nation?

Has that report comparing the health of Americans and Brits getting much interest in the MSM? Or is it just one more bit in the 24/7 news cycle, here and gone in a day?

Hekate

[crickets]

16. I know - It's not about ability

It's about the money, and the misogyny.

"The report highlights the three areas it says have the most influence on child well-being: female education, presence of a trained attendant at birth and use of family planning services.

The report said that family planning and increased contraception use leads to lower maternal and infant death rates."

Of course. But when you put pressure on or eliminate the so-called abortion clinics, you take away certain family planning resources, often low cost alternatives for those who can't otherwise afford such services, that provide neonatal care that would allow for healthy babies or contraception that would prevent unplanned pregnancy in the first place.

The repercussions are so sad and unnecessary. /preaching to the choir