Mom gives 'bear hug' to families who lose infants

NORTH WALES, Pennsylvania (WPVI) -- Dola Spering's bosom to assistance her assemblage comes from her ain experience.

Her son, Jeremiah, was stillborn successful 2008. The adjacent year, she got large again. Her son, Vincent, died of an corruption astatine 2 weeks old.

"To person it hap twice, you can't explicate it. It's the worst ever," said Spering. "It tin beryllium precise lonely and isolating. Even if you bash person that support, grief has this mode of making you consciousness that you're the lone 1 that feels this way."

The North Wales ma didn't privation different parents oregon siblings, for that matter, to consciousness that grief alone, and she didn't privation them to permission the infirmary empty-handed. That's wherever 'Project BEAR' comes in.

"They clasp the carnivore and they cognize that idiosyncratic other cares. And to beryllium a portion of that is amazing," she said.

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BEAR stands for Bringing Empty Arms Reprieve. She's helped present much than 20,000 bears to families nationwide who person mislaid babies to stillbirth, miscarriage, oregon neonatal death. And she pays for astir each of it retired of pocket.

"We thought, 'Okay, this is simply a mode for america to assistance different parents who've been done that.' That successful and of itself was healing for america to do," she said. "It's overwhelming successful a truly bully mode to cognize that determination are radical retired determination I'll ne'er conscionable face-to-face, but to cognize they've been helped a small bit."