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Georgia sisters raise money, awareness after stillbirth
Two Georgia sisters have channeled their family's grief into action. They're trying to raise funds and awareness about pregnancy and infant loss and they're doing it one cookie at a time.
GRIFFIN, Ga. - In Downtown Griffin, sisters Brittany Duskin and Mickenzie Tolen are selling Little CrumbSnatchers, Tolen’s cookies.
"The O.G. chocolate chip is probably the number one seller," Tolen says.
And, there’s another favorite customers have driven miles to buy.
"Everybody, if I don’t ever have the Dani, they do ask about the Dani," she says.
The Dani, named after the baby Brittany and Jerry Duskin’s lost last summer.
"Dani is my daughter," Duskin says. "She was born sleeping last July, on July 19."
Mickenzie Tolen, Duskin’s older sister, had undergone an emergency c-section a decade early, after developing severe pre-eclampsia, a blood pressure disorder, in the last days of her pregnancy.
But when Duskin, who is now 33, says when she told her Dublin doctor she was not feeling well, she got a very different response.
"I just was told, you know, ‘You’re in your thirties now, you’re older, and so you just feel bad," she says.
About two weeks before her due date, Duskin says, she drove to her doctor’s office.
"I told them, ‘She’s not moving. Something’s not right. My kick counts are off," Duskin remembers. "And, they just kind of met me with frustration, and they’re like, ‘Well, if it’s really that bad, just take yourself to the hospital.’"
She says she drove herself to the hospital.
"It took them a couple of minutes to find the heartbeat and her heartbeat would drop, and then it would spike, but they said it was within a normal range," Duskin says. "So, even though it was dipping and rising, they said, ‘It’s fine.’"
Two days later, fearing something was now very wrong, Duskin says, she called her doctor’s office again.
"I was like, ‘Now there’s no movement, please help,’ Duskin says.
"And, I went to the doctor’s office, and they wouldn’t listen for her heartbeat or anything. They said, ‘We don’t have time right now; we have too many patients. Another office had closed, and so they had inherited a lot of their patients.
Later in the hospital, Brittany and Jerry Duskin got the news she had been fearing: Dani no longer had a heartbeat.
She was delivered stillborn the next day at 38 weeks.
Duskin says, she later read in her medical file, she, too, had experienced postpartum pre-eclampsia, after the birth of an older child.
"If I would have known, I would have had more knowledge to say, ‘No, I think, I’m more prone to this or something’, or I would have been able to go to a different doctor," Duskin says. "Any information would’ve helped."
Tolin created the Dani cookie to honor her niece.
Brittany and Jerry Duskin pose with the "Dani" cookies they are selling to raise awareness about pregnancy and infant loss.
The sisters are selling it to raise money for the Christian non-profit Hope Mommies, hopemommies.org, which sends "hope boxes" to mothers and families experiencing miscarriage, stillbirth or baby or infant loss.
Tolen sent one to Duskin after they lost Dani.
"Every box comes with a handwritten note from a hope mommy who’s packed it, prayed over it, and sent it out to another hope mommy," Duskin says.
Each box costs about $60 to pack and ship.
The $250 raised from this sale will help build and deliver hope boxes to doctors’ offices and hospitals in Middle Georgia.
"Because, that’s one of the hardest things, is going home without the baby that you thought you were going to get to take home with you," Duskin says. "It’s a very lonely feeling."
Brittany Duskin hopes their story empowers women to trust their gut and push for answers.
"That’s kind of my hope with sharing Dani’s story, is that it will help save the life of other children and moms from experiencing this heartache," Duskin says.