Chicagoland Bereavement Doula · In person, at your side
You should not have to walk into that room alone.
When a baby dies, families are too often left to face the hardest hours of their lives with no one beside them who knows how to help. I am the person you call. I come to the hospital. I come home with you. And I stay.
If you are reading this for someone you love, you found the right place. Keep going.
Did you know you still need postpartum support after your baby dies?
Your body still labored. Your milk may still come in. You still bleed, still heal, still recover, only now without the baby everyone expected you to bring home. The world treats loss like an ending. Your body did not get the message. You deserve the same care, rest, and tending any new parent receives. Maybe more.
What is a bereavement doula?
Someone trained for exactly this moment, so you don't have to figure it out alone.
A bereavement doula is a trained professional who supports families through pregnancy and infant loss: miscarriage, stillbirth, a fatal diagnosis, neonatal and infant loss. I am not a replacement for your medical team. I am the steady person beside you who is not there to take vitals or chart, I am there for you.
I sit with you. I help you understand your options when no one slows down enough to explain them. I help you make the memories you may not know to ask for, and protect the ones you do. I hold space for your partner, your other children, and the people who love you and don't know what to do. This is what I was trained for, and it grew out of my own daughter Evelyn, born still, with her father deployed and me feeling completely alone. The care a doula gave me in that room is the reason I do this work.
The part no one warns you about
Most hospitals won't tell you this support exists.
This is the hard truth, said plainly: bereavement doula care is still so new that many hospitals, nurses, and providers don't know to offer it, or aren't allowed to refer out. That means the call has to come from you, or from someone who loves you. No one is going to hand you my number on the worst day of your life.
So if that day is here, or coming, reach out now. You don't need to have the words ready. You don't need to know what to ask. You only have to call or text, and I will take it from there.
In person at the hospital & at home
How I help you navigate it
Every family is different, and I will never assume what yours needs, I'll ask. But here is some of what I can do, wherever you are:
Bedside presence
I come to you at the hospital and stay through labor, birth, and goodbye, a calm, knowing presence so you are never alone in that room.
Understanding your choices
I very tenderly explain your options around time with your baby, photography, hand and foot molds, bathing and dressing, and keepsakes, without rushing you.
Memory-making
The moments you can't get back. I help you create and protect them, so you carry more than just the loss.
Advocacy & questions
I help you ask the questions you don't have the bandwidth for, and make sure your wishes, cultural, spiritual, personal, are heard and honored.
Partner & sibling support
Grief touches the whole family. I hold space for your partner and help you find words for surviving siblings.
Postpartum recovery at home
I come home with you. Physical recovery, rest, feeding and milk questions, and the long, quiet days after everyone else moves on.
Support & investment
Getting support is simple. Here's what it costs.
One call or text is all it takes to start. Below is how care is structured, and no family is ever turned away over money (see the sponsorship note).
Bedside Bereavement Support
In-person support at the hospital through your baby's birth and goodbye, plus immediate aftercare. On-call so I can be there when it's time.
Continuity of Care
Everything in Bedside Support, plus prenatal or post-diagnosis planning and a series of home postpartum visits across your first weeks of grief. Care that follows you home.
Postpartum-After-Loss Visits
Ongoing home or virtual support after the hospital. Available on its own or to extend any package. Four-visit bundle: $600.
Have Maven, Carrot, or Progyny through work? You may pay little to nothing.
If you or your partner have an employer family-building benefit, doula support, including bereavement and postpartum care, may be reimbursable. These plans usually work as reimbursement: you pay for care, then submit for repayment, often within a range that covers the full cost above.
Coverage varies by employer, so check with your HR or benefits portal — and I'll provide the invoices, contracts, and documentation these plans require. Not sure? Reach out and I'll help you find out.
If money is the only thing standing between you and support, tell me.
A number of sponsored and reduced-cost spots are available each season, funded by proceeds from The Evelyn James Shop and gifts made by others in memory of their own babies. No family should walk this path unsupported because of cost. Just ask, without explaining yourself.
And if you've been carried through your own loss and want to carry someone else, you can sponsor a family in your baby's name.
Reach out, any hour, any day
You don't have to know what to say.
Just call or text. If I don't pick up the moment your world is breaking, I will call you back. You will not be alone in this.
(231) 818-2898