By Melanie Wingo
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SACRAMENTO, California (KCRA) — Photographs help Katy and Brian Herman of Rocklin keep the memory of their baby boy alive. The couple cherishes in-delivery room images, captured of their son Wesley Dean Herman, who was stillborn, April 11, 2021.
“It’s just, it’s very peaceful looking to me,” Katy Herman said as she looked at a framed photo of Wesley, taken the day she gave birth to him. “This was right before we left him. We each got our turn to say goodbye.”
A brother. A nephew. A grandchild. A son. Wesley will always be all of those things, even though he couldn’t go home from the hospital with his family.
“It shouldn’t be like that, you know. Him in my arms, he was heavy. The weight was heavy. I still feel him in my arms,” said Herman. “It was hard. Really hard.”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) numbers show over 21,000 babies are stillborn in the United States each year. Recent data for the state of California appear to show that more than 2,100 fetal deaths (stillbirths) occur in the state each year, on average.
After nine-plus months of a normal pregnancy with Wesley, however, Herman never imagined her child would be included in those statistics.
“He was five days past due and I just suddenly didn’t feel movement one day,” Herman said. “No one should have to go through this. The sad reality is people do.”
Doctors say Wesley died from a true knot in his umbilical cord.
Finding out that their baby wouldn’t go on to live a full life has left the Hermans forever-impacted, but out of the devastation, an idea was born.
“The day after I delivered him, I was on a phone call and I looked out in my backyard, and I just saw some butterflies fluttering by,” Herman explained. “I just knew at that moment that, that was our symbol.”
The butterfly became a symbol to the Hermans that they would go on to help others enduring the trauma of infant loss.
Discovering a way to help
Sutter Medical Center Sacramento’s High Risk Maternity Unit says it sees three to five infant deaths at birth per month.
Now, the donation of a Cuddle Cot device to the facility from the Hermans’ Born Sleeping Foundation — which they started in Wesley’s honor — may lift up families experiencing the death of an infant.
“There’s more room for growth and more humanness around a fetal death,” said Cherie Abercrombie, clinical manager of the Sutter Medical Center Sacramento High Risk Maternity Unit. “This Cuddle Cot has allowed that the baby can be at the bedside for really as long, until the family is ready to let go.”
The Cuddle Cot is, quite simply, an infant-sized cooling pad connected by an insulated tube to a motor that keeps the pad refrigerated. It’s an on-site apparatus that gives families an opportunity to process precious lives lost.
“To grieve in their own time, and in their own way,” said Abercrombie. “Really know that they did what they needed to do within the hospital to, to help support their healing.”
Already, the Born Sleeping Foundation has raised enough money to purchase and donate nearly 30 Cuddle Cots to hospitals in California, Nevada, Washington and Texas.
“It just gives the gift of time to families who go through stillbirth or infant loss,” Herman said.
Each Cuddle Cot costs around $3,000, according to the Born Sleeping Foundation which says it’s regularly approached by hospitals in need of the devices, and makes donations to those facilities as funding comes in.
“My thing is, say yes. Say yes until it stops,” said Herman. “Say yes until, until we can’t. Let’s just see what happens and how we can help people.”
It’s a mission the Hermans hope helps families like theirs embrace grief, as a means of starting down a path toward healing.
This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting.
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