As Long As I'm Living

Why did MY baby die, when so many others live?

This is a question that we're sure all of you have asked yourselves at one point or another. We talk about our feelings on this topic and how they've evolved over the months since Aiden and Quinn died.

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

This week (1/18) marks the second anniversary of Quinn's death. To give Alina a break from editing, we're releasing this Instagram Live we did back in November when we were together in DC for our podcast anniversary!

We talk about things like:

If you'd rather watch this live instead of listen, you can do that here!

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

Dr. Laura Arling is a Washington, DC-based pediatrician and mom of 3, including her first son, Remy, who died of a rare heart-related condition in his first year of life. She has built a practice around taking care of "rainbow baby* families" -- those who are parenting living children and have also experienced the death of at least one child.

In this episode, we talk to her about the unique considerations she takes into account when treating the children of traumatized parents, and we ask the following questions, among others:

Finally, we know that many of you listening are not SIDS parents but worry about SIDS. We ask Dr. Arling directly for guidance for parents of alive infants so that they can prevent SIDS to the best of their ability. We are so grateful she agreed to come on the podcast!

*We knew when we released this episode that "Rainbow Baby" is a controversial term, but we learned from our Instagram community that some actually find it offensive. We are leaving the episode title as is since it's the simplest way to encapsulate Dr. Arling's pediatric specialty, but please know that we don't think of any of your loved and lost babies as "storms." We'd encourage you to listen to the episode anyway, despite the title, and we do actually address the controversy of the term in the episode. Sending love to all of you! Xo, Alina and Judith.

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Things we talk about in this episode:

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

2023: You better not be as f***** up as our internet horoscopes suggest! Listen to this episode to hear what is allegedly in store for us next year. Are you as scared as we are? We reject these horoscopes and have decided to move forward with ease into the next year. 

2022... thank you, next!

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Things we talk about in this episode:

- Happier New Year: last year's new year episode, where we talk 2021 and 2022 horoscopes

- Judith's 2022 and 2023 yearly horoscopes! (Sagittarius)

- Alina's 2022 and 2023 yearly horoscopes! (Capricorn)

- Cafe Astrology horoscopes -- the ones that are slightly less terrifying

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

We get by with a little help from our friends, and now you can too!

This is an episode designed for you -- a grieving person -- to share with your friends, so that they can learn how to support you better. We recap all of the tips, tricks, and lessons learned from our friends who graciously joined us on the podcast over the past few weeks, and we have also included a little glossary of other episodes of our podcast that would be helpful for grief supporters (links below).

If you are the friend of a grieving person and you've arrived here... congratulations! You are a good friend. Either you found this on your own (wow!) or your grieving person wants to involve you in their life, as difficult as it is right now. We are honored to have you, and we validate your experience and know it is hard for you too. We hope you find this helpful.

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The Friendship Series!

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Other helpful episodes for friends of grievers:

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

There's only a few people in the world you can ask to help edit your dead son's eulogy. For Judith, this person is Miriam.

Their friendship was based on first boyfriends, late-night movies, and sneaking into hotel pools. Fifteen years later, life looks really different, but they're still just as close. Miriam found a way to help Judith carry Aiden's loss even though she never met him in person and this episode is a look at what it looks like when a friend gets it right.

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Other episodes in the Friendship Series!

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Things we talk about in this episode:

- Rainbow Rings

- Grief Needs a Witness, an Interview with Dr. Denise Mandel | ALAIL

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

The first thing Judith and Alina bonded over was the fact that they both had pregnant friends named Julia. A few weeks ago, you met "Judith's Julia" and today, we introduce you to "Alina's Julia" in the continuation of our friendships after loss series!

Alina and Julia met a decade ago through Kaylee, who you all know as Quinn's other parent. They spent their twenties in deep conversation and big feelings, and for a while they were on the same track, marrying in 2017 and getting pregnant in 2020. Then... when Julia was 4.5 months pregnant with her first child, Alina's first child died and her marriage ended.

The conversation in this episode is a raw, honest, and unflinching look at what deep friendship looks like after loss. Alina and Julia have not been able to be as close as they used to be, as their life circumstances and mental health issues trigger each other, but the love between them has not gone away (not even close). We hope that this episode is validating to the experience of loss parents and friends of loss parents alike. We are all doing the best we can.

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Other episodes in the Friendship Series!

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

:::

As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

Just popping in with a reminder that no matter how much time has passed, our babies are still dead.

Today is Aiden's birthday, so please send all the love you can spare to Judith and to Aiden in the stars. 

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

Have you ever considered seeking the services of a medium to connect with your baby after they died? Judith has! In fact, she booked this session in November... 2021. She has been trying to meet with this guy for over a year, and the moment has finally arrived!

Did Aiden speak to Judith through the medium? Did we learn anything about his death? Are Aiden and Quinn friends in the stars? Listen to find out! 

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To join in our fundraiser visit www.buymeacoffee/alailpodcast. 

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

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As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.

Hello hello from Judith and Alina, your As Long As I'm Living podcast hosts.

We've been doing this podcast for a whole year now, and we LOVE it. L-O-V-E. It is truly a joy to bring you a new episode each week. That said, we are in this for the long haul, and we are realizing that we need to upgrade our recording equipment and editing platform. Will you help us?

We are trying to put together $500. This will cover a year's worth of 2 things:

1. The pro version of the recording studio we use for our episodes. This will allow us to record separate tracks, which will hopefully eliminate the talking-over-each-other situation that is... honestly it is just a staple of As Long As I'm Living podcast at this point, but shouldn't be! There are also some other cool features that we're excited about, but the separate tracks is the big win.

2. The pro version of the audio editing tool that Alina uses to produce the episodes. This will drastically speed up her editing time, and the easier it is for Alina to edit, the longer we will be able to keep this podcast in the realm of "hobby" instead of "chore."

You can click the link below to make a contribution to As Long As I'm Living podcast:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/alailpodcast

THANK YOU for even considering this ask. If a financial contribution is not an option for you at this time, fear not, there are other ways for you to support us!

First of all, please join us on Instagram! We have a thriving community over there, and we so enjoy engaging with podcast listeners in a more "two-sided" way. If you don't follow us over there already, hop on over to @aslongasimlivingpodcast and give us a follow!

Lastly, we would so appreciate if you would leave us a rating and review on whichever platform you use to listen to podcasts. That could be Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify... it doesn't matter! Any and all good reviews on any and all platforms will help us get into the ears of more loss parents, which is our main goal.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! There will be a regular episode tomorrow. 

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Follow As Long As I'm Living on Instagram at @aslongasimlivingpodcast, send us an email at [email protected], or visit us at anchor.fm/aslongasimliving! We would love to hear from you!

:::

As Long As I'm Living is a podcast about life, love, and laughter after infant loss. Judith and Alina are rebuilding Happier Ever After one day at a time despite excruciating grief and trauma and offering support to grievers of all flavors, but especially those who have lost a baby to SIDS, infant death, birth accidents, stillbirth, TFMR, ectopic pregnancy, or miscarriage.