PLANNING
EverLoved provides online resources for planning and affording a funeral, creating a memorial website and obituary, as well as shopping for urns and caskets. If you want to take the process into your own hands from start to finish, you might find this helpful.
Cake, an end-of-life platform, offers additional resources that you can check out on their website. There are resources for every age and stage of life, including grandparents of a child or miscarriage loss.
FUNERAL HOME
We've provided a list of 161 funeral homes in NC & SC
If you need financial assistance, check out these organizations that can help out.
MUSIC
We've curated a playlist specifically for the funeral of a baby. Many of these songs were played during Gemma's funeral.
FLOWERS & CARDS
Consider making a note like "in lieu of flowers please make a donation to XYZ organization in baby's name". We did this at Gemma's funeral and asked for donations to go to the NICU where she was born.
If you receive flowers that you want to preserve and save somehow, consider drying them, pressing them, or sending them to a wedding bouqet preservation specialist (Etsy has many). I had so many flowers that I couldn't even consider pressing them all, so I dried just the roses over the course of several months. Later, I made epsom salt mixes and included some of the dried petals and gave them as gifts to close friends. It was special to get to re-share a part of her funeral.
Funerals and memorial services typically hand out small cards with information about the deceased: pallbearers, the family, songs played, and favorite quotes. It's okay if the baby's funeral cards have limited information on them; parents had limited time with their babies so there are only so many memories that can adequately by shared. At Gemma's funeral we bought an Etsy funeral bookmark template and had them printed/cut at the local Fedex office (that was a trip I, Gemma's mom, couldn't handle emotionally, so Gemma's dad went there instead. The Fedex staff were so sad when he picked up the order, as they had seen that they were about a baby that had died at only two days old.). The bookmarks were awesome because they were small and easy for people to slip into their bibles or stick on their fridge as a sweet reminder of her.
When you receive cards in the mail you can save them in a photo album. I had hundreds of cards after Gemma died, so I cut off the fronts of cards I thought were particularly pretty, and always saved the insides where folks had left notes and signed them. They have made a pretty little book I can reference any time I want and reminiscence.