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Don't forget! Our Silent Auction is coming up quickly! Join our Silent Auction Facebook group to see all the items up for grabs! We have over $7,000 worth of items! All of the proceeds raised from the Auction will directly support Aaron's Butterfly Run Ottawa/Gatineau! All the items will be announced on Thursday June 1st. The Auction will officially open on Friday June 2nd at 9 AM and close on Saturday June 3rd at 9 PM. Here's how the Auction will work... Yesterday (Monday May 29, 2017) Rachel and Kayleigh, volunteers from Aaron's Butterfly Run Ottawa/Gatineau, shared their personal loss stories on Daytime Ottawa / Rogers tv Ottawa, Cable 22. In case you missed it, you can check out their segment - check out the YouTube video below. They also spoke about the Silent Auction for Aaron's Butterfly Run Ottawa that's coming up on June 2-3 which is raising funds to support our event. Thank you Rachel and Kayleigh for sharing your story! To commemorate the symbolism of The Butterfly Run, we're selling butterfly wings! This weekend, stop by 3 Sisters Bakeshop & Gourmet Creations to pick up a latte and pair of butterfly wings. The coffee is worth a little trip (if you don't live in the Alta Vista area) and these wings are just too cute to pass up for a little child who likes to play dress up! Selling for $30/pair with all proceeds going towards Aaron's Butterfly Run and Roger Nelson House. These wings are handmade with organic cotton by Fabrications Ottawa and sewn in memory of Aaron who lived 100 precious minutes. 
 Thank you to those who've made this fundraiser a possibility!
Have you been trying to conceive, but struggling with infertility? If you are the 1 in 6 Canadians who struggle with infertility, you're certainly not alone. Secondary infertility also exists and is defined as the inability to become pregnant, or to carry a pregnancy to term, following the birth of one or more biological children. If you live in Ottawa/Gatineau and are having trouble with your fertility, did you know that there are resources out there to support you? Some of those support resources have events coming up in the next few days... This Saturday May 28th is the monthly peer-led Infertility Support Group. Here's some more information about the group:
Little Lotus Yoga is also offering another 4-week series of Fertility Yoga beginning on June 1st!
There is also an online support group that you can request to join on Facebook, the Infertility Support for Ottawa and the Valley.
I can speak from personal experience, that Dr. Patricia Gervaize, a psychologist at OFC, is an amazing source of support for couples or individuals needing help when dealing with infertility and/or miscarriage. Fertility Matters Canada is also an excellent source of information and support! What other resources do you utilize in our community, or online, to support you in your fertility journey?  What if hundreds of people united, each taking one small action to improve their city, all on the same day?
Well on June 3, 2017, that's exactly what's happening in Ottawa and in other cities around the globe! 100In1Day is a global festival of citizen engagement and a growing movement that is changing how people interact with their cities. The festival is a platform for citizens to activate ideas to make their city healthier, happier and more inspired, one initiative at a time. This is the first year that 100In1Day is in Ottawa! We are proud to say that our Silent Auction in support of Aaron's Butterfly Run Ottawa/Gatineau is a participant in Ottawa's 100In1Day! You can read more about how we are part of this initiative in this article. There's also still time to join our Silent Auction group - the event is online June 2-3! Join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1047874661979823 Thanks to this great initiative, #100In1Day, powered by Synapcity and Evergreen! We are so happy to announce the photographers for Aaron’s Butterfly Run Ottawa/Gatineau: Kim Brookes from Breathe In Photography and Annie Carrier photographe lifestyle et artiste émotionelle!
Kim from Breathe In Photography specializes in celebrating connections through birth, feeding, babywearing and in-home newborn photography. She talks about her work:
Kim’s style honours real life so that you can remain true to the moment so she can capture the beautiful connections between you and the people you love. Every birth story, the fuzzy chaos of the early days with a newborn, the mess in the kitchen and the mismatched booties on your baby's feet is the setting for beautiful moments. She believes photography celebrates connections, builds community and sparks important conversations. She hopes her images will provide you with beautiful tangible moments that you can look back on for years and years. Annie Carrier photographe’s mission is to become your creative partner to ensure that you get images that reflects the beauty and rawness that makes you the beautiful and unique beings that you are. She tells us about her approach to photography:
Annie is also a volunteer photographer for Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. She photographed the family of one of our volunteers after her daughter Anya passed away at birth in 2013. Anya’s mother, writes:
 Kim and Annie have both volunteered their services for the day of the run. Hopefully you will have the opportunity to get to know these amazing, generous women! They have also donated photography packages to our Silent Auction, scheduled for June 2-3, 2017 (join the group here).
Thank you SO MUCH Kim and Annie!!!
In order to win:
The print size is 31x46cm and is silkscreened so each print is unique! Please note that the frame is not included. The lucky winner will be notified via Facebook private message on Tuesday, May 23. Thank you to Alexandre from CDNPrints who donated these amazing prints. You can check out his shop on Etsy.   Lots of what you've seen posted here so far talks about pregnancy and infant loss from a mother’s perspective. Mothers carry babies, mothers birth babies, mothers love babies, mothers lose babies, mothers grieve babies. And dads do too. But a father’s grief is often ignored, thrown under the rug. He may set aside his grief to care for his wife. He may not know how to express the pain he feels at the loss of his baby. Do any of us? If you know a dad who lost a baby, please consider his grief too. Think of him when you send food. Think of him when you give hugs. Think of him when you lend a listening ear. And keep him in your heart. To hear dads talk about their grief after the loss of a baby, we invite you to watch one of the videos we viewed during our Film Night & Panel Discussion, "When the Storm Hits" (in French, subtitled in English). Please share, this video may help a dad you know too.
Babywearing in Canada aims to:
Last May, I (Rachel) had maternity photos taken as a Mother’s Day gift to myself. Looking at these photos, you would never know that our baby had a diagnosis that meant that he would not survive after birth. It’s eleven months next week since Aaron was born and passed away. I cherish the photos that I have from while I was pregnant and after his birth because they remind me that for a short time he was here and that he is so loved. An article in Maclean’s from this week titled “Parents of Stillborn Children Find Solace in Photography” is a very good read. The article discusses the bereavement photographs and infant loss program that nurse and bereavement specialist Laurie Soares and other nurses provide at the Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga, Ontario. The Beyerlein family lost their daughter Madelyn at 36 weeks and Laurie was their nurse during the delivery of their daughter. “I cried a lot when I held her for the first time,” Madelyn’s mom Krista said. “I wanted to know what her nose looked like and what her ears looked like. That was our only chance. She was beautiful.” Laurie and the other nurses took photos of Madelyn and her parents that the Beyerlein family now treasures. They left with a carefully constructed care package that included the photos on a CD, molds of her feet, and other mementos. “It was the hardest thing I ever had to do and the best thing I’ve ever done. The photos and trinkets mean the world to us now.” Although the majority of pregnancies end with the birth of a healthy baby, it is estimated that 1 in 4pregnancies end in miscarriage (loss up to 20 weeks of pregnancy), and approximately 7 in every 1,000 pregnancies end in stillbirth (loss after 20 weeks of pregnancy). With this level of frequency, it is very likely that either you or someone close to you have experienced this traumatic event in their lives. Other families and individuals experience the devastating loss of a newborn or infant. According to the article from Maclean’s, several research studies, including a 2014 study of 104 parents published in BMC Psychology, have advised parents photograph stillborn babies and save the pictures as mementos that can help ease a sense of loss. These photos give parents something to hold onto when their arms are empty due to the loss of their wanted and much loved baby. I have a photo from our vacation to Newfoundland in 2013 that shows me proudly showing displaying my "baby belly". I was about six weeks pregnant and Rob took the photo to announce our news to our parents who would be grandparents for the first time. It's one of the only photos I have from that pregnancy as we found out at 10 weeks that our baby had no heartbeat at our first ultrasound. I was too flustered to ask for a photo at that ultrasound which was devastating when I realized it a few days later when we experienced the miscarriage. As Laurie stated in the Maclean's article: “People think attachment starts when the baby is born. But attachment starts way before that. You lose the dreams of what your child and family was going to be. You lose your future.” This week I had the privilege of writing an article for Babywearing in Canada. You can read the full article here: “A Different Kind of Mother’s Day: Pregnancy and Infant Loss”. Lorraine Rigby-Larocque spoke at the first Babywearing in Canada conference that took place May 2015. During her session “Losing a child: Coping today, tomorrow and forever,” Lorraine shared her personal experience with loss. Lorraine’s son Kevin was stillborn at 29 weeks gestation over 20 years ago, and she also experienced eight miscarriages and survived cervical cancer. Just like with our family, Lorraine has keepsakes that she treasures to this day: ultrasound photos, a clipping of hair, handprints and footprints tenderly captured by a compassionate nurse. These are the things that transcend time, things that bring us closer to our babies. These items we can hold and cherish remind us over and over again that our babies were here if only for a moment. In the Ottawa/Gatineau area, volunteer photographers from Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (NILMDTS) do an amazing job of capturing these moments for individuals/families facing the loss of their baby at birth. Veronique Lalonde, the NILMDTS coordinator for Ottawa/Gatineau was contacted by the palliative care team at Roger Neilson House take photos when Aaron was born. She was so kind and compassionate and captured photos that mean the world to me. I look at these photos often and they help me remember what Aaron looked like – his beautiful lips and his tiny feet that danced so often while I was pregnant. I often wonder what our family would look like now if Aaron were still alive. Our family photo this Mother’s Day would look so different. One parent would be chasing a very busy toddler and one parent chasing a very busy eleven month old. Though Aaron was not able to make me a lovely handprint craft for Mother’s Day like our older son Gabriel, his handprints and the handprints of our first baby will always be on my heart. Thank you to Débora Rodrigues and Babywearing in Canada for her support and her sponsorship of Aaron’s Butterfly Run!
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