Mother helps others heal from stillbirths

Plans Dec. 15 silent auction to aid ministry

By Rob Cullivan

The Gresham Outlook, Nov 14, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (5 Reader comments)

Megan Gebhardt, shown here with her daughter, Maizy, 3, has started a ministry for families who have suffered a stillbirth.

Jim Clark / Gresham Outlook

Megan Gebhardt was 37 weeks into her third pregnancy last December when she noticed her unborn child was no longer moving.

A visit to the hospital revealed her baby’s heartbeat had stopped. After delivering her stillborn son by Caesarean section, she eventually learned the baby had a true knot in his umbilical cord, which led to his death. After delivery, she held her child, but felt his presence elsewhere.

“It was a body, and I knew he’d gone ahead home.”

Home, she believes, is with Jesus Christ in heaven.

“God just gave me so much peace in knowing,” she says, adding she felt the creator telling her, “Your boy isn’t here anymore. He’s with me.”

Left behind

Despite believing her son, whom she and her husband named Macsen Danforth, was in heaven, Gebhardt says she still had to grieve.

“I came home and pretty much stared at my Christmas tree for two weeks,” she says.

She credits members of her congregation at Greater Gresham Baptist Church for rallying around her. Several showed up to visit her in the hospital, and many gave her sympathy cards, she says.

The love she felt from God and neighbors caused her to wonder how those who were not comforted in a similar manner coped with such grief. A self-taught artist, she came up with the idea of creating memory boxes for parents such as herself who are coping with stillbirths.

The boxes – which she encourages parents to fill with their own mementoes – are inscribed with scriptural passages and contain such items as a candle, a journal, an angel pin that says “Mother” and herbal tea designed to help a mother stop lactating.

Gebhardt notes having your body ready to breastfeed a baby who’s not there is both physically and emotionally painful.

She adds she was impressed with the kind words most people said to her after losing her son, but notes some words can wound even if delivered with good intent. For example, she says, some folks told her, “At least you have your girls,” referring to her daughters Maizy, 3, and Mia, 6.

“It kind of made it seem like my son’s existence wasn’t worth the void I felt.”

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