Purchase a Caring Cradle for Stillborn babies

We are Michelle and Kep Carmichael, the parents of Kate Carmichael who was born still on January 20, 2003 at 38 weeks gestation. We had a very healthy pregnancy and yet when I went to the hospital after not feeling her move one evening, they did not find a heartbeat. We were able to spend about 5 1/2 precious hours with her before they told us that we needed to give her back to be cooled, so the autopsy (to help us find answers as to why this happened as there were no obvious answers) would not be compromised. Through some research, we later learned that if you have brief cooling periods, you can spend more time with your baby. Therefore, babies are sometimes placed in refrigerators to cool them. Since then, two apparatuses have been developed to allow babies to stay in the room with their families and cool. One of them made in the USA and is called a Caring Cradle. The cost is 6,000. It's basically a bassinet that plugs into the wall and has a cooling pad that keeps the baby cool in the room so parents can spend more time with their babies and not have to give them back so quickly and this helps with the grieving process. Indiana University Health/Riley now has their own maternity ward, which used to be Methodist. We delivered Kate at Methodist. 

      We want to  help raise money for one of these units to allow families to spend more time with her babies and have the baby in a comfortable cradle in the room.  Currently IU hospital does not have any caring cradles (they have one unit sold in UK that isnt as nice, hard to clean , etc.) and they are getting an average of 4-5 demises  per week. Not all of them are stillborn, but infant deaths at different stages, and that also need these units to delay decomposing after death. The bereavement coordinator is crushing ice and putting it in diapers to allow families to spend more time with their babies. We would eventually like to purchase 4 of these but, for now, we want to set the goal at purchasing one for the hospital! Any amount is much appreciated, and will help others more than you can imagine. It will give them more time with your precious baby and help them long term with their grief.

We started a foundation, called Kate Cares. We started it to help families who have stillborn families with the proper testing, a expert case review, and just support in general through the whole stillbirth process, including bereavement. Allowing them to spend time with their babies is part of the care we want to support through Kate Cares. Donations for Kate Cares can also be made to help us staff the program as we are currently only able to pay a coordinator part time. 

     Donations for KateCares can be made online: See Katecares.org and follow the prompts. You will be directed to the Riley Childrens Foundation website. You click DONATE and then choose OTHER and type KATECARES  STILLBIRTH PROGRAM in the notes for a donation directly to Kate Cares.

With love and gratitude,

Michelle and Kep Carmichael (Kate's parents)