Articles:
Philadelphia Daily News
The Trend
The Willow Grove Guide
The Bucks County Courier Times
The Intelligencer
Times Newspapers
Philadelphia Daily News, Tuesday, October 14, 2008
LEGACY FROM A LOVING MOM
Foundation Helps Grieving Parents
By Janice Armstrong
More than anything Michelle Caruso McAdoo yearned to be a mother.
When she got the news that she was pregnant, McAdoo threw herself into getting ready. Everything appeared on track for a healthy, normal pregnancy. Then, two weeks before her due date, McAdoo stumbled on a curb outside a video store and landed hard on her abdomen. Afterwards she was told everything was fine. But she suspected trouble. There was less fetal movement. She was having back pains. Doctors told her she was being overly anxious. McAdoo was told not to return to the hospital until she was experiencing strong contractions that were 5 minutes apart.
When she went back two weeks later, doctors couldn’t find a heartbeat and performed an emergency Caesarean section. Arrianna Rose-8 pounds,7 ounces-was born with thick black hair and big feet. But she never opened her eyes. She was stillborn. It was June 10, 2002, McAdoo’s 36th birthday.
“As the hours passed, I begged God please let this be a mistake,” McAdoo later wrote in her journal. “I was an emotional wreck. I was unable to make decisions concerning her burial and funeral. The only request I had was that she be buried in my christening gown. I didn’t know how I was going to pay for her funeral,” she wrote.
“Never once did I think my baby’s birth would end up in tragedy, and that we would be forced to face the financial problems associated with death. Andy [McAdoo, her husband] and I were neither financially nor emotionally prepared.”
Her large family rallied around and helped pay Arrianna’s funeral expenses.
Hoping to turn tragedy into something positive, McAdoo created the Arrianna Rose Foundation to help parents in similar situations pay funeral expenses.
McAdoo busied herself getting tax exempt status, creating a web site and organizing fundraiser's. The first of what would become the foundation’s annual dinner dances took place less then 10 months after Arrianna’s death.
“When she would talk to people after they had lost their child, it was sometimes hard on her,” Andy told me yesterday. “Sometimes it was good, because she knew she was helping.”
As the years passed, Michelle McAdoo got pregnant several times but repeatedly miscarried. Then, in 2007, her dream of being a mother was finally realized after she and Andy traveled to Guatemala to adopt an 8 month old boy they named Mark Andrew. But their happiness was short lived.
Three weeks after they returned home with Mark, on August 11, 2007, McAdoo died in her sleep. She was 41.
McAdoo, who saw her doctor earlier that day, had health problems that included sleep apnea, a leaky heart valve and asthma. She’d also been sleep-deprived and adjusting to being a new mother.
Devastated, McAdoo’s shell shocked family and friends muddled through, trying to support Andy and the baby.
“I said, ‘What is going to happen to the charity? Michelle would want it to go on,’ ” recalled Suzanne Curry, who grew up in Northeast Philadelphia with Michelle and attended Archbishop Ryan with her.
“Michelle’s husband wasn’t all into having [the annual dinner dance]. He said, ‘Let’s not do it this year.’ We said, ‘We have to,’ ” recalled Curry, a stay-at-home mom who now helps run the Arrianna Rose Foundation. “We were like robots. We were like zombies. We had other people speak for us at the Buffet & Open Bar Fundraiser”
Since then, Curry and McAdoo’s sister, Cheri’ Caruso, have run the foundation, now based in Caruso’s Bensalem home. In the year since McAdoo’s death, the non profit has contributed to funeral cost for four infants.
The donations for each baby range from $800 to $1000, with funds going directly to the funeral homes.
The organization also negotiates with funeral homes to try to lower the costs for the families.
Typically, recipients of the foundation’s largesse are young, grieving and unprepared to pay cost associated with burying an infant.
“It’s almost like a double trama,” said Terri Wyatt, coordinator of perinatal-loss support services at the Bebee Medical Center, in Lewes, Del., which has referred 14 cases to the Arrianna Rose Foundation since its inception.
“It doesn’t cross [parents] minds until we are sitting down and talking about what to do with the infants remains,” Wyatt said. “It’s an emotion shock. It’s a financial shock.”
Wyatt called the foundation “one little, tiny light you can offer parents at the time of their greatest need.”
The Trend, Wednesday, September 24, 2008
GRIEVING PARENTS FIND SUPPORT IN ARRIANNA ROSE
Nonprofit created after one child’s passing helps parents with unexpected funeral costs
By Megan DohertyTrend Editor
“I held her. She had a full head of hair-curly, black hair,” said Cheri’ Caruso describing the first time she saw her niece, Arrianna Rose.
What should have been joyous occasion-the birth of Arrianna Rose McAdoo-was instead a time of grief. Arrianna Rose suffered from Sudden Antenatal Death Syndrome and arrived stillborn on June 10, 2002.
Caruso had flown in from California, where she had lived at the time, to be with her sister. She decided to stay to support her sister, Michelle McAdoo, through the difficult time.
Six years later and after a number of bittersweet events, Caruso now lives in Bensalem and runs a nonprofit, along with childhood friend Suzanne Curry, in memory of Arrianna Rose.
The Arrianna Rose Foundation provides help for bereaved parents of infants and young children by providing funds for funerals.
The Foundation was started by Michelle McAdoo and her husband, Arrianna Rose’s father, Andrew, shortly after their daughter’s death. The McAdoos wanted to provide help to others like they had received after Arrianna Rose’s death, specifically financial help.
“Andy and I were neither financially or emotionally prepared to bury Arrianna. However, we were blessed by an outpouring of family and friends,” Michelle wrote in a recollection of the days following her daughters death.
So, they started an organization that would help pay for the unexpected expense of an infant’ funeral.
“She wanted them [children] to have a proper burial if that’s what they [parents] wanted,” said Caruso.
And so the Arrianna Rose Foundation was formed.
“She [Michelle started it in ’02, right after Arrianna died. It helped her with her grief,” said Caruso.
Michelle was dedicated to the nonprofit until she unexpectedly passed away in her sleep on Aug. 11, 2007.
Only three weeks prior to her death, Michelle and Andrew had begun to realize their dream of raising a child. They adopted a little boy, Mark, from Guatemala.
“She was so happy,” Caruso said of the brief time Michelle spent with her son.
But Michelle expressed to her sister and friend Suzanne Curry that her son cannot replace Arrianna Rose-he was an addition to the family. Michelle also expressed her hopes to continue her work with the Arrianna Rose Foundation.
“When Michelle was alive, she often said to me that her biggest concern was that the foundation would go beyond her,” said Curry.
Caruso and Curry are seeing that it does. The two women have planned a dinner-dance benefit for Oct. 17 at Twining Hall in Trevose. This will be the sixth annual Arrianna Rose Foundation Dinner Dance, but it is the first planned entirely without Michelle.
“We are doing her last dying wish,” said Curry.
Caruso and Curry are determined to keep the nonprofit alive and expand it even more. The two women spoke of adding more to the foundations Web site, such as information for grieving parents, how parents can talk with siblings of the late infant about the death, and poems by mothers and fathers who have lost a child.
They also plan to hand out information at Bensalem’s Fall Festival on Oct. 4 at the Commerce Bank Amphitheater at the township municipal Complex.
“This year we want to reach out further to the community,” said Caruso.
Part of that reaching out is educating the public about S.A.D.S.
S.A.D.S. is the medical term for a stillbirth, an intrauterine death of an infant beyond 20 weeks gestation. Prior to 20 weeks gestation is medically considered a miscarriage.
Though the mission of the Arrianna Rose Foundation is officially to help those who lost a child through Stillbirth or SIDS, Curry said, “Michelle never turned anyone down, and we don’t want to either.”
Michelle also wanted to educate expectant mothers that “kicks count.”
After tripping and falling on her abdomen, Michelle felt her baby moving less. According to her written memoir, she went to the E.R. and was told she and her baby were fine. The kicking and movement of her baby she had previously felt decreased.
According to the National Stillbirth Society 9www.stillnomore.org), counting kicks is a way to monitor the unborn child’s health. A sudden decrease in kicks (or any movements) can be a symptom that the baby is in distress.
“We are trying to balance getting the word out with getting the money in,” said Caruso.
Since Michelle died, the Arrianna Rose Foundation has helped three families pay for their child’s funeral.
Usually, the families are referred by health care or bereavement professionals affiliated with the organization or through word of mouth.. The family asks for help and the money is sent directly to the funeral home.
“It’s hard taking those calls. My sister was better prepared for it,” said Caruso, who is herself the mother of two children, John Michael, 4, and Graciela Michelle, 1, who was born the month after Michelle died.
She and Curry both have big plans for the Arrianna Rose Foundation, from future events to becoming a nationally know foundation.
“We would love to do a bike run. Michelle loved motorcycles,” said Curry.
They have also set up a partnership with iGive.com, where people can search the Internet or shop online through the site and generate money for the foundation.
“The major [fundraiser] is our dinner dance,” said Caruso.
The event will take place from 8PM to midnight at Twining Hall at the Trevose Fire House. The event features a DJ, open bar, raffles and silent auction. Tickets are $30 for adults 21 and over, $20 for ages 13 to 20, $15 for children ages 6 to 12 and free for children under 5.
Much like Michelle shaped the foundation’s mission as a way to handle her grief, Caruso & Curry carry on in memory of the sister and friend they lost.
“She had the biggest heart of anyone you would meet,” said Caruso. “We are just picking up where she left off.”
The Willow Grove Guide, September 2 – 8, 2004
WOMAN CREATES FOUNDATION
TO
HELP OTHERS COPE WITH LOSS
By Mark D. Marotta
Through the Arrianna Rose Foundation, named after a daughter she lost in pregnancy, Willow Grove resident Michelle McAdoo hopes to help families cope with the death of an infant or toddler.
McAdoo, 38, and her husband, Andrew, have lived in Upper Moreland Township for more than five years, moving there as newlyweds in April 1999. After discovering that she was pregnant, McAdoo picked Arrianna Rose as the name for her daughter, who was due to be born on June 11, 2002.
“Everything was perfectly fine with the pregnancy,” McAdoo recalled. But about a week before she was due to give birth, McAdoo fell down three concrete steps, landing on her abdomen. She immediately went to the hospital, were she was assured that everything was fine with her pregnancy.
But McAdoo noticed afterwards that she no longer felt the baby moving.
“I just didn’t have a good feeling,” she said.
On June tenth 10th, McAdoo delivered Arrianna Rose, who was stillborn.
“I had a really bad depression after everything happened,” McAdoo recalled. “My grief was just so overwhelming.”
She recounted that she was unable to continue working at her job taking photographs of babies at a retail store in Feasterville.
“It’s a hard thing to live with, thinking you did something wrong,” she added.
McAdoo said her family helped with the baby’s burial expenses. Additionally, her uncle, Earl Bradley, who lives in Lewes, Del., suggested starting a foundation to help people in similar situations.
“The idea literally was conceived the day we were dealing with the death of Arrianna,” McAdoo said.
She explained that her uncle and his sister, Lynda, took care of filing the paperwork and getting the tax identification number for the foundation, which was established as a nonprofit charity in 2002. It is a subsidiary of the Baybees Children’s Foundation, which McAdoo described as a group serving the population in Delaware by providing art and culture to children.
While the Arrianna Rose Foundation was basically created to help families who have lost infants and newborns, there may be extenuating circumstances in which assistance may be provided where an older child has died. For instance, the foundation helped a family who lost a 3-month-old baby with sudden infant death syndrome. In another case, McAdoo said, a single mother 8-month-old daughter had died was helped.
“I don’t want to ever turn any family down,” McAdoo said. “It’s the most horrible feeling, not to be able to take care of your child.”
McAdoo explained that the foundation helps with funeral, burial, and cremation cost. She noted that undertakers usually work at coasts when a baby has died.
Additionally, McAdoo said, She may also counsel family members, so that they do not feel alone in their loss.
So far, Through referrals from a perinatal loss coordinator at the Beebe Medical Center in LEWES, the foundation has helped eight families in Delaware, McAdoo said. Locally, she has contacted Holy Redeemer Hospital to offer her services.
“Nobody up here really seems to need my help yet,” McAdoo added
“Nonetheless, she said, she is looking both for volunteers, as well as a mentor to teach her more about how to operate a charity.
McAdoo explained that the foundation is supported by donations, as well as the sale of items such as the sale of children’s clothing and toys at flea markets. Additionally, on Sept. 24, the foundation will hold its second annual dinner dance, at Twining Hall, 4900 E. Street Road, Trevose, from 8 pm, to midnight. McAdoo added that she was also thinking about holding an art auction.
“My family and friends are the biggest support,” she said.
She credited her husband with helping with fundraising, paying for her to attending classes about operating a charity, and even attending seminars if she is not able to.
“He has vision like I do,” McAdoo said. “I really feel in my heart there is a potential for this to grow.”
Bucks County Courier Times, Monday, October 10, 2005
HELP WHEN BABIES ARE LOST
Families get assistance with funeral costs
for babies who died
By: Shaila Dani
In June 2002, Michelle McAdoo went to the hospital with a pregnant belly. She expected to leave with a newborn baby in her arms.
A room in her modest Willow Grove home was prepared. A crib waited. The expectant mom had picked out bunny ears for the baby’s birth announcement. And two first-time parents had filled their hearts with love for the infant they wanted so much. But Arrianna Rose McAdoo never drew a breath after leaving her mothers body. The child, who was stillborn, would now be 3 years old. Mom and dad, Andy McAdoo, still grieve her and have memorialized her in a foundation that helps pay for funerals for babies.
“I get up every morning and I have an aching in my heart that does not go away,” says Michelle McAdoo. A framed photo of the baby sits on a dresser next to the crib, which is still up.
Three years ago, a devastated McAdoo went home from the hospital with a green “Memory Box.” Inside the baby hat Arrianna Rose wore fir a few minutes is sealed in a bag to “keep her scent.” Two small blue footprints are printed on a card.
The heartbroken couple didn’t have funds for a funeral. They were only able to pay for their baby’s burial with help from their family and a local funeral director.
Arrianna Rose rests at Whitemarsh Memorial Garden in Ambler. The couple visits her often.
“She’s our baby and we want to be near her,” said McAdoo, “Just so she knows she was loved and wanted”
At first the McAdoos started the nonprofit Arrianna Rose Foundation to memorialize the baby they never got to know. But the foundation has grown into something other than a memorial, they said.
In less than three years, it has helped 12 regional families bury their stillborn or deceased babies on an annual budget of about 4,000 dollars. The nonprofit has no overhead coasts, said McAdoo.
“Any family that reaches out to us, we will help,” said McAdoo, who said she could often pay for a funeral with about $800, especially when funeral parlors are willing to cut her a break.
The couple helps mostly lower- or middle- income families, she said.
They often get referrals through few hospitals they work with in Philadelphia and Delaware. The McAdoos said they’d like to expand the reach of their services, possibly to hospitals in Bucks, but know that it is sometimes hard to garner support, funds and interests in a group that can’t purport to help cure or treat any disease.
“Death is not something that people look forward to,” said McAdoo. You couple that with a baby- and that makes people very uncomfortable.” McAdoo said she realized that soon after Arrianna Rose’s stillbirth. People didn't know what to say to her when she told them what happened, she said. McAdoo, who likes sharing the few ultrasound and after-birth photos she has of Arrianna Rose, said it doesn't make her feel better when people tell her, “It wasn't meant to be.”
“My child was my life. My child is my life,” said McAdoo, who is trying to get pregnant again.
But there is some peace to be found in helping other families going through similarly painful experiences, McAdoo said.
“There’s definitely a need,” she said. “It happens a lot more than you'd realize.”
The Intelligencer, Monday, December 16, 2002
OUT OF LOSS COMES HELP FOR OTHERS
By: Melissa Milewsk
UPPER MORELAND-Pregnancy was no sweat for Michelle McAdoo.
The first-time mother-to-be had a little morning sickness and would get tired. Michelle and her husband of four years, Andrew, embraced the months leading up to the June due date. The Willow Grove couple decorated the nursery with stuffed animals and a rocking chair. They got excited every time the baby kicked, and they would listen closely to the baby's heartbeat when they went for checkups. Michelle and her mom knew the baby was going to be a girl and decided to name her Arrianna Rose.
"We couldn't wait," Michelle said. "He (Andrew) would kiss my belly every morning."
Her labor pains started on June 7 around the same time she noticed the baby wasn't moving much. She called the hospital and doctors told her that she was just nervous. But, when she eventually was brought to the hospital they couldn't find the baby's heartbeat.
On June 10, Michelle's 36th birthday, doctors rolled her into surgery, performed a Caesarean section and then gave the McAdoos the news.
"My baby was dead," she said. "That's when I found out it was my little girl. The girl I knew I was going to have. And, that was it."
Instead of late-night feedings and diaper changing, the couple was planning a funeral that came with a price tag of more than $7,000. They didn't have it.
If it hadn't been for family and friends, the McAdoos are not sure how they would have paid for it.
In remembrance of their daughter, the McAdoos started the non-profit Arrianna Rose Foundation to help families of stillborn babies pay for funerals.
"There are a lot of other people in this situation who aren't as fortunate," McAdoo said. "And doing this helps me believe Arrianna didn't die in vain.
McAdoo said the foundation has received only a few donations but it has already helped one family in Delaware. The foundation is seeking donations of money and services to help families who are dealing with the tragedy of a stillborn.
"I just had to find a way to help," McAdoo said. "I'm still grieving. Millions of women have babies, and I never thought mine would end like this."
According to the March of Dimes, one in 200 pregnancies results in a stillbirth. The loss is unexpected for most mothers, like McAdoo, because about half of stillbirths occur in pregnancies that seem problem-free. And, in more than on-third of the cases, the cause of the stillbirth cannot be determined, according to the March of Dimes.
Some of the most common known causes for stillbirths include placental abruption, a condition in which the placenta peels away from the uterine wall before delivery; chromosomal abnormalities; and bacterial infections. Less frequent causes are umbilical cord accidents, trauma, maternal diabetes and high blood pressure, according to the March of Dimes.
To decrease the risk of stillbirths, doctors tell pregnant women not to smoke, drink alcohol or use drugs; they should report any vaginal bleeding and inform physicians of any previous stillbirths. Doctors also may suggest after the 26th week of pregnancy women count the number of kicks they experience each day.
If a woman counts fewer than 10 kicks per day or notices the baby is moving less than usual, she should contact her doctor, according to the March of Dimes.
Times Newspapers, Thursday, February 13, 2003
TURNING GRIEF INTO ACTION
By: Tom Waring
Michelle McAdoo and Jennifer Sanzick are trying to help other parents who lose a newborn after suffering through their own personal tragedies.
Michelle McAdoo and Jennifer Sanzick both had good pregnancies.
The young ladies were given baby showers and looked forward to the birth of their first child.
"I was on cloud nine," McAdoo said. "I loved being pregnant. I couldn't wait for her to come out. I took for granted that she would be a perfectly healthy baby."
Added Sanzick: "I was excited, ecstatic. I couldn't wait."
For McAdoo and Sanzick, the eager anticipation of being first-time mothers turned into heartbreak.
McAdoo, of Willow Grove, lost her baby on June 10, 2002, following a nine-month pregnancy. Sanzick, of the Far Northeast, delivered a stillborn baby on June 29, 2001.
Instead of preparing for their child's baptism, McAdoo and Sanzick had to bury their children in their christening gowns. The tragedies stunned the women.
It's just not natural, they say, for parents to have to bury their children. Babies, they thought, were always delivered healthy after they survived the first three months of pregnancy.
"You don't want to believe it," said Sanzick, who was about to deliver her parents' first grandchild. Since then, the women have had time to reflect on the loss of their children. Both said memories of their babies will be with them forever.
Now, McAdoo and Sanzick want to help other parents - both those who suddenly lose a newborn and others who need some help providing for their child.
McAdoo and her husband, Andrew, have started the Arrianna Rose Foundation, which is named after their late daughter. "It's a way for me to channel my grief in a more constructive way," Michelle McAdoo said. The McAdoos, who have been married for four and a half years, were aided in their time of tragedy.
A family friend, who owns Angelone Funeral Home in Roslyn, donated fureral-home services and a casket. Michelle's mom, Lisa Caruso, donated a cemetery plot to bury Arrianna Rose next to her great-grandfather. The couple's family paid for flowers and a marker.
That charity encouraged the McAdoos to help others in similar situations to handle the emotional and financial aspects of a child's death. "A lot of people aren't blessed with a family that will help them," Michelle said.
Over the long term, the McAdoos want to help a lot more families. Sanzick and her fiance, Mike Erbrick, are pitching in too.
The Arrianna Rose Foundation - whose logo is a sleeping baby in a rose - is teaming with Holy Redeemer Hospital and Medical Center to help any parents who lose a newborn. The foundation plans an outreach to Frankford Hospitals. The foundation also has been designated the charity of choice in 2003 by a women's auxiliary affiliated with a Delaware medical center. The auxiliary has raised $600, to go along with the McAdoo's $1,000 donation, money that had been earmarked for Arrianna Rose's college fund.
Two funeral homes - Givnish Funeral Home on Academy Road and Bryer's Funeral Home in Willow Grove - have donated their services. Whitemarsh Memorial Park has donated cemetery plots.
In addition, the McAdoos are considering such fund-raisers as a 5K run, a beef-and-beer and a silent auction. The couple are focused on turning their tragedy into a triumph.
"I want it to be my baby's legacy," said Michelle McAdoo, who sleeps with a framed picture of her daughter and visits her at the cemetery every week. McAdoo met Sanzick last August at a monthly meeting ofUNITE, a group therapy session for grieving parents.