The mission of The Colette Louise Tisdahl Foundation is to improve outcomes of pregnancy, childbirth, prematurity, and infancy, as well as aid in the grieving process through financial assistance, education, and advocacy
Dear Friend,
Today marks the end of
Black Maternal Health Week, a time to focus on racial disparities that affect moms’ lives. This year, we saw the first ever
presidential declaration of this week as well as plans to address these disparities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have data to show that black women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women. Even more disturbing is that two out of three of these deaths are preventable. The House Appropriations committee held a session on maternal mortality this week and you can watch that
here.
On a personal note, Mark and I both got the first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. I was surprised at just how emotional I got when I was getting my shot. It wasn’t pain, it wasn’t worrying over reactions, but just mourning a year plus of missed events and milestones, those who died from this terrible disease, and the loss of hope and feeling of dread and despair this has all brought up. I also mourned that we could not have a normal process of a newborn coming home, something that was robbed of us during Colette’s pregnancy and delivery, which involved an emergency c-section and Colette going directly to NICU. One thing that we had wanted was when bringing home Colette’s younger sibling, to feel like it was at least somewhat close to the ideal experience we imagined before Colette was born. Being robbed of that due to Covid and of the normal first nine months (and probably longer) is tough.
We have also been busy with non-vaccine issues. I wrote a
Friday Five about the lessons learned after losing Colette, which was both easy and extremely difficult to write. You can check it out here and if you are interested in writing a
Friday Five, please
contact me. I also was interviewed for the
Limitless Pregnancy podcast, squeezing myself into a small closet to participate. We also got to participate in the
Baby Loss Project, with me being interviewed about losing Colette and Sweet Pea and the grieving process and then having a family photo taken of us with our Coco bear to represent Colette as a member of our family. I can’t wait to see the pictures, especially because once again, as he has done in every photo, Elliott reached out on his own and held Coco bear’s hand. It makes me so happy and sad at the same time to know that even though they never met, they remain connected as siblings.
We are on a short break from taking applications to allow us some time to catch up and to finish out paperwork and other behind the scenes work for the quarter. We will reopen applications on April 21. In the meantime, we are doing a lot of spring cleaning and are planning to have an online silent auction during the month of May to include some of the goodies we are clearing out. More information will follow.
Wishing you a great couple of weeks and as always, thanks for listening, supporting, donating, and sharing!
Michelle
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