From Loss to Sea of Hope with Christina O’Mara

Wendy & Rich 0:01
Coming to you from the Freedom Federal Credit Union studios, Hartford County living presents conversations with Rich Bennett. Hi, good to see you. Hi, good to see you. You're not going to show up! You're not going to show up! You're not going to show up! I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. I'm

Rich Bennett 0:27
going to play a lot more. 

I'm going to play a lot more. 

I'm going to play a lot more. 

I'm going to play a lot more. 

I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. 

I'm 

going to play a lot more. 

Tammie Wingrove 1:44
I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. 

Rich Bennett 1:52
I'm 

going to play a lot more. 

I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. 

Christina O'Mara 2:19
I'm 

going to play a lot more. 

I'm 

I'm 

Rich Bennett 2:50
going to play a lot more. I'm going 

Christina O'Mara 2:52
going to play a lot more. 

Rich Bennett 2:57
to play a lot more. 

Christina O'Mara 2:59
I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. 

I'm 

going to play a lot more. 

I'm going to play a lot more. 

I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. 

I'm 

going to play a lot more. 

I'm going to play a lot more. I'm going to play a lot more. 

Rich Bennett 4:37
I'm

Christina O'Mara 4:44
going to play a lot more. 

Rich Bennett 4:47
Uh, with the loss of Aurela, how soon was it that you actually started the non-profit? Or actually better yet, when did you first think about it? 

Christina O'Mara 4:57
So when we lost Aurela in April of 2018? 

Rich Bennett 5:02
'Kay, 

Christina O'Mara 5:02
Um, you know, I was devastated. I spent a lot of my time, um, just kind of, just being in my own emotions. 

Rich Bennett 5:13
mm-hmm. 

Christina O'Mara 5:13
And I was dealing with triggers and how to navigate and trying to find the right area where I could fit in to help me, 'cause I- 

Rich Bennett 5:20
Right, 

Christina O'Mara 5:20
I'm- I'm physically asking for help. But I'm not getting the response back that I needed. I wasn't getting that response back. So especially when I tried to turn to family members. Now, mind you, when you suffer a loss, family members come out of the woodworks. And they're 

Rich Bennett 5:35
yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 5:35
like, "Oh, it happened to me." And I'm like, "Okay, well, what helped you?" And they're like, "Well, we just kind of kept to ourselves and we didn't talk about it." And I'm like, "I can't do that." 

Rich Bennett 5:43
No. 

Christina O'Mara 5:43
I 

Rich Bennett 5:43
Mm-hmm. 

Christina O'Mara 5:44
can't do that. On the sake of my own personal mental health, and the fact that I don't want my daughter's memory to be forgotten, I need to talk. I need to find the people that are going to help me, and so that I can better myself, and possibly help other people. So in, in that aspect, in that moment of the first few weeks, I was like, "You know, I-I want to start something." But it wasn't until, um, I was able to kind of collect my thoughts and pull myself together. I reached out to another non-profit that had just started a chapter here in Maryland, and I became actually, I-I-I followed them for a good amount of time. I had started the mermaid run, um, in her honor, we started planning in 2019 for a 2020 race, and... At that time, I was like, "Okay. You know, we're doing all this good, and where all of the proceeds are being donated back to a non-profit, because we didn't want to keep it to ourselves." So when they saw what we were doing, they invited me to become part of their committee. So I ended up being part of the committee that was an infancy in pregnancy loss organization here in Maryland. The 

Rich Bennett 6:54
Mm-hmm. 

Christina O'Mara 6:55
problem with them was that they were more, on-outside of Hartford County, outside of C-So County, they were further away, 

Rich Bennett 7:03
Right. 

Christina O'Mara 7:04
and... at that time, I and I think one of their person was the only representative here in Hartford County, and... When I looked at it, I was like, "There's nobody here. There's nobody here to help." I-I can't put a support group together myself, 

Rich Bennett 7:18
Yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 7:19
because it has to go through the channels of them. So I stuck with them for about four years, 

Rich Bennett 7:25
Ow. 

Christina O'Mara 7:27
In the year that we decided that we were going to start our own non-profit, 

Tammie Wingrove 7:32
and in...

Christina O'Mara 7:32
we didn't realize that the organization that was in, the chapter was dissolving. So literally, we were gonna do, we were gonna hold out for a whole other year, and then we were gonna be like, "Okay, we'll gradually go in." Well, the universe decided otherwise to say, "Nope, you're gonna go headfirst into the deep end." And was like, "Okay, so we were sitting out on the porch one day, and we're like, okay, well, we need a name, we already know what we're gonna do, we need a name, and that's where the C-Of Hope Foundation was born." It was around 2022-2023, is where we decided we were going to start our own headfirst 

Rich Bennett 8:06
Right. 

Christina O'Mara 8:07
into the non-profit world. 

Rich Bennett 8:08
How'd you come up with the name? 

Christina O'Mara 8:10
So, for me, Aurela, when we named our daughter, I was a huge Disney fan. 

Rich Bennett 8:18
I had a feeling that I was gonna do with 

Christina O'Mara 8:20
That 

Rich Bennett 8:21
it. 

Christina O'Mara 8:21
was Aurela's nursery was decorated, and all the little 

Rich Bennett 8:25
Okay. 

Christina O'Mara 8:25
roommates- And I didn't- my husband didn't want to call her Ariel, because he's like, "I'm not calling my daughter Ariel," and I was like, "Okay. Let's do something different, so we were looking through all different names." And things like that. And I was like, "What about this one?" And it just kind of fit. It just fit for what we wanted. So, and I've always been connected to the C, because I feel like, whenever you bring yourself to the C or the ocean, you have that calm. And it could also be- it could also be bad, the C brings- can bring- Disaster, devastation, death, it can bring it. But then it can also bring rebirth and life and new form of new things. And I felt like it was just fit, when we talk about the waves of grief and we talk about being in your boat. All these things are ocean-related. And I felt like it just- it just made sense. The connection that I have and the connection that we had with our daughter, it just made sense to be in the sea of hope. Oh, thank you. 

Tammie Wingrove 9:31
So when you said about "in the sea", during 2020 I heard someone say, "we're all in different boats, but in the same storm", and it just really echoes back to the same thing. We're all "in the sea", but your grief is different. That's the my grief, and you and I really bonded. The timing was so providential, because for me, what most of my family, in France, don't know is that we also experienced loss. At the very end of October we found out that we had found out in September that I was pregnant, and it was a big surprise, my husband was over the moon, and it ends so for me the process was really interesting, wrapping my mind around. Okay, we're gonna have another baby that I didn't know, RSVP to this party, and then the loss that came with it, and meeting you two weeks after, because we met at, um, the Grand Opening, and for me, mine, and when Kelly introduced us, I was just thinking, "oh my goodness, this is perfect, because..." Who do you talk to about it, and my mom had experienced loss 30 plus years ago, and it was the same thing where there's not there weren't groups. 

Christina O'Mara 10:52
And that's the one thing that I always tried to tell people, or at least that was the almost-a-piphany moment that I had over this past break, is that we talk about how we're one in four. One in four families who've suffered from infancy and pregnancy loss, and that statistic may not be correct, it may be one in two. 

Rich Bennett 11:13
Yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 11:14
And we know generations upon generations, it's embedded in history that people do suffer from infancy and pregnancy loss, and the fact that it's so crazy that we are not able to openly talk about it, without some sort of hesitation, or two taboo, is insane, because I felt like the moment that I had was, because it's so common, we should be talking 

Rich Bennett 11:42
it. 

Christina O'Mara 11:42
about But because it's so emotional and it's such a grey zone, we don't talk about it, because people are too afraid to talk, because of how history is brought it through, where we don't err all the things, and it's just another. That's what we've always been, it's just another, you can have another. All these little moments of words that people say, oh, it's okay, you can have another. That's so triggering for someone who has just 

Rich Bennett 12:11
And it's 

Christina O'Mara 12:12
lost. 

Rich Bennett 12:12
not always the 

Christina O'Mara 12:13
It's 

Rich Bennett 12:13
case. 

Christina O'Mara 12:13
not the case, it's not. 

Tammie Wingrove 12:15
Always just try 

Christina O'Mara 12:16
You 

Tammie Wingrove 12:16
again. 

Christina O'Mara 12:17
cannot, you don't know what the other person has gone through just for that pregnancy alone. That could have been their first one. They could have went through IVF, they could have went through rounds of treatments just to have that one. And I found myself in the beginning of my grief, where when I had lost her, we were coming right into Mother's Day. And my husband, because I had a son prior to our daughter, he wanted to take us all out. So we went out, we went to sunny day cafe, and we were sitting outside. And I found this, I sat there, and I found this woman walking up with her husband, and she was pregnant. And I felt this, why her, 

Rich Bennett 13:07
why, 

Christina O'Mara 13:07
why her and then and then it took time for me to realize, but I don't know her story. I don't know what she went through to get there. And we don't know where her story is going to end. And I can't pre-judge, I can't, there's no more judging. So when you go back and you look through decades of people just keeping to themselves and not bringing it to the forefront because they don't understand how common it is, but how uncomfortable it makes people. And when you put those two together, you're going to have that, let's just keep it to ourselves. Because you have that unfortunate unbalance of, I want to tell everybody in the entire world, but I don't want the response where I have to feel like I have to defend 

Rich Bennett 13:58
yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 13:58
how I feel. Because not only am I defending how I feel, I'm defending the memory of my child. And I just, it was almost like that moment of, okay, we have to find where that fine-line balancing act works so that people who do who have suffered years prior, where it was never talked about, and where it was never discussed and was hidden and was just pushed under the rug, where they can come forward, and we offer that, we offer for those people who have lost children 30, 40 years, however long ago. Infancy pregnancy in early toddlerhood to come to our groups, to get that support that you need, because it's needed, because no matter when you have your child, when you have your pregnancy, it stays with you forever. It doesn't go away, it doesn't vanish, it doesn't get pushed under the rug, it happened, and not everybody likes to be as vocal as I am. some people just kind of like to be around those who have experienced it so 

Rich Bennett 15:03
Mhmm, 

Christina O'Mara 15:03
that they know that they're not alone, and that's the one thing that I remind everybody when they come to me, you are not alone, you did nothing wrong, there was nothing that you could have done to prevent what had happened. My husband, in the world of this, a lot of people tend to rely on faith. 

Rich Bennett 15:23
mhmm, 

Christina O'Mara 15:24
My husband is not so much a religious person, so when everybody kept telling us it happened for a reason, it wasn't a reason, or it wasn't anything that he wanted to accept, there was no reason for it. My husband has come to the wonderful words that he says, "It happened the way that it happened, there wasn't a rhyme, there wasn't a reason, it just happened. There's nothing that we could have done to prevent it. There was nothing that we could have done, or we have done everything that we could have up to our capability to try and help the situation, but everything else was just out of our hands. So that's where I sit on that 

pedestal. That's where I sit on that moment of just saying, "I'm here to tell everybody that no matter what you can talk freely, we lift the veil, we say, "You don't have to walk on eggshells around me. If you tell me you've lost a child, I'm not going to be like, oh, my God." And then my face will change, because that's the one thing that happens when we talk to people's, when we say they'll ask us, "How many children do you have?" That one question, you're like, "Oh, okay, I'm about to make this person's day very bad, and they're going to look at me differently." So when I say, "I have the children that I have, and I have one that's passed away," they're facial expressions changed. They don't know how to continue to go further with the conversation, and that uncomfortable feeling where you turn into the person, consoling the other person, because of your loss, it 

Tammie Wingrove 17:06
becomes 

Christina O'Mara 17:09
too much. Because you're wanting to keep that memory alive. You're wanting to keep your mental health focused, and moving forward, but now you find yourself consoling somebody else who's never gone through it about the traumatic experiences that you've gone through. So when I say when people come and they say, "You know, we're looking for help," we lift that veil because we surround ourselves, people who have suffered it. So you're more freely to talk about it without that hesitation. 

Rich Bennett 17:40
Yeah, say, 30 

Tammie Wingrove 17:43
years 

Rich Bennett 17:44
even longer than that, people didn't talk about mental health, 

Christina O'Mara 17:48
ago, 

Rich Bennett 17:48
and this is the part I don't understand. And today, a lot of people 

Tammie Wingrove 17:58
talk about mental 

Rich Bennett 18:00
health more than they will about mental health. Which I'll lose. Please on your mental health. Talk about it. When you mentioned, when they asked how many kids you have, I told them, "I have three. My son and my daughter," and if they ask, "I saw it, yeah, we lost our other daughter," but yeah. It's still three. She's my guardian angel sitting up here. 

Christina O'Mara 18:25
A little bit. 

Rich Bennett 18:26
Yeah. She makes me something. She doesn't smack me. I think it's my 

Christina O'Mara 18:30
brother. 

Rich Bennett 18:35
I 

have 

tradition. And with our daughter, she was still born. 

Christina O'Mara 18:43
a 

Rich Bennett 18:43
But my mother went down to the gift shop. I got a little angel on a music box. 

Christina O'Mara 18:48
You 

Rich Bennett 18:49
pressed the button that played. 

My God, I am drawn up. Song always makes me cry too. Amazing grace. 

Tammie Wingrove 18:59
Oh man, okay. 

Rich Bennett 19:00
Eh, 

Christina O'Mara 19:01
That'll 

Rich Bennett 19:02
yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 19:02
do it. 

Rich Bennett 19:02
Eh, what I did was I put it in her in my daughter's hand. I wanted something that touched her. 

Christina O'Mara 19:09
Yes. 

Rich Bennett 19:10
To this day, and I was back in 2000, to this day now since then the music box fell off but to this 

Tammie Wingrove 19:15
day. 

Christina O'Mara 19:15
Mm-hmm. 

Rich Bennett 19:16
I keep 

Tammie Wingrove 19:16
that in 

Rich Bennett 19:17
nightstand. 

Tammie Wingrove 19:17
the 

Rich Bennett 19:18
So before I go to bed, I'll say Right. And it blows, there's a picture of her and my 

Christina O'Mara 19:24
a piss. Right. 

Rich Bennett 19:25
wife, you know, uhm, 

Tammie Wingrove 19:27
wake 

Rich Bennett 19:27
and then when I 

Tammie Wingrove 19:28
up in the 

Rich Bennett 19:28
morning, first thing I do before I get out of bed and get ready, Figure out, say a prayer, give her a kiss. 

Christina O'Mara 19:36
yeah. 

Rich Bennett 19:37
Uhm, but it just makes me, it makes me, it makes me feel so good. And then, now here's the funny thing. Our other 

Tammie Wingrove 19:46
daughter was 

Rich Bennett 19:46
born 2001. Now, my cell was devastated. He, because he went into a little sister. 

Christina O'Mara 19:53
Right. 

Rich Bennett 19:53
And then when our daughter was born in 2001, she never knew about, and she got older, we told her, well, my daughter found a heart-shaped rock when she was a little baby 

Christina O'Mara 20:06
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 20:06
or old enough to walk. And she gave it to, I call it my grateful rock. So that's just next to the age. 

Tammie Wingrove 20:13
It looks like 

Rich Bennett 20:14
I'm grateful for. 

Christina O'Mara 20:15
Right. 

Rich Bennett 20:16
She went, I think when, um, I think it was my brother and I took her to Gettysburg 

Christina O'Mara 20:22
okay. 

Rich Bennett 20:22
one day and I forget what house it is, but they went in and she found a doll with red hair 

Christina O'Mara 20:28
Uh-huh. 

Rich Bennett 20:28
because our daughter Maggie had, she had red hair and the little green, I was dressed and she called it Maggie and she sleeps with 

Christina O'Mara 20:36
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 20:36
it. Now, when they go away, here's the weird thing. When they, my wife and daughter will go away, which I can't stand. I can't sleep, but now my, my daughter will, my daughter's 24. 

Christina O'Mara 20:47
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 20:48
She'll put Maggie in my bed, she goes, make sure you take care of Maggie and I grip that, I wake up and I'm still gripping 

Christina O'Mara 20:54
it. Yes. 

Rich Bennett 20:55
But I, I sleep. I can sleep now. Makes me, but it's just, Things like that, because I swear she's right there. Yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 21:05
yeah. 

Rich Bennett 21:05
And I'm, I want to keep the memory alive. Even though we couldn't create memories, I'm 

Tammie Wingrove 21:10
memories. 

Rich Bennett 21:10
creating That makes sense. 

Christina O'Mara 21:11
It does. The one thing that, a lot of the times that we talk about, when I suffer the loss of our daughter, one of my co-workers had lost her husband. And she was in that devastating grief where she was angry. And when I had come out from what was to be my maternity leave, but while I was off because of trying to get myself together, I came to work and she was still in her angry grief. And she said to me, she was like, well, at least she didn't have all the memories that would last for, you know, through the lifetime of being married. They were married for X-Money years. And the same with my father along. My father along passed away a year prior to Oriela being born and passing. And she she's like, well, you know, they had X-Money years together and there's memories. I said, yes, but I'm missing out on the possibilities of memories being made. I'm missing out on those milestones, those moments of memories that you have that you can cling to that you can hold onto that you could take pictures or go back and look at video and, and remind yourself that they were here. Even, even if you have a child who is lost through toddlerhood, you're missing out on their first day of school, you're missing out on their first last tooth, you're missing out on their first haircut, you're missing out on birthdays and anniversaries and all of these things. And I think for me, that's the one thing as a lost parent that we we cling to, 

Rich Bennett 22:49
yeah, 

Christina O'Mara 22:50
those moments in life, those particular moments where milestones are made. We don't get to have because we're sitting there in wonder. We're wondering what they would be, who they would be, how they would be, and what they would grow into. 

Rich Bennett 23:08
When you, maybe I'm just weird, this happens with me, but do you ever have dreams of her older? 

Christina O'Mara 23:17
So for me, I've, that was like one of the things that I always, I always wanted. I always, I've had dreams of families, family members who've passed, and I've had, and I've asked in the beginning and when it was new, I was like, just, please just give me a dream of her where I know she's okay, where I know she's like, I can physically see some, something where, and it's not like. It's not as vivid. 

Rich Bennett 23:45
Right. 

Christina O'Mara 23:45
I get more of this feeling. 

Rich Bennett 23:50
Okay. 

Christina O'Mara 23:50
.. so, for the longest time, because of the reason that we lost our daughter, it was called incompetent It's when a 

Tammie Wingrove 23:57
cervix. 

Christina O'Mara 23:57
healthy pregnancy is formed. 

Rich Bennett 24:00
Uh-huh. 

Christina O'Mara 24:01
But the cervix is so weak, that as the baby gets bigger, the cervix tends to open, and which causes premature labor. So, the opening to where she's supposed to be safe is starting to open, and she's coming out on her own. And it affects one in one hundred women, and for the longest time, I blame myself, because I blame myself saying my body failed to carry my daughter. I carried my son, no problem. But there were signs during my sons, my firstborn's pregnancy, that I, not as a doctor, should have seen, and said, "These were reasons that maybe we should treat the next one a little bit differently, and there's no rhyme or reason to incompetent cervix. It could happen to anybody. It could happen in your first, it could happen on your fifth, it doesn't matter." And, I blame myself for five years. I woke up on the 

Tammie Wingrove 25:04
fifth year, 

Christina O'Mara 25:07
and it was like, "She had come to me, and she said, "Okay, mommy, it's enough. Stop blaming yourself, it's enough." And I just had this overwhelming calm, this overwhelming relief of saying, "You know what, she's right. 

Rich Bennett 25:22
I 

Christina O'Mara 25:23
can't keep blaming myself. I did everything that I possibly could to try and save her." She was born on the 28th of April. And no, I'm sorry, I have a lot of birthdays in April, so she's born on April 27th. That Monday, we were supposed to go in for our anatomy scan, but I had already, I wanted to do something special, so we wanted to do a gender reveal party, and I hired an ultrasound tech to come to our house to do this scan for us to see what we were having. And that's when we found out we were having a little girl, and we were supposed to go for the gendered anatomy scan through the normal route on that Monday, and that's when everything kind of took place. My birthday is on the 24th of April. 

I spent my birthday in the hospital at University of Maryland in Baltimore in what's called Trendelonburg Position for the entire week. That means my whole body was upside down. Like hanging upside down. So, my head was down, and my legs, and my whole body was up, and I had to stay in that position to eat, to drink, to use the restroom. 

Rich Bennett 26:36
For a week? 

Christina O'Mara 26:37
I was in there for a week. I was in that way for a week, because the thought process to Trendelonburg Position is, they give you the medication to reduce the fluid, and hopefully gravity moves the membrane back into the cervix so that they can go in and tie the cervix so that nothing's coming back out to give it more of the natural effect rather than them trying to touch it, because if they'm trying to touch it, you have the possibility of rupturing the membrane which caused your water to break and labor too. So, I spent my birthday in the hospital, and it was such an up and down moment because on the day of my birthday, I was supposed to go in for an ultrasound to see if the progress had worked 

Rich Bennett 27:28
right, 

Christina O'Mara 27:29
and we got to the ultrasound, and we knew what we were looking for because we'd been shown before what the cervix looks like open and what it looked like closed. So, we got to the ultrasound, and my husband and I were looking at each other, and we were looking at the screen, and I was like, "This is it. It closed, the membrane, everything is back. Let's go." I was feeling happy, I was feeling excited, I was, "Oh, sigh of relief. It had come onto me," and they were like, "Okay, will the doctor come in tomorrow morning to see what we can do to review everything?" The next morning, the doctor comes in, and she's looking at me, and she's like, "How long has that happened? How long is what happened? What are you talking about?" And she's like, "You're leaking. I'm like, leaking, what? What am I leaking?" So, apparently, the ultrasound was wrong. It gave a false positive, and I was actually leaking fluid from the sack. So, at that point, on the 26th, we had to make the decision on what we were going to do. I was willing to fight. I'm like, "Look, I don't care what it takes because I've heard of people who have had the water break, but still go on to have healthy pregnancies. We were at 20 weeks, and it's 24 weeks for viability. I said, "I don't care how long I have to stay upside down. I'll do whatever you need me to do." and the doctors had come in and they were like, As much as you want this, there's a possibility of you having an infection and having sepsis, and at that point there's a possibility of you dying along with your daughter. And having to make a decision like that is just unimaginable. And the worst part about it was we made that decision at 10 o'clock in the morning on the 26th. And because the University of Maryland's labor and delivery floor were two separate floors, they didn't have a delivery room for me available to go up and do it. I spent all day crying because she's still like I could 

Rich Bennett 29:48
Yeah, 

Christina O'Mara 29:48
still feel her moving. I could still feel she was just just normal pregnancy. I could still feel her moving still feel her, you know, doing the normal thing. And it what and I'm just crying I'm crying and crying and crying they did not move me to labor and delivery until 11 o'clock that night. and I had already had a headache from crying so 

Rich Bennett 30:11
Yeah, 

Christina O'Mara 30:11
much from exhaustion. And I'm like, I don't want to deliver my daughter and be so exhausted that I pass out. So I had asked for something to help me sleep. We got up there. I slept for about 15, 20 minutes, and they said, okay, Miss Somaro, we have to figure out what you want to do. And I'm like, I don't want to do any of this. I don't want to do this. Like this is not what I want to do. And then they're like, well, we have to, you know, this is something we have to do. And just like my son, my son was born in 15 minutes and full term pregnancy with him and he was born in 15 minutes. With my daughter was the same way. I said, the minute you break that I water, she's going to come out and she's going to come out fast. And it was the, my water broke and she came out and I spent what felt like seconds with her was ours. And it was one something in the morning when I delivered her on the 27th. And you just like everything in your head, you know, your processing grief, your processing, you know, loss your processing is sitting there with your daughter who's wrapped up into blanket that you want to, you don't want to leave her. You don't want to, you know, 

Rich Bennett 31:32
still feel like you got to protect 

Christina O'Mara 31:33
you have to protect her. And, you know, the one thing that I always take with me is out of the room full of silence. I was the only one that was. I was the one that I could hear myself cry. But in the moments that I had stopped crying for just a single moment, I could hear crying from the nurses. 

Rich Bennett 31:54
Oh wow. 

Christina O'Mara 31:54
Yeah. And that's why for us with our organization, we support and we recognize the nurses whenever we're first going into a hospital and we do a donation drop off for our Barrafe and Foxes. We always provide a thank you luncheon for the day shift and the night shift of the labor and delivery and NICU nurses that are there. because we know that they're grieving with 

Rich Bennett 32:18
Oh, 

Christina O'Mara 32:18
us 

Rich Bennett 32:18
yeah, 

Christina O'Mara 32:19
there. They've been with you that whole route and they want to see the other end with you. But when it's a devastating end, they're there, they're there with you at ground zero, they're there crying with you and how holding you taking care of you and going through their own emotions. So, you know, from that day, I always take I always take certain things away with me. There's a moment that I'm that you could see where the nurses were taking photos of everything. And I'm at that time, I was like, I don't want to remember and I'm so glad that I did. I'm so glad that they gave me that because there's a there's a moment where you could see where I physically just I'm gone from myself, from my soul, I just I'm just a shell at that point. And you could see my husband trying to bring me back and he brings me back and you could see the pain and you could see everything in these photos. And before they brought in their camera, my dirt was like one something in the morning. They took my husband's cell phone and they wanted to get photos of us. And we were in upper Chesapeake, or we were in University of Maryland and the way that they have the labor and delivery unit is it's inward in towards their like little opening area. It's not facing outside. There's no daylight or anything and all the lights are off and the lights are off in our room. The only light that we have is from the light from the hallway, which is about a good 10 feet away. And I'm sitting there while they're taking these photos and I'm crying because I know that his crappy little cell phones not going to take great photos. And we get back home. And, we're looking through the photos and it's of myself and my husband and we're holding our daughter and they're just, you know, you can see the look on my face and we're just devastated and... The one thing out of these photos that my husband cannot explain, that I cannot explain, is there is a natural light behind us. And we, and my husband again, is not a religious person, 

Rich Bennett 34:27
Right! 

Christina O'Mara 34:27
but he cannot explain himself what it is because no lights were turned on. There was no glow from anything. There wasn't even a flash from the cell phone. It was just this natural, almost light behind us that was there. And we can't explain it into this day. I, I just... When you say, you know, have your other dreams, I cling to that because I'm like, there's something there and she's there with us. She's there with us every day, you know, uh, through everything. I try to remember the good moments out of the bad. So, when you say, you know, if you had memories or if you have dreams about them, it's not so much dreams, it's so much more of like, I could feel them with me and I just can't explain it. 

Rich Bennett 35:13
Yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 35:14
And my husband, you know, we visit our daughter every week. She's buried at, at Baker Cemetery in Aberdeen. It's across the street from the Ricken Stadium. we visit her every week. We decorate her stone for every holiday. We go up there and celebrate her birthday. And I, you know, whenever I get too long in my 

Rich Bennett 35:36
And 

Christina O'Mara 35:36
week and I haven't seen her yet, I tell my husband, like, she's 

Rich Bennett 35:38
meant... 

Christina O'Mara 35:39
probably I haven't come and see her and it was like, 

Rich Bennett 35:43
she's... 

Christina O'Mara 35:43
She's not there. She's not there. She's there, but she's not 

Rich Bennett 35:45
Not there. 

Christina O'Mara 35:45
there. She's with us here. So for him to say that it's just very, very comforting. 

Rich Bennett 35:52
You're listening to the conversations with Rich Bennett. We'll be right back. 

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Christina O'Mara 37:06
know we talk about how siblings go through the whole thing. My oldest who's 14 now, he was going into kindergarten when all this happened. 

Rich Bennett 37:19
Oh, wow. 

Christina O'Mara 37:20
And he was so excited to be the big brother and my older stepson were excited because there was no girls. There were no girls in the family. And we're going to get the sister and we're going to protect her and we're going to do all this and so when we had to come home and explain it to our son, who is going into kindergarten that his sister is no longer here, it was so hard we didn't have the resources to help us to guide us and what to say and what to do. So now that we, we have found a way to help families explain to their children ways so that they can cope with their grief and be able to have a guide to explain it to their children no matter what age they are. 

Rich Bennett 38:07
easier 

Christina O'Mara 38:07
So it gives them a little bit of less of a, give some more of a buffer and less of a trauma triggering experience. So my 14 year old, he, he talks about RLS if she's here with us all the time and our little guy who came along, which is considered a rainbow baby any baby born after a loss is considered a rainbow baby. Our little guy, because we talk about her every day all the time he, you know, he wishes he could be with everybody understand that she's not here and through everything else, he came to us one day out of the blue and he looks at us, he goes, I saw Sissy today and I'm like, you did. Okay, tell me where did you see her. She lives on the moon. I was like, okay, Sissy lives on the moon. I can work with this, I can, I can't do this. So every night, when he sees the moon, he blows a kisses and he 

Rich Bennett 39:08
oh 

Christina O'Mara 39:08
says hi Sissy. and he's in the corner of the house where the moon comes up for the front and it comes in the and it comes up from the back and it goes on the front and he has a clear cornered window. So all he wanted, he all he wanted for Christmas outside of video games, outside of video games, he wanted a telescope to see Sissy to see her closer. So Santa brought him a telescope for Christmas. 

Rich Bennett 39:37
Do you buy chains at the book Good Night Moon? 

Christina O'Mara 39:41
We do have good night moon and that's one of the things that we do for our brief sibling group is we pick a book a month that helps with providing 

ways for families to explain loss. One of our favorite one of our top three that we donate to the hospital is my sibling still, dear star baby and when we see a rainbow. Each book 

Rich Bennett 40:16
Yeah, 

Christina O'Mara 40:16
that all of these three books are age age appropriate. So you have when we see a rainbow is for toddlers it's a bright color picture book and it shows the rainbow it shows like feathers and bubbles and butterflies all these little signs of things that we can't see but they're still they're still with 

Rich Bennett 40:37
By 

Christina O'Mara 40:37
us. We can see them but they're not physically there. My sibling still is one of our favorites. It talks about how whether you come from a family of loss that has been before child been born or after that they're still with us that they're with us and they're always with us. Dear star baby is from a perspective of a big brother who's preparing for his younger sibling to come into the world and something happens and talk about mommy had to go to the hospital and now you know they were preparing for everything just like we were but then you know mommy daddy came home and they're not their sibling is not with 

Rich Bennett 41:23
they 

Christina O'Mara 41:23
them but they talk about how it's their star baby that their baby is up in the stars. So yeah we do a book a month for our support groups for the sibling so that if there's any time where a family or a parent and we we make sure that we announce what book we're using so if there's a parent that does like the story that we read they can go back and say I really like this book and I want to purchase it so yeah 

Tammie Wingrove 41:51
and it's so important with the kids too because you're teaching them that there's not a timeline for grief there's not a okay you know the baby didn't come him in the hospital or the baby did come from the hospital the baby died as a toddler there's a timeline for this there's not a timeline for the parents grief doesn't just end and so it I I like that it helps them to it's okay you we we have all lost this as a family and I think for the moms too we tend to keep things like you were saying for so long it was isolated we wouldn't talk about it other than you know with our partner it wasn't a thing that you talked about you don't talk about it to your friends you don't share it with many people but tell say their name talk about them you know let them let them live on it doesn't matter how far along you were in your pregnancy for us we were hadn't made it quite out of the first trimesters or things were very early we hadn't we hadn't even said anything to our kids yet because it was so early and not that it's a thing that we won't bring up with them but I love that that there's a there are books that we can share with them as they get older and and let them know it's okay and and this is a thing that happened we call our baby Charlie because we didn't know if it was a boy or a girl 

Christina O'Mara 43:15
I 

Tammie Wingrove 43:15
and my 

Christina O'Mara 43:15
love 

Tammie Wingrove 43:16
husband's name is CJ he's Charles and so we had said we'd call this one boy or girl Charlie so you 

Rich Bennett 43:22
it 

Tammie Wingrove 43:22
know 

Rich Bennett 43:23
works yeah 

Tammie Wingrove 43:23
talk about 

Christina O'Mara 43:24
that one of the things that I love seeing with our brief sibling support group is 

when when my when my oldest and my little one went to school and they would talk about because they talk about their sister and the kids around them didn't understand 

Rich Bennett 43:43
yeah 

Christina O'Mara 43:43
so they were like well what do you mean what are you talking about like how does that how how do you you know all these and when they tried to explain but when you see them in the group it's almost like the shield is gone I could talk freely and no one's going to sit there and ask me why 

Tammie Wingrove 44:01
right trying to wrap their minds around it and 

Rich Bennett 44:03
yeah 

Tammie Wingrove 44:04
understand 

Christina O'Mara 44:04
and 

Tammie Wingrove 44:04
they 

Christina O'Mara 44:04
they be 

Tammie Wingrove 44:04
all get it oh 

Christina O'Mara 44:05
they become connected and they formed their own little friendships with the group and my little guy he's so excited he's like are we going to sibling group i could just see my friends i could just see all these other kids that are similar to me and and we all have siblings that are here and that are not here or you know and and it's just it makes me so happy that they have that that connection because when you do go into the world and you have just like us adults that are so blessed of not having to go down the road that we had to go down and you don't have to walk on eggshells 

Rich Bennett 44:43
i 

Christina O'Mara 44:45
want the new generation to be able to come through and say it's okay to talk about this we're okay to talk about this and having that being able to focus in that path i it 

Tammie Wingrove 44:58
just 

Christina O'Mara 45:00
everything full circle full circle for me 

Rich Bennett 45:02
i want to add something to that too and 

Christina O'Mara 45:04
sure 

Rich Bennett 45:05
i mean thank god this didn't happen with us but also for those that are going through child loss it is also 

Tammie Wingrove 45:13
okay it's 

Rich Bennett 45:15
not okay you should talk to your partner as well because there are a lot of times the partners will not speak 

Christina O'Mara 45:22
yes so correct um one of the things that i was so worried about in the beginning of the loss is that i was going to be blamed that i felt like my partner my husband was going to blame me because of the loss because i blame myself 

Rich Bennett 45:39
right 

Christina O'Mara 45:40
um and you do you have that statistic out there that families that do suffer from losses do end up not a lot of them don't they do end up separating or they rush into trying having another one so soon and they haven't 

Rich Bennett 45:59
fully healed 

Christina O'Mara 46:00
not yeah not even the heal is they haven't even fully addressed their 

Rich Bennett 46:03
have right 

Christina O'Mara 46:03
grief yeah they 

Rich Bennett 46:04
yeah well 

Christina O'Mara 46:04
different 

Rich Bennett 46:04
that's not me 

Christina O'Mara 46:05
yeah yeah right they haven't processed it they haven't worked through their own 

Rich Bennett 46:10
but 

Christina O'Mara 46:10
grief and that was the one of the things that i was so worried about with my husband but i sh at that point i shouldn't have been because of knowing the type of person that i married 

Rich Bennett 46:22
um 

Christina O'Mara 46:22
i you know and we know that dads or significant others process 

Rich Bennett 46:30
things 

Christina O'Mara 46:30
things differently 

Rich Bennett 46:31
yeah 

Christina O'Mara 46:32
um we're we're starting and implementing this year um something for dads we are i'm going to be making the phone call today the hatchet house in Aberdeen 

Rich Bennett 46:43
oh okay 

Christina O'Mara 46:44
so where dads can come out and just kind of be where they don't necessarily have to talk about anything but they have an activity to do and they get out their frustration whether it's physical or just want to sit there and just chat with somebody um to again lift that veil lift that shield of being so guarded because my husband is the type of person that pushes everything down and he's so worried about everybody else and wanting to make sure that everybody else is okay that he'll put his feelings on the back burner and then there will be days where it just it bubbles over and we're trying to pick up the pieces of you know what's bothering him or how bad of a day he's had and having that having that support from that significant other is it's it's beneficial for both 

Rich Bennett 47:37
yeah 

Christina O'Mara 47:37
because when you don't have family or when you don't friends who understand and you do see in when you lose a child or a pregnancy your friends tend to become different just like when you would have a normal child and they're a lie and they your friends tend to change because of the path you're going down it's the same thing with losing a child your friends tend to change they tend to not want to talk 

Rich Bennett 48:06
it 

Christina O'Mara 48:06
about 

Rich Bennett 48:07
family 

Christina O'Mara 48:08
members don't want to talk about it because it's just too much for them it's too much for them to accept the grief and when you go into it you're not thinking about it in a grief you're thinking about it in that remembrance 

Rich Bennett 48:22
right 

Christina O'Mara 48:23
I want to share my child with you not so much of loss of my child but the memory of my 

Rich Bennett 48:31
child 

Christina O'Mara 48:32
so every day I say to myself I said I say I hope that she's looking down and pointing at me and say and that's my mommy like look at her do looking at her do these things and that's my mommy and then there'll be times where I'll do something in my husband thinks it's crazy and something will happen so one of the big kicks is that every time it's her birthday It's always and I want to bring all the decorations to the cemetery. And my husband always says, 'She doesn't want all the balloons! 

Rich Bennett 49:08
windy. 

Christina O'Mara 49:08
She doesn't want all these balloons!' 

Tammie Wingrove 49:10
Telling your. 

Christina O'Mara 49:10
and I'm like, 'I don't care! I'm bringing them up there anyway!' 

Tammie Wingrove 49:22
Yes, that is one of my favourite things to embarrass my children. Yes, my husband. If I don't get an 

Christina O'Mara 49:27
day, 

Tammie Wingrove 49:27
eye-roll 

Christina O'Mara 49:28
it's 

Tammie Wingrove 49:28
not a complete day, 

Christina O'Mara 49:29
So 

Tammie Wingrove 49:29
so you're in her 

Christina O'Mara 49:30
I'll 

Tammie Wingrove 49:30
eyes, Roll. It's okay. 

Christina O'Mara 49:32
bring all these balloons up to the cemetery and he's like, 'She's telling you, she doesn't want them!' I'm like, 'Listen, it's her birthday and I'm going to bring everything up here!' And it'll be the windiest day of the entire and these balloons will be like waving to the ground and they'll pop on the grass and she's like, 'See, she told you!' and I was like, 'I don't care! I'm still doing it!' So there was one, when we don't do balloon releases because it's very bad for the 

Rich Bennett 50:05
year, 

Christina O'Mara 50:05
environment, so 

Rich Bennett 50:07
lanes... Planes. 

Christina O'Mara 50:07
R and Our connection with our daughter is bubbles. 

Rich Bennett 50:14
Okay. 

Christina O'Mara 50:14
So every year, bubbles, yep, every year, for her birthday we bring a bubble machines and it fills the entire cemetery with bubbles and they just take off the wind. 

Rich Bennett 50:27
That is 

Christina O'Mara 50:28
Yeah, 

Rich Bennett 50:28
awesome. 

Christina O'Mara 50:29
so, 

Tammie Wingrove 50:29
do she like the bubbles? 

Christina O'Mara 50:30
She does like the bubbles. She likes the bubble, she hates the balloons and my husband will be like, 'That's my girl!' 'Cause I hate the balloons.' 

Tammie Wingrove 50:37
I think that she just wants more attention. The balloons are just right there and only some 

Christina O'Mara 50:43
Yeah. 

Tammie Wingrove 50:43
people can see. I think she's saying, 'Hey everybody, here I am!' 

Rich Bennett 50:52
You watch, I guarantee you, those traditions will change. With our daughter, now I'm not big on going to the cemeteries, but my wife will go to the cemetery on June 23rd because that's when we lost 

Christina O'Mara 51:06
Okay. 

Rich Bennett 51:06
her. Put the flowers there, but every single 

Tammie Wingrove 51:09
passenger... 

Christina O'Mara 51:10
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 51:11
I'd be good at the cemetery because my 

Tammie Wingrove 51:13
parents 

Rich Bennett 51:14
are there, our daughter is in the same 

Christina O'Mara 51:18
area. 

Rich Bennett 51:19
Well, actually on top of my great-grandmother 

Christina O'Mara 51:22
and 

Rich Bennett 51:23
behind my grandmother, across from my aunt's, so it's like family thing. But, it's tradition for us St. Patrick's Day, we go to my father and my mother's first. We're probably the only family in the cemetery that has a core, I mean, a core full of beer there. And we'll sit there and drink 

Christina O'Mara 51:42
beer. 

Rich Bennett 51:42
a 

Christina O'Mara 51:42
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 51:43
Good day, because he was the leprechaun. 

Christina O'Mara 51:45
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 51:46
But now the tradition is because our daughter would have been 

Christina O'Mara 51:49
Right. 

Rich Bennett 51:49
25. I didn't start 

Christina O'Mara 51:51
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 51:51
this. It was 

Tammie Wingrove 51:53
my son 

Rich Bennett 51:54
and my youngest daughter who year younger. Now they go over there and also have a drink of Maggie. 

Christina O'Mara 52:01
Yeah. I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward into the change and evolution of their traditions. We 

Tammie Wingrove 52:07
Right. 

Christina O'Mara 52:07
always say, you know, my husband, my relation with Ariela is through Marmets, but my husband's relation with Ariela is Penguins. So we have these penguin things that he, I don't know what it is, it's just penguins in him and Ariela, that's their thing. And that's cool. I'm so, you know, 

Rich Bennett 52:25
Uh-huh. 

Christina O'Mara 52:25
that's, that's all right. 

With, you know, with how she would have been 8 this year. So as she grows, you know, I can't wait to see those traditions. 

Rich Bennett 52:39
Yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 52:39
Seeing that. 

Rich Bennett 52:40
And to see the kids take 

Christina O'Mara 52:41
Exactly. 

Rich Bennett 52:41
them on and even change them. That's what got me. Wow. 

Christina O'Mara 52:46
You know. 

Tammie Wingrove 52:46
I love the excitement and the hope in, in such a loss, right? 

Rich Bennett 52:52
Yeah. 

Tammie Wingrove 52:53
But, but there is excitement to hear you say, I can't wait to see. There's hope for, for people who are listening and it just are in the dredges of that grief, that there's hope that you can look forward to. You can still make traditions. Having that shot, it's not the way that you thought it was going to be. But you, you found that tradition and you're going to see how things are going to change. And it's okay, they're still growing up with you. Just not the way that you thought it was going to be. 

Christina O'Mara 53:27
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 53:31
Guys, did you think Maggie would hate Budweiser? 

Christina O'Mara 53:34
Yeah? 

Rich Bennett 53:34
Because I was my father's beer and so my daughter would be like, well, I'll grab it truly then or I'll wake 

Christina O'Mara 53:39
up. Right. 

Rich Bennett 53:40
She 

Tammie Wingrove 53:41
20. 

Christina O'Mara 53:41
like 

Rich Bennett 53:41
probably doesn't 

Christina O'Mara 53:41
it. Right. 

Rich Bennett 53:42
Neither. I mean. 

Tammie Wingrove 53:44
could be boozy. You should bring her a charcuterie 

Christina O'Mara 53:46
Yeah. 

Tammie Wingrove 53:46
board. I 

Rich Bennett 53:46
told 

Christina O'Mara 53:46
She 

Tammie Wingrove 53:46
bet 

Rich Bennett 53:46
you. 

Tammie Wingrove 53:46
I 

Rich Bennett 53:46
Oh God. 

Tammie Wingrove 53:49
You really get her a nice glass of wine and a charcuterie 

Rich Bennett 53:52
board? No, she'll probably be like-- 

Christina O'Mara 53:54
No. 

Rich Bennett 53:54
She's my other daughter and my wife now be like, can you make her an espresso martini or a gingerbread martini? 

Christina O'Mara 54:00
See, my stepsons or my stepsons will be 26 and 24 going to-- 

Rich Bennett 54:06
That bourbon face. 

Christina O'Mara 54:07
Yeah, so they're right now. They're still rocking the hard stuff that-- 

Rich Bennett 54:13
Uh-huh. 

Christina O'Mara 54:13
--wood and things like that. They're still rocking that right now. But-- 

Rich Bennett 54:16
They got to wait 'til she's 21. 

Christina O'Mara 54:19
No, right. No, no, but I-- But like you said, you know, you-- --for those who are listening, and they're so raw in their grief because it's so new. 

Rich Bennett 54:30
Yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 54:30
It's so hard sometimes to comprehend this part in my life because this is my journey. But what I've also known is that people who are ahead of me-- --in their--in the time frame of their child-- --still may not be in the same 

Rich Bennett 54:48
No. 

Christina O'Mara 54:48
mind frame as me. And so what I take from it is, you know, I-- I can't wait to see what we grow, whether it's our event that we plan in her honor with the mermaid run, and see how that's grown in--in--in that time frame. But the one thing I reflect back on is when we were-- I had to cemetery it before we could afford a stone. Because stones 

Tammie Wingrove 55:16
are expensive. Don't 

Rich Bennett 55:16
get E. R. 

Christina O'Mara 55:17
They're so expensive. We bought a purple pink mom, and it was no bigger than like a little bushel of flowers. And each year it has grown with her. And it's gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's the one thing that I want families to understand is that even if you're in the beginning of your raw emotional loss and it's so new-- 

story one day could help someone who is in this--in that same predicament of "I don't know if there's hope for the future." 

Rich Bennett 55:51
--your 

Christina O'Mara 55:52
Your story could be the inspiration that gets them up in the morning. Your story could be the inspiration of them branching off and doing something that is well without your means, but within their means that they can help in another direction. Because in this root of infancy and pregnancy loss there's so many branches to this tree. There's so many ways that people can help and so many things that people can do. And the more people talk about it, the more we can bring awareness to it. And the one thing because we have other children that we had grown to see is that in starting a nonprofit and being within that nonprofit world, it's almost like a revolving door where you have the new ones that come in that are so raw in their grief and they need that support. And then you have the ones who had been around for a while and they're like, "You know what? I'm able to manage my own. I don't really need this anymore and I'm going to take it in my own direction." So they leave and you don't hear from them or maybe they might pop in every once 

Rich Bennett 56:54
while. 

Christina O'Mara 56:54
in a We wanted it to be a continuous thing because memories and moments are continuous. And that's why we developed our brief sibling scholarship program so that when a child who has been born after or before and they have a sibling that's been lost when they get to that age where they're going to go for college or continuous education that will be there so that they can apply for a scholarship through our organization. And we award two. We award two scholarships at $800 per-- and the one thing that I love and it keeps everything connected is during our events especially with our walk that's coming up in May on May 30th, it's our See of Remembrance Walk. Our two top fundraising teams will be invited to the next academic year to present their award on behalf of their child to the recipient of the winners of the scholarship award. So we have two winners from previous year who will be awarding the scholarship to applicants that are coming in this academic year. 

Rich Bennett 58:02
Oh, wow. 

Christina O'Mara 58:03
It just keeps 

Tammie Wingrove 58:04
Being in 

Christina O'Mara 58:05
it, 

Rich Bennett 58:05
it. Yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 58:06
yeah. So it's not only is it a gift from a sibling from the loss of those who are applying, but it's bringing in the community. 

Rich Bennett 58:14
Yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 58:15
And having their children be recognized. So We're hoping that we did have one applicant last year who won. And we're hoping that here we have more. As of right now, we don't have any. So if you, if you have a student or someone you know has a student that is looking for a scholarship for continuous education, we please invite you to just come and apply. It doesn't take anything to apply. You just, there's a form to fill out. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 58:46
And where do they find this? 

Christina O'Mara 58:48
On our website. 

Rich Bennett 58:49
What's 

Christina O'Mara 58:50
the web site? The sea of hope foundation, that work 

Rich Bennett 58:53
the sea 

Christina O'Mara 58:54
is 

Rich Bennett 58:54
of hope. 

Christina O'Mara 58:56
know it's sea of you can either do either or I bought both domains. 

Rich Bennett 58:59
I don't 

Tammie Wingrove 59:01
If 

Rich Bennett 59:01
you do either, 

Christina O'Mara 59:02
no, 

Rich Bennett 59:03
you. No, you. No, 

Christina O'Mara 59:03
you can do. Yeah. Yeah. So you can do the sea of hope foundation or you can just do. We have it as sea of hope foundation. org, and there you'll be able to find our updates to our support groups. You'll be able to find updates to our events, our remembrance events, like our sea of remembrance walk that's coming up. Our wave of light event in October, because October is infancy and pregnancy loss awareness month, both those events are hosted in have degrees at Concord Point Park. We host our yearly mermaid run in Aberdeen and under the sea bash in Aberdeen in August. And all of the funding that we receive goes right back into our organization where we're able to give back to the families in this year, in this past year. We were so honored to have the connection with the branded tolls in foundation. 

Rich Bennett 59:59
Oh, 

Christina O'Mara 1:00:00
We 

Rich Bennett 1:00:00
yes. Great. 

Christina O'Mara 1:00:01
can be amazing. 

Rich Bennett 1:00:02
Yes. 

Christina O'Mara 1:00:03
Candy and I talked and we teamed up and for the families that do go to them who have suffered from infancy and pregnancy loss, because we have that specific help that specific reason. And we can gear towards that. We've been able to help more families last year in the month of October, November that we did in our entire first year and the year before. 

Rich Bennett 1:00:26
Wow. 

Christina O'Mara 1:00:28
But with that is a double edged sword. The money has to also come in for us to be able to help. We just 

Rich Bennett 1:00:34
means people need to make their nation. 

Christina O'Mara 1:00:36
They do, 

Rich Bennett 1:00:37
do 

Christina O'Mara 1:00:37
they 

Rich Bennett 1:00:37
and sponsor the events. 

Christina O'Mara 1:00:38
Yes, sponsoring is a big deal. 

Rich Bennett 1:00:41
Yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 1:00:41
We take that as a very big deal because we want the community to recognize that these organizations, these businesses, whether they're local or big are coming to help. And they're coming to help an organization that is helping the community, whether it's here in Harper County, Cecil County, if they're surrounding areas. We're making those donations, we're making those financial contributions to those families so that when we make the call to the funeral home, and saying we are proving the entire cost coverage of this child's funeral. And the response from the other end, from the family, from the funeral home is you don't understand what you've done. You've helped us in so much the tears, the, the, the, just pure general, like understanding and and 

Rich Bennett 1:01:36
cinemas aren't cheap. 

Christina O'Mara 1:01:37
They're not, they're not cheap at all. Just just the pure emotion that comes from us saying, okay, we have that hands on where we're walking the check-in and we're just putting it in the mail and we're saying, this is covering this baby's funeral and this family doesn't have to worry about it. One of the, one things that I recently did with the Brandon Tulson Foundation is they sent, they sent her information to a hospital in Baltimore and the hospital actually called us and said we have this family. And their need of assistance with trying to find a funeral home the loss just happened. They literally called us at the loss and just happened and I said, okay, I dropped everything I said, what can I do? So I got a hold of macomas who we've been working with. I talked with them and the crazy thing is that the family didn't speak English. So I said to macomas, I said, this is what we have, this is what I need you to do. Can you help this family? She called me back and she's like, we can help the family. So I know what it was like to be in that moment where that family was because we didn't have a plot. We didn't have a place to bury our child, we didn't have anything. 

Rich Bennett 1:02:57
and 

Christina O'Mara 1:02:58
We didn't know what to do. We had a nurse come to our room to do the formalities to tell us we had four options. Option number one is we have the funeral home, come and collect and you can have your own funeral service option number two is we can do cremation. Option number three is you can donate her body to science. which again you just asked me that after I just delivered her and the fourth option I never even thought was something that was possible and it just it opened my eyes to want to help more families. It was hospitals do mass burials for infants for pregnancy 

Rich Bennett 1:03:36
I 

Christina O'Mara 1:03:36
loss. 

Rich Bennett 1:03:36
did not know that. 

Christina O'Mara 1:03:37
I did know that until we were asked and for those families who don't have the financial means or are traveling from another place because we were in a high risk, you know, pick you, NICU/NICU/How 

Rich Bennett 1:03:51
when 

Christina O'Mara 1:03:52
you have them traveling from other states and they can't afford the transportation to get their child back because you can't just transport, you know, on your own, that's the option that give them. And I at that moment when I got that phone call from the hospital, I said I we can't have this. So what ended up happening was it all worked out and we ended up cost of the entire funeral cost for the baby. And McComas came through and went and picked up the baby that day. Wow. 

And so it's just those stories that I feel like I feel like Ariela I want to do good in her name. Her memory to live on but I also want for the Seattle Foundation to be able to grow so that families know that whenever they're in need of help that they can reach out and they can ask for help and we will do everything that we possibly can to help them. And again, going back those sponsors, those businesses, those communities, those organizations that come out and come forward, those are the ones that are helping us fund that. We can we can give us much grief support and as much, you know, counseling or peer-to-peer or anything. We can do that out the ends. But coming through covering the costs of a funeral or donating over $3, 000 worth of Berrief in boxes. So families have something to take home because we'd realized when we were making the donations to the hospitals for Berrief in boxes that some of the nurses were fitting the cost for the boxes. 

Rich Bennett 1:05:32
Wow. 

Christina O'Mara 1:05:33
It's it's that's the reason why we're in this path is to help them. That was that's just 

Tammie Wingrove 1:05:43
one 

Christina O'Mara 1:05:43
the 

Tammie Wingrove 1:05:43
thing. 

Christina O'Mara 1:05:44
If not many things that we just want to do to help our community to help others to be able to go out and say, we're here to help. You're not alone. And we will help you in any which way we possibly and physically can. 

Rich Bennett 1:05:59
It's like I love the name. See of Hope Foundation, but it's almost to me sounds like a pond because you know at the sea you got the waves coming in. Well, the pond you drop that pebble or whatever in there and you get that ripple 

Christina O'Mara 1:06:14
So 

Rich Bennett 1:06:15
effect. 

Christina O'Mara 1:06:15
it's 

Rich Bennett 1:06:15
that. Which 

Christina O'Mara 1:06:16
funny you 

Rich Bennett 1:06:16
is what 

Christina O'Mara 1:06:16
say 

Rich Bennett 1:06:16
you guys are creating. I want to say for the parents to the baby, to the nurses, to the siblings. 

Christina O'Mara 1:06:23
It's funny you say that because our quote, our catchphrase under all of our stuff is turning waves of grief into ripples of hope. That's what our that's what our little quote is underneath all of our stuff. 

Rich Bennett 1:06:38
Wow. Somebody must 

Christina O'Mara 1:06:41
say 

Rich Bennett 1:06:41
have told me to holy cow 

Christina O'Mara 1:06:43
is Maggie. 

Rich Bennett 1:06:45
You could 

Christina O'Mara 1:06:45
been

Rich Bennett 1:06:45
have

Christina O'Mara 1:06:48
the one thing that we we differ from a lot of other organizations is that we have more of a hands on approach. we invite not just the parents to come out and seek help. We invite family members and uncles, cousins, grandparents to come out because we want to give them the correct education of what to say and what not to say of to say, it's okay. You know, it's not taboo anymore to talk about it. And if you want to honor your niece and nephew, God, son, God, daughter, however, it's okay. 

Rich Bennett 1:07:28
And 

Christina O'Mara 1:07:30
It's okay. There's nothing wrong with that because there's no right or wrong way to grief. There's no timeline to grief and having that opportunity for them to be able to come out and support their their family going through that loss. That that builds that that's what makes the journey of this so much more because you have that network of support because if we're not there which we rarely ever are, you have someone in your system, your support to help to rely on. And we're trying to do that in ways. 

Rich Bennett 1:08:16
You are. You are and I have a funny fear because you're still a young nonprofit. 

Christina O'Mara 1:08:20
Yeah, it's very young. 

Rich Bennett 1:08:22
Within 

Tammie Wingrove 1:08:24
probably 

Rich Bennett 1:08:24
I want to say 

Tammie Wingrove 1:08:25
a five 

Christina O'Mara 1:08:26
year, yeah, 

Rich Bennett 1:08:27
you're gonna be so huge to where you're not only taking 

Tammie Wingrove 1:08:31
fear 

Rich Bennett 1:08:31
care of 

Tammie Wingrove 1:08:31
of 

Rich Bennett 1:08:31
the 

Tammie Wingrove 1:08:31
the fear of the Heroes, 

Rich Bennett 1:08:33
but something else that we mentioned that is 

Tammie Wingrove 1:08:35
expensive, and 

Rich Bennett 1:08:36
it takes a lot of time to get it. I know it took us, I forget how many years, 

Christina O'Mara 1:08:41
yeah, the 

Rich Bennett 1:08:42
head stones. 

Christina O'Mara 1:08:43
It's ridiculous about how much it costs. Our daughter's, yeah, earns. 

Rich Bennett 1:08:49
Nothing, 

Christina O'Mara 1:08:52
We didn't realize when, when we found after my husband was on the phone the same day we lost our daughter because his family doesn't have plots here. 

Rich Bennett 1:09:03
right. 

Christina O'Mara 1:09:03
They were cremated and their ashes were spread, and we found that after we found the cemetery that would take us to see us that day. So I had heard one something in the morning. They discharged just from the hospital at 10 a. m. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 1:09:21
What? 

Christina O'Mara 1:09:21
10 a. m. mm-hmm. 

Rich Bennett 1:09:23
I think my wife was still up for a couple days. I found that. 

Christina O'Mara 1:09:26
10 a. m. We were discharged from the hospital. I was wheeled out with birthable wounds in a box, because again it was birthday. In a box, in our birch, in a box, into this huge lobby, and the best thing, like the best way I can put it is you feel like your entire world has stopped, but the rest of the world is speeding by you. Got into the car with my husband because we had to make an appointment because the funeral home wouldn't pick up our daughter from the hospital until we had an appointment to 

Tammie Wingrove 1:10:02
right 

Christina O'Mara 1:10:03
sit coordinate everything. Got in the car. Took us about 45 minutes to get home. I got a shower. We got there around like 11 11 30 and then at 12 o'clock we were at the funeral home. 

That's 

Rich Bennett 1:10:20
a lot. 

Christina O'Mara 1:10:20
It's a lot. So when we went through whole thing of the funeral and we had the plot, we had our funeral, we had her burial, then you know we're like, okay we want a stone. We want a stone to say that she's here because all we had was a little metal stick inside. That said her name on it. We had gone to a couple of different places that were local and some that were in Baltimore County and we didn't realize how one one stone company said to us, you're lucky. And I was like, what do you mean we're lucky? They're like, some cemeteries have a rush fee. If you don't have a plot, they charge you extra because it's a sudden loss. And I'm like, this is insane. So just to just to die, just to pass 

Rich Bennett 1:11:11
It caused 

Christina O'Mara 1:11:11
away, 

Rich Bennett 1:11:11
a lot of money. 

Christina O'Mara 1:11:12
it cost a lot of money. And those triggering moments, you know, between that and knowing that you gave a life birth because our daughter did live for 16 minutes. 

I wanted a live birth certificate. But when I went to the health department and I went to get her birth certificate, they printed it out. But as it was printing out, it shocked me and it shocked the woman that was printing it out because she had never seen it before in big black letters right across her birth certificate said deceased. And when I called the hospital, I said she was born alive. I have her death certificate. Why is her and they said because of people who use it for attacks? 

Rich Bennett 1:11:55
Come on. 

Christina O'Mara 1:11:56
Yeah. That's what we were 

Rich Bennett 1:11:59
told. Wow. 

Christina O'Mara 1:12:00
Yeah. I said, I don't like at that point, I mean if you're going to go above and beyond and try and get a birth certificate, I just felt like I was like, I just want something that said she alive 

Tammie Wingrove 1:12:11
because I 

Christina O'Mara 1:12:12
sure just got the bill for it. It said live birth on the bill that I got a normal delivery. That's what I got. I was like, if everything else is telling me it was a live birth, why can I have her birth certificate as a live birth? 

Rich Bennett 1:12:25
Wow. 

Christina O'Mara 1:12:26
It's shocking in the things that we experienced just through the hospital and the doctors and all of the insurance alone. And that's where part of our journey and part of what we want to do is start at that ground zero. We need better, better educated nurses and doctors where, you know, because again, going back to the loss of my daughter, something like that could have been caught at the 15, 16 week anatomy scan. And I asked the doctor, why didn't I get one? And he said because your insurance company won't cover it. So there's a lot, there's a lot to a non-profit that is trying to help in not just the after mass, but that hold the before to prevent. We're trying to. Like I said, it's a tree. 

Rich Bennett 1:13:20
Yeah. 

Christina O'Mara 1:13:20
So many branches, so many, we're all rooted in the same cause, but we're so many branches of different ways to help. 

I 

Rich Bennett 1:13:52
didn't realize this. I mean, when you said that, because insurance when it covers, like, 

Christina O'Mara 1:13:57
yeah, it's just yeah, it's just here recently that, uhm, they just the government just approved uh, stillbirths being able to get a birth certificate, because before they would not give birth certificates for stillbirths. So, um, so a lot of it is formalities, unfortunately, and- I'm just very honored that you invited me to come out and be on your podcast, I, I'm the more I can talk about my daughter and talk about what we do, the happier at him, because that means I get to say her name 

Rich Bennett 1:14:35
Right. 

Christina O'Mara 1:14:35
more times in a day than if she was here and I was yelling at her to go get her toys up up the floor. Or, you know, go clean up her room, or stop fighting with her brothers. 

Rich Bennett 1:14:49
That's a great way to end. Let's say their names, Maggie. 

Tammie Wingrove 1:14:54
Charlie, 

Christina O'Mara 1:14:55
Arella. And for all those who don't have names as well. 

Rich Bennett 1:15:00
Thank you for listening to the conversations with Rich Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and learned something from it as I did. If you'd like to hear more conversations like this, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and if you have a moment, I'd love it if you could leave a review. It helps us reach more listeners and share more incredible stories. Don't forget to connect with us on social media or visit our website at conversations with Rich Bennett. To do this, head to dot com for updates, giveaways and more. Until next time, take care, be kind and keep the conversations going. You know, it takes a lot to put a podcast together, and my sponsors help add a lot, but I also have some supporters that actually help me when it comes to the editing software, the hosting and so forth. That goes into putting this together. So I want to thank them, and if you can please, please visit their websites, visit their businesses, support them, however you can. So please visit the following full circle boards. Nobody does charcuterie like full circle boards, visit them at fullcircleboards.com sincerely. So your photography live in the moment they'll capture it. Visit them at sincerely so you're.com. The Jopetown Lions Club serving the community since 1965. Visit them at jopetownlinesclub. org and don't forget the e at the end of Jopetown because they're extraordinary.