From grief to gifts: Two women wrap support with handmade baby blankets sold at Bohemian

Raw grief surfaces when Stacia Garmon talks about Dax, her baby who died the day after his birth in July 2023.

She and husband Ken were given a donated blanket their son had with him at Seattle’s UW Medical Center, where he was born due to a rare medical condition. She cherishes the soft reminder of him.

“It’s one of my favorite things of his – it’s a connection,” said Garmon, a dental hygienist. “He had the blanket with him in the small NICU at UW Medical Center, so it spent time with him, and we got to take it home.”

Garmon, a Newman Lake-area resident, was 21 weeks pregnant with Dax when specialists diagnosed bilateral renal agenesis, meaning he hadn’t developed kidneys.

“Throughout the world, that is a fatal diagnosis,” she said. “There are doctors now who do treatments, and there are children living with this.”

Although she got the treatments in utero, Dax didn’t survive beyond hours of life. A few months after his death, Garmon tried to keep her mind and hands busy by sewing, creating baby blankets as gifts for friends and family.

She soon decided to make more baby blankets to stash away for eventual donation to other parents after the loss of a baby.

That plan didn’t get stitched together until she met Danielle “Dani” Golay, whose infant son Raz died five years ago. In spring 2024, the women started to share small talk at a dentist’s office and discovered that sad connection.

They’ve stayed in touch, talking and texting frequently.

Golay also is co-owner of The Bohemian, a Spokane Valley gift store with more than 70 artisans. In November, her shop began stocking her new friend’s baby blankets and “Garmon Family Creations” soft cotton accessories such as burp rags and teething clothes with a wooden ring.

Each blanket sold will help pay for another blanket Garmon will donate for hospitals to gift to parents if a baby dies.

“It was just a routine dental checkup, and I didn’t want to go,” Golay said of meeting Garmon. “But something inside me was like, ‘I’ve just got to go.’ When I sat in that chair and met her after we started talking, it was like God’s divine intervention.

“Since then, we’ve been able to talk on our good and bad days. My son would have been 5 this year, and she’s just started what I call her journey in grief. You never lose it. It’s always there, but the first year is the hardest.”

Golay and her husband, Riley, began the business in 2018 around her hobbies of refinishing furniture and making crafts, so she could have daughter Colie, 7, by her side.

She did the same with their other children: another son Azlee, 4, and daughter Hennie, 1. Golay was 36 weeks pregnant with Raz when she had a rare placental abruption and was rushed to the hospital.

The baby didn’t have a heartbeat.

“We don’t know what caused it,” Golay said. “I was home, then all of a sudden I was sitting in the living room and felt super ill. I went to the bathroom and started puking, then I started bleeding. I knew something was wrong.

“I had to have a bunch of blood transfusions because of what was going on. I couldn’t give birth right away or I couldn’t do a C-section, because of the amount of blood I was losing.

“I was in the hospital for a couple of days. It’s kind of crazy what your brain does. It blocks out a lot of things.”

Raz Lee was delivered stillborn Jan. 26, 2019, at Sacred Heart Medical Center. Family surrounded him.

Because Golay is in the public eye at the store where people saw she was pregnant, that required being open regularly about what had happened. She found support from other women who lost children, including her mother, Carol King, whose twins had died.

“People were just amazing through it,” said Golay, adding that it’s difficult to describe that type of grief, going from anticipation while pregnant to “excruciating” pain.

“You can’t put into words the amount of pain,” she said. “Over the years, I’ve become very good at being able to block some of it. When you open that door to let your emotions go, it’s too heavy, it’s too much.

“We all cope in different ways. Talking helps hugely, although it’s the hardest thing to do.”

Garmon has had those conversations with Golay.

“Finding Dani and being able to talk to someone who has walked that path has helped, because being a loss parent is devastating” something she said can make you “feel really alone.”

When Garmon recently shared her idea to sell some of her sewn creations and donate some, Golay said she was all in.

“I always wanted to do something for Raz that could help people, but I hadn’t figured out what it was,” Golay said.

“Then, when she sent me that message about sewing blankets, I was like, ‘get them in here yesterday.’ I just love that she does that, and that I can try to help get her exposure.”

The Garmons hope to have other children. She’s stayed in touch with another mom who received in utero treatments for her son diagnosed with the same condition as Dax.

The other baby boy recently had a kidney transplant and is doing great, Garmon said.

For that boy and Dax, the women had a weekly amnioinfusion treatment by Dr. Michael Barsoom, an OB-GYN at CHI Health in Nebraska, where Garmon traveled after researching Dax’s condition.

A developing baby’s kidneys normally make urine, which creates amniotic fluid. Without kidneys, amniotic fluid can run dangerously low. Adequate amniotic fluid also is needed for the baby’s lungs to grow. Some babies survive with those consistent infusions of fluid into the uterus.

“The goal was to get Dax to 36 weeks,” Garmon said. “I was in the UW hospital for a while awaiting his birth. The plan was for him to receive care at Seattle Children’s.”

Garmon went into labor at 35 weeks and five days. He was born July 29, 2023, and they got those hours with him. His parents knew he’d have to battle for life.

“There is just so much about the human body we don’t know and understand,” she said. “I believe those amnioinfusions gave us that time with our son. He was definitely able to be here longer with us because of those.

“I want the sales of these blankets to help create more blankets to donate to families who have experienced child loss, to get them into NICUs to give at their discretion.”

Golay and Garmon hope the blankets at The Bohemian also help open up conversations.

“One thing that both of us would want is to make sure that people don’t feel alone,” Golay said.

“We want them to know they can reach out to us. I think that was healing and helpful for us. I don’t want people to be scared. It’s something heavy and yucky, for lack of a better term, but you don’t have to go through it alone.”

Garmon had known that isolated feeling.

“As lonely as it feels, you’re not alone.”

We want them to know they can reach out to us. I think that was healing and helpful for us. I don’t want people to be scared. It’s something heavy and yucky, for lack of a better term, but you don’t have to go through it alone.” Danielle “Dani” Golay