My Why Behind What I Do?
Hi, my name is Kate and I am the founder of David's Little Angels.
Welcome to my website it is a pleasure to have you here, and I look forward to presenting to you the work we do.
David's Little Angels is a non-profit campaign that transforms donated wedding gowns into baby angel gowns. The wedding gowns donated to us from the amazing brides from all across the world are sown by hand and transformed into beautifully decorated gowns so that the pain stalking process of wondering what to dress a baby in after it's passing is taken care of. We do this so the parents can concentrate fully on spending what little time they have with their little angels before they have to say goodbye for good.
After all the gowns are transformed we then deliver them to our local hospital that provides a private suite situated on the maternity ward, and this allows parents to have the privacy and support they require after experiencing stillbirth.
How this started
The David's Little Angels Campaign began in 2017 in the memory of my own grandson, David, after he passed away quite quickly at his birth in November 2016. Nothing can prepare you for losing a grandchild or having to watch your own daughter say goodbye to her own son, but what it can awaken you to is a deeper understanding of how precious life is and how it should never be taken for granted.
Experiencing the loss of David really opened up my eyes to how much help is needed to dress babies after they have passed away. The whole experience taught me how much of a struggle it was for the nurses to find David something to wear, and how that can now be something of the past because we turned our tragedy into something wonderful by easing the pain of others in the same situation.
David's story, written by his Nanna
Mum's Fix Everything, Right?
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Well, at least that is what I thought and for the past 20 years that is all I have been doing. "Mum I need you to fix this it's not working", "Mum how do I make this happen", "Mum what do I do with this?"
If you are a parent you know them statements only too well from your children and you have adopted that role of the "fixer". Well, I wish that was possible for me yesterday, but it wasn't. Nothing I could do could fix the situation we were in and I felt useless. When I received that call at 6:30am in the morning to tell me my daughter’s water had broken, and she was on her way to the hospital, I sprang into fixer mode and started packing her hospital bag.
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We were so unorganised because she was only 27 weeks into her pregnancy and this was unexpected. I rushed around like a headless chicken fixing the hospital bag cancelling all meetings that day and calling my partner back from work. As soon as Matthew arrived home, we chucked everything in the car and headed to the hospital. I tried frantically to get in touch with my daughter on the way to the hospital, but she was not answering. 20 minutes later she called me to say she had delivered the baby, but it was not looking good.
I was only 10 minutes away from the hospital at this time, now I was in shock in tears and needed to get there soon as possible. We pulled up in the hospital car park and grabbed the bag out the boot of the car and my phone rang again. It was Emily to tell me that the baby had passed away. I couldn't breathe, I felt like somebody had punched me in the stomach. Now how the fuck am I supposed to fix this?
With tears streaming down my face I grabbed the hospital bag and ran to the special baby unit. When we arrived, we were guided to a side room called the "Snow Drop" suite. The midwife could have been talking French for all I know, the only words I remembered her saying was "I am so sorry for your loss" the rest was a blur. I just needed that urgency of holding my child because right now she would need her mother. I sat down on the sofa in the Snow Drop suite and waited for what seemed like 5 hours but was only 10 minutes.
The double doors opened, and the midwives pushed Emily's hospital bed into the room. I turned my head back to the door and stood in the door frame was Mark holding his tiny son wrapped in a white towel. Mark sat next to me and cried his heart out while holding his son. I held Mark and told him how sorry I was, and I looked down at the little bundle he was holding. He passed me the bundle and I held him in my arms, he was still warm, and he was the most beautiful thing I had laid eyes on.
His head was to the side and his mouth open, me trying to get my mind to understand he was not alive was challenging. Every ounce of me hoped and prayed for a tiny noise, or some movement, but nothing. My tears fell from my cheeks onto his forehead. I passed him to my partner and walked over to the bed and sat next to Emily and hugged her and told her how sorry I was.
She looked at me and said "Sorry for what mum? You have no need to be sorry".
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The rest of the morning was spent gathering footprints, hand prints and a lock of hair from David. I offered to wash him and dress him for his photo's. His tiny body was stuck to the white towel he had been wrapped in and I had to peel the towel ever so gently away from his skin, carefully not to tear his delicate skin. I wash him down with baby wipes to clean all the blood off his skin from the top of his neck to the bottom of his dinky toes.
He had long legs, big hands and big feet, but so do all the boys in our family. His little legs had become black from no circulation or heartbeat in his tiny little body and he had a little bruise on his nose and chest where the nurses had tried to resuscitate him for over 30 minutes. I dressed him in a little white vest and wrapped him back up in his blanket and lifted him up to my face to get a better look at him. I wanted to take in every detail of his face while I had the chance. I kissed his cheek and could feel his cold skin against my lips.
I placed him back in mum's arms and the vicar arrived to baptise him. We had a lovely little ceremony and he was blessed, and his soul was released to heaven, where he lays in Jesus' arms until the day, we meet him again. I thanked the vicar for the lovely ceremony and he looked at me and said: "I am so sorry for your loss, there are no words to console your pain right now".I looked at him with my tear stained face and said: "Mum's usually fix everything, this is something I cannot fix", the vicar looked at me and said, "I know, God bless you and your family".
I shook his hand and thanked him for baptising David and he left the room. I and Matthew spent the next hour with David and said our goodbyes forever. I took some photos of him and his foot and hand prints and kissed my daughter goodbye. This was now her time to spend alone with him until she decided she was ready to say goodbye. We found out from the medical report that the placenta detached itself from Emily's womb, which is why her waters broke and why David passed away. Even though this is a hard-tragic time right now, I am so appreciative of the time I spent with my first grandson. I am so glad I made the choice to spend that time with him and to wash him and dress him because that will stay with me forever.
Each day is a new day, and we must move forward even if it's a tiny step at a time. The one way we find our healing through this whole journey is to help other's not to struggle dressing their own baby angels when the time with them matters the most.
