‘We Turned Our Deepest Grief Into Good’: PA Couple Helps Grieving Parents Say Goodbye
Loving Daniel donates Cuddle Cots so families can cherish meaningful moments and heartfelt goodbyes
Key Takeaways
- After losing their newborn, Nicole and Bill Dice turned their grief into a healing mission.
- Their nonprofit, Loving Daniel, gifts cooling Cuddle Cots to help families say goodbye.
- The Pennsylvania organization has already donated 13 life-changing devices to hospitals.
After losing their newborn son, a Pennsylvania couple transformed heartbreak into hope, creating a nonprofit that helps mourning families spend extra time with babies they never expected to lose. Here, they share their story with Woman’s World.
“Finally!” Nicole Dice squealed when the pregnancy test came out positive. She and her husband, Bill, had been trying for three years.
But about five months in, an ultrasound showed something that shattered their world. The little one in Nicole’s belly had an often fatal form of dwarfism called thanatophoric dysplasia. The doctors expected that the baby wouldn’t live.
The Uniontown, Pennsylvania, couple cried the whole way home from the doctor’s office. As people of faith, they placed the life of their baby, whom they named Daniel, in God’s hands.
Please, God. We need a miracle for our sweet baby, the couple prayed.
For the duration of the pregnancy, the family prayed for Daniel and talked and sang to him in the womb.
Daniel, who had an enlarged forehead from fluid in his brain, survived to be born, but he only lived for 89 minutes — all of which he spent in his grieving parents’ arms. Then something miraculous happened: Daniel’s body was somehow preserved for three and a half days after death without cooling, allowing his parents to stay in a hospital room with their baby, which gave family and friends a chance to love on him and say their goodbyes. Usually, babies who are stillborn or die soon after birth are quickly taken from their parents.
Knowing that miracles like this are rare, Bill and Nicole looked at each other and said, “How can we help other parents get this precious quality time?”
How Cuddle Cots help grieving parents
Right after Daniel passed, Nicole began researching products and services that could help parents in the same situation.
She learned about Cuddle Cots, which are cooling pads that allow parents to spend extra time with their babies who have passed. The price of a Cuddle Cot starts around $3,000, but Nicole knew that they could be a godsend to grief-stricken parents. She did fundraising to purchase a Cuddle Cot for Uniontown Hospital, where Daniel was born, and planned just to gift it to that hospital.
But not long after, they received a generous donation that inspired them to continue expanding the project. In 2016, they made their project an official nonprofit called Loving Daniel.
Turning grief into hope
More than a decade has passed since Daniel was born in November 2015, and the Dices went on to have two healthy children, Manny, 9, and Anna Rose, a toddler.
Since then, Loving Daniel has donated 13 devices to 12 different hospitals in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Loving Daniel maintains the equipment and donates replacement parts to the hospitals when needed. The Dices personally reach out to parents who have lost babies so that they know they are not alone.
Karen Lessman, the labor and delivery nurse who was there for Daniel’s birth, says that unforgettable day changed her life.
“I’d never seen anything like it before, and I’ve never seen anything like it since,” Karen says.
As for Nicole, she knows every moment parents have with their baby is precious.
“I feel that God gave us that time with Daniel so that we would know the value of it and give it to others,” Nicole says. “We try to turn our grief into something good.”
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