Beth Seyda
Beth Seyda’s life was transformed in 1997 with the birth and death of her critically ill newborn son, Dylan. She combines her 25+ years of professional experience in consumer research with her personal experience as Co-Founder and Executive Director of Compassionate Passages, Inc. The mission of her non-profit organization is to give a voice to pediatric patients and their families through advocacy, education, and research with the goal of improving pediatric end-of-life care and providing support to dying children and their families. Compassionate Passages donates the book Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby to bereaved families. Beth lives in Chapel Hill, NC with her husband, Mark, and their 7-year old son, Tyler. Beth appeared on the radio show “Healing the Grieving Heart” with Dr. Gloria & Dr. Heidi Horsley to discuss “Miscarriage and Infant Loss.” To hear Beth being interviewed on this show, go to the following link: https://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/34073/miscarriage-and-infant-loss
Articles:
Pennies and Pachelbel: Signs from a Son
Back in 1997, my husband Mark and I had been married for almost 12 years and had been trying to get pregnant for the last six when we stared at the positive results from the home pregnancy test. To say we were thrilled was an understatement. Sixteen weeks into our pregnancy we had a routine ultrasound that showed our baby had a congenital diaphragmatic hernia. This would prevent the lungs from developing and growing properly during pregnancy and our baby would have a 50% survival rate when born. We learned we were going to have a boy and named him […]
Read More
First Halloween
I usually love Halloween, seeing all the little kids in their cute costumes struggling to hold up their trick or treat bags and trying to say “trick or treat”. But that first Halloween was only a couple of weeks after our infant son, Dylan, had died, and I knew I could not be at home to give out treats this year. I felt bad about it, but I knew that I would be in no shape to see so many kids. So my husband, Mark, and I decided to see an early movie and have dinner. This would keep us […]
Read More
Does Grief End? Mom Holds On While Letting Go
After my infant son, Dylan, died I started jotting down various things and scenes I recalled from our experience. I wanted to write about these memories not only to capture the details of Dylan’s life and death as a personal keepsake, but I also wanted to send it to our health care team. I wanted them to learn from our experience. Writing our story felt good, it was therapeutic for me. I wanted to share the parental aspects as well as the medical. Writing allowed me to release all this “stuff”. Afterward, I felt different. For a while I was […]
Read More
Open to Hope is an online community offering inspirational stories of loss, hope and recovery. We believe hope is the bridge between loss and recovery.
