Beautiful but heartbreaking display
Hub lights honor babies on eve of Infant Loss Day
Boston’s Zakim bridge looked stunning last night lit up in pink and blue but there’s a lot of pain and heartache behind the beautiful display.
The lights were there in honor of Mallory Kathryn MacKinnon and all the other babies who have died too soon — and to raise awareness about one of society’s most common yet leastdiscussed tragedies: pregnancy and infant loss.
Ashleigh MacKinnon, whose daughter, Mallory, died last March when Ashleigh was 32 weeks pregnant, is on a mission to change that. Ashleigh reached out to a MassDOT employee who then arranged for the pink and blue lights on the eve of today’s National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.
“Everyone shares what they’ve had for breakfast on Facebook and yet they won’t share something that’s so hurtful and just so sad,” Ashleigh told me yesterday.
Ashleigh, 37, got the idea from a woman on social media who has suffered multiple losses and wants to get every state to illuminate a public space in blue and pink on remembrance day.
Ashleigh found a MassDOT employee through Facebook. Although other colored lights were scheduled for today, he told her he’d be happy to display the bridge in pink and blue last night.
“What I’m most hoping to accomplish with lighting the bridge is just to have conversations started,” Ashleigh said. “It’s a topic and a subject that still in 2018 does not get talked about. I understand it’s uncomfortable for people but these are our children.”
Ashleigh and her husband, Jon, were just seven weeks away from the birth of their second daughter when their nightmare began. Ashleigh hadn’t felt her baby moving and went to South Shore Hospital. Mallory had died. Just that morning, Ashleigh had ordered new sheets for her baby’s crib. That afternoon, she delivered her lifeless baby via C-section.
“It was very much like a nightmare, a bad dream I just wanted somebody to wake me up from. I’m still kind of waiting for that,” she said.
The nurses with the hospital’s Pregnancy Loss Team, Ashleigh said, were “like angels on Earth” to her and Jon. Ashleigh still keeps in touch with them. “In the absolute worst moment of my life,” she said, “they were like a bright spot.”
Ashleigh and Jon have also raised over $10,000 to purchase four Cuddle Cots for various hospitals, which keeps a stillborn baby cool so grieving parents can say goodbye to them. Mallory had been in a Cuddle Cot so Ashleigh and Jon could spend time with her.
The nurses gave the couple’s 4-year-old daughter, Chloe, a stuffed bunny from her sister Mallory.
Chloe sleeps with that bunny every night.