Mother Kateřina found herself face to face with the terrifying news that the baby in her womb had died. Nevertheless, she decided to complete her dream journey as a mother. Julinka was born, she was beautiful, but quiet….
“After giving birth, Julinka stayed with her parents for about twelve hours in the traditional way. Everyone in the family could say goodbye. All this thanks to the cooling cradle that the maternity hospital has for this purpose. Everyone was together, they had the time they needed, no one was in a hurry.” describes the healing situation after the painful loss of a little girl, the executive director of the Spinkey association Štěpánka Pokorníková. It is she who is working with her team to ensure that special cooling beds are prepared for these cases in Czech maternity hospitals.
A longer goodbye
“The cooling cradle lowers the temperature of the body and allows parents to be with their child for a longer time, to say goodbye to him, to take care of him,” Štěpánka Pokorníková explains the purpose of the facility.
The cradle also helped the Julinka family a lot. Some time after the birth, the little girl was dressed and went from her mother’s arms to her father’s, grandmother’s and grandfather’s arms. Everyone cuddled her, buried her, took a photo as a memory… Only someone who has lost a child can understand the power of such moments. Such is life in its power and elusiveness.
The Spinkey association helps
Štěpánka Pokorníková herself lost her adult son in a car accident three years ago. “I was thinking about how to help myself and other mothers after the loss of a child,” he explains.
This is how the Spinkey association was born, which helps parents with perinatal loss. The purpose of the association is to secure funds for the purchase of cooling cradles, especially as a support and expansion of services for palliative teams of hospitals in the Czech Republic. We currently have five cradles available. “My vision is that there should be at least one in every region in the Czech Republic, for teams that want to work with them. In time, ideally in every maternity ward,” adds Štěpánka Pokorníková.
This year, the association has been promised financial support in the fall for the purchase of one cot for the FN Ostrava. A fundraiser for the purchase of a cradle for the Regional Health Center in Ústí nad Labem was also launched. You can also support her purchase.
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The family took a picture of Julinka for the last time.
Author: family archive