By Jordynn Wolford Miss Emery 2020
The Lilly Pad Project is a non-profit organization to help families who have lost a baby to miscarriage or stillbirth by providing bereavement kits for burial. This project was started in 2009 by Natalie Olsen in Orangeville when she had a stillborn baby girl named Lilly.
Natalie never wanted families who lost their stillborn babies to worry about how to bury them. She believes that every baby should be dressed with utmost respect no matter the circumstances of the loss.
The program makes burial clothes for babies out of donated wedding dresses or old prom dresses. Each burial outfit is made by hand and added to a bereavement kit, also assembled by hand. These kits are then given to hospitals and mortuaries to be donated to families who find themselves in need of a kit.
There were originally six boy and six girl kits made and donated. Those kits were used within three months, which proved how often the kits are needed and how vital it is for grieving families to have this comfort.
The smallest babies deserve the reverence, respect and honor of dressing them, wrapping them in a blanket and giving their families a memory of their precious, short life. This happens more often than we know.
Often, miscarried and stillborn babies aren’t talked about. Through this project, I have learned there is a desperate need for this service, especially in rural Utah. It’s so heartbreaking when a mother and a family have to go through the loss of a child before he/she is even born.
The Lilly Pad Project is a small way I can help these families. I personally know many women, including my own mother, who have gone through the loss of a child. It is heartbreaking to see them struggle to move on and find joy again.
Whether you are aware of it or not, odds are, you know someone who has experienced the loss of a baby either through miscarriage or being stillborn.
My goal as Miss Emery has been to raise awareness of this amazing and much-needed organization. This summer, I’m privileged to be able to help place the 400th kit donated since The Lilly Pad Project began.
You don’t have to be able to sew to help. The Lilly Pad Project gratefully accepts donations of many kinds such as matching sets of 10” or smaller stuffed animals, matching jewelry sets, matching blankets, caps, headbands, preemie socks, sweaters, store bought preemie and newborn outfits, and micro-preemie and preemie sized diapers.
The Lilly Pad Project is a registered 501(c)(3) and will also accept monetary donations. Each kit costs approximately $85 to put together. For a full list of what is needed either by donation or by hand sewing, please check out The Lilly Pad Project webpage at https://lillypadproject.org/ or the Lilly Pad Project’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/LillyPadProject/
The The Lilly Pad Project’s motto rings so true. “Sometimes, the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.” -A.A. Milne.
I believe we need to step up and provide comfort to those families who experience the pain of losing a child.