Grieving parents give back to Madison Angel Babies program
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REXBURG — People are coming out in greater numbers to aid grieving families through the Angel Babies program at Madison Memorial Hospital.
The program provides coping and burial services to women who’ve lost a child in the womb, but due to the late stage of pregnancy are still required to deliver the child.
Over the last few months, hospital officials say a greater number of employees, doctors, families and foundations have donated items and money to help.
“We just recently got donated to us from a family, this bear and book from a mom who lost her baby, and she is going through the grieving process,” said Jill Clawson a nurse at Madison Memorial Hospital.
“It’s really interesting how so may parents use different items like this and do such acts of kindness to help with their own grieving process and to put forth that effort to help other grieving moms,” she said.
Upper Valley resident Tiffany Clifford was on the receiving end of these acts of kindness. At 18 weeks pregnant she experienced the unfortunate event of miscarrying.
“I noticed I hadn’t felt much movement,” Clifford said. “They told me I had miscarried and that I would have to deliver (the baby) this time. It was my third miscarriage in a row.”
Her baby was the first to be buried at the Angel Babies gravesite at Sutton Cemetery in Archer.
“They had a little coffin. It was just a little wooden box that a little Eagle Scout had made and donated to the hospital. They donated a blanket to wrap him up in. And then all of the services,” Clifford said.
On the giving end of the Angel Babies program was Easton Shaum, an Eagle Scout. He didn’t realize his efforts would touch lives, while helping parents cope with death. Shaum says it took 144 combined hours for he and the scouts to make 21 caskets.
“I slowly realized that this Eagle project wasn’t about me. I didn’t need to accomplish something. Someone else was going to use these boxes, and needed these boxes,” Easton says.
Clifford is grateful to her nurses, and all those who’ve made efforts for the Angel babies program, and to the Eagle Scout she has a small message.
“Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done with out his little service and I’m really surprised that a boy his age would even think of that and be willing to do such an amazing thing for us moms who have to go through this. It helped a lot,” Clifford says.
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