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Common Questions

Lesson 11 from: Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Sandy Puc

Common Questions

Lesson 11 from: Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Sandy Puc

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Lesson Info

11. Common Questions

Next Lesson: Final Thoughts

Lesson Info

Common Questions

we're gonna ask a question before we get jump right in with her. Question is from Mary Aylin photography and she says, How do we contact or promote? Now I lay me down to sleep in hospitals, in areas where now I lay me down to sleep. Doesn't already have a connection. We actually have a ton of information on the website. But really, if it's a case, especially if you're in another country and you're just starting out, we do recommend that you contact headquarters. I'm sure after this presentation they will be very busy. So we do appreciate the patients that you have. We mentioned that there are six people in the office. We probably need 30 or 40 would be helpful. So please don't feel like you're being ignored. Give us a little time, and headquarters can actually help you with the process of starting and building in your area. Great, thank you. Another question from Mary from Costa Rica because she says, I know that this is a delicate thin line. Is there correct way again that a studio or...

photographer convention that they're affiliated with the program that doesn't make it sound like they're using the program for a business advantage. Um, you know, I think you'd be surprised as much as we we state that we don't want to be promoting your business. Obviously, people like to work with people who do good things. So there people are going to find you and are going to ask you for your services. And we're comfortable with that. We know that. But again, the real key is at that moment in that session, you should be an hour. Let me down to sleep, Representative. You should be dressed appropriately. Should have the appropriate literature, including, if possible, a business card. That is Now I lay me down to sleep And then outside of that, anything you do for your business, any contacts you make outside of that, it's totally appropriate to do so as long as you're not using. Now I lay me down to sleep as the springboard. You know, I'm a member and would like to do this. It should be I own this business and would like to work with you. So as long as you're separating those, it should not be a problem. One more question actually came up, and I think it needs some clarification for all the people watching Aaron Sele asked. Does watching this Webcast result in certification? It does not thank you for asking. This is a full training course, and it is a requirement of becoming a member. Of course there are. We do have an online training course, and we have area coordinators are trainers that travel around the United States, and we hope to very shortly end up in Canada. I have taught this in Canada before, and we hope to take it to your oppa's well. And someday I hope we're teaching it all over the world, and I think you guys creativelive might be helping us make that happen. So so this does not automatically qualify you as a member. However, if you are interested, we'd love you to start the process of joining. Now I lay me down to sleep, getting that paperwork filled out, and from there they will let you know if there is additional training that you need to have handle. But this is actually the course that we do teach the full 68 hour course that we teach. That is a requirement, so you're really close by spending your time with us. You are absolutely getting them great. And we talked a little bit earlier. But if you have more questions for now, I lay me down to sleep. The best place to go is to their Facebook page, and I continue to ask questions there. So back over to both of you, All right? And of course we brought Cheryl back here. We're getting to the tail end of this program, and we appreciate everybody hanging on our live audience creativelive again. The fact that they have provided this venue in this opportunity to share all of this information with so many people that we could never have reached It's the the progress that we've made in the opportunities that we've had. To me, this one feels like, you know, it's magnified 10 times what we've ever done because, you know, we're trying to help Canada, where Trower dreaming about going to Europe. And here we've just opened the door to countries all over the world. So there is just some extreme gratitude on our end as well. Um, we are at the point where we're gonna try toe close this program. We do have a few more slides to go through that we want to cover, um, and hopefully end with a really nice strong ending. So we've got a gun through retouching. We've gone through the process working with the families. Now what? The requirement? The gift requirement, all photographers, all affiliated photographers must provide a CD with high resolution images to families and provide them with the full copyright released to print at their discretion. Make sure that copyright releases on the disc of images or in the notification letter sent to the family affiliated photographers may not accept any money for this and as it is a required gift to the family, I was recommended with the copyright released that you do take a picture or scan it and put it on the disk. People lose papers all the time and trust me, they will not lose that CD if they can help it. So that gives him the A surety. What you don't want is a family to be standing at Wal Mart, you know, trying to order images for their relatives and to have an employee saying these air professional pictures. You can't have them. This is and this happens It's a very tough time for those families, and we certainly don't want to disrupt their ability to offer this to print their images. Additional gifts that some photographers offer Some of photographers try to get an image for the memorial service if possible. Typically, the turnaround on that is 1 to 2, maybe four days at most. So please don't make the offer. If you cannot fall through and provide that image, it does not usually mean all of the images. It might just be one that you may say, you know, if you have a memorial in on Wednesday, I could get I could email you one image that you could put it on display. Many photographers provide a video slideshow with music attached to it. It is very important that you use copyright free music. We do have a lot of music that has been donated to us, um, beautiful songs that are very appropriate for this type of work, and you can find them on the forum. And now I let me down to sleep dot com. There is a music room and it is in the main section, and they're really beautiful songs. Many of which were written and produced by families who have lost a child. So they're very sensitive, and they very much apply to the work that we do. When you're delivering these images their several ways, you can do it with Cheryl. Of course, I invited her to my studio, but after a few months of more and more and more and you know we were doing so many babies, we did change that system to mailing the images to the families. Now we do try to send a letter to the family a few days before we send the images. What this does is it gives them an opportunity to prepare for those images to arrive. As much as the parents want the images and they're hoping for them, it is still very startling to go out to your mailbox and all of a sudden be hit with. You know, these are the images you're waiting for. So it is that we do have a letter that is on the Forum on Available to you. That that will tell, you know, that's a nice letter to tell the families that you have been working on the files and that they will be arriving soon, and that just gives the family heads up to emotionally prepare for that as well. You can personally deliver them to the family if you want again. This is something where it is not appropriate to say, Let's watch these. Let's sit down and watch these. In fact, I have many of the parents we have served. Um, I had a session come in Ah, year two ago. And as I was photographing this mother and father in their twins, I just kept thinking, I know you from somewhere and I couldn't I didn't want to say anything cause I clearly had photographed these babies before. And finally the mom turned to me and she said, Do you recognize me? And, um, I said, You know, I'm so sorry. I know I know your name and I don't know why I can't remember. And she said that she was, uh, Now I lay me down to sleep. Family. They actually were a set of triplets, and they had lost one of the babies. And this was years after the babies were three or four. This is Matteo's sisters, and they were probably two or three at this time. And, um, the interesting thing was, you know, through that conversation that opened the door for me to realize who she was, we started talking about it and she told me that. And this is years later. She told me that she has never seen the images that she had never opened the should never up to so desperately love them. But she was not ready to see them yet. So you can imagine that there are parents who will receive these images and they won't open them. They'll put them in a safe place, and they will wait until it's an appropriate time for them. So it isn't appropriate to try to be a part of that experience. You need to drop them off and let them have let them make their own decisions as to when they want to see and view those images. Couple questions. We're gonna go through these really quickly. How often will you be called? That depends on where you live. If you're in a busy city, it may be more often if you're in a rural area. It may be virtually, you know, one or two times every six months, so it really does depend. The bigger area you're in, the more reserves we try tohave so that you're not over tasks we address. Do you drop everything and go? Absolutely not. Your family and your life is foremost and anybody who allows us to get in the way of that will end up eventually leaving our membership. If you let this overwhelm your life, you will eventually determine that you can't serve the families at all. And we certainly don't want that to happen to get the parents consent. That was one of the questions we addressed. It is so important. We want to make sure we mentioned that it has to be done before the session is actually started. Absolutely. I think we beat this one up. You need to log in the session. And the hardest question is, what if I have to say no? What if I really can't go? That's OK. You have to understand that if there are no photographers able to serve, we do have to say no far more often than we would like to. But that is again. This goes back to this is volunteer service, our photographers, we want them to be healthy and happy before they provide the service. And if you have Ah, no, As Cheryl said before, the nurses in the hospital do have cameras, they can take images and you can recommend that they go that route and that we have recherche artists that can help them make these images beautiful. This was really important that I post now I lay me down to sleep images on my website blawg or any forum? Absolutely not. We do have a very strong stance on this thes air private images, even if you have the parent's permission and they say it's okay. Keep in mind that many times through the grieving and bereavement process, they feel very indebted to you. So even though they may not be comfortable and they don't want their child exploited that way, they may say yes when they really mean no. So we really requests that. You try not to do that. Some families we've contacted for educational purposes, some families become dear friends of these photographers. We've become very close to certain families we've served and in that case we are able to tell their stories at an appropriate time. Long after that, child has passed and where we feel like we're sharing a beautiful story and not taking advantage of these families, may I promote. Now I lay me down to sleep on your website. Absolutely. We have actually all kinds of literature and information that will help you do that the more times people click are. But in the more information the world gets, the more families we will eventually serve. So please do promote post. We love it when you post on your Facebook, you know your blawg again not using the images but telling the stories. And if you have, we actually have images that can be used such a Cheryl's image on and some that we do publicly allowed to be used. So if you really have an interesting story or something, we could provide you some help there as well. How long after the baby has passed? Can it still be photographed? Honestly, there's no right answer for that. The longest we have done was 14 days, but this baby was well preserved. So, of course, our goal is as soon as possible. But again, it really has to do with educating yourself and asking the right questions how long they required to keep the digital files. That is really the photographers choice we recommend. For five years, I have everyone I've ever photographed that I couldn't imagine getting rid of them. However, we have had one family within one year contact us because they lost the CD. And so I know that I'm holding and I'm storing some things that may never be used. But I just could not get rid of them at this point in a perfect world. And maybe somebody out there is listening that's going to open up a new door. We would love to have a massive storage unit that every photographer could upload these image, and we would have an archive, a safe place for everything to come. Just throwing it out there. You never know what I mean. That's the hardest thing. We've looked into that a 1,000, times, and we have just not been able to find with the cost of that is just so unbelievable because of the amount of captures that we deal with that it's not an option in a perfect world, and I will throw this one out there as well. We would love to have a telephone system where we could have a 1 800 number, that we could process these calls and serve these families better. But central. Yeah, very centralized. And in the total perfect world, we will eventually and I believe that this will happen. We will eventually have different areas across the country and hopefully around the world where we have headquarters where we can facilitate the photographers and families on a closer level. I mean, these are things that take massive amount of funding. When you think of organizations like the Red Cross and these places that are global, that didn't happen overnight, and the amount of donations and the funding that would take is unbelievable. So I always say, Throw it out there and you never know. So if maybe somebody's listening that knows something we don't, you know, we're certainly our goal is we know we're gonna grow. We've seen so much growth that it's it's impossible that this won't happen. It's just a matter of finding the right resource is and making it happen. Is there an age limit? Volunteers There is. It is 18. You want to make sure that you stay within that limit. You cannot bring your Children to a session. We, you know, if you've got somebody that's younger than that, they do have to a sign the ESA and the agreement and be have to be a of an age of 18. What if I'm pregnant? This is very common with our volunteers, and it is your complete and total discretion. The concern is typically that going into a room where a family mother has suffered a loss or father and you're carrying a child, the concern is that that would be hard on the family. Keep in mind that in the hospital they're nurses that are pregnant. There are people they're having babies that are pregnant, so it's not uncommon. But there is a comfort level there, and most of our volunteers will actually take a leave of absence closer to the end of their pregnancy, just to ensure that they're not putting anyone making anyone uncomfortable. And it's, you know, towards the end of their pregnancy. Sometimes it's a mental thing. It's hard to be around those situations when you're having your own child, so it's completely up to you. Well, I become emotionally callous to this work. That is a great question, because that was actually one of my biggest fears is I didn't want it to be something that I just was a machine and did, and I can assure you that it is much easier now. I mean, we can walk into a room. We can honestly drive to the hospital laughing and joking and talking. We get to the hospital room and the mood changes. We get serious and we go on. We provide that service. And unlike Cheryl's event, where I was completely traumatized and cried for two days, we can leave that hospital and go right back to our lives and laughing and joking. And so we don't want you to become callous to this work, however, volunteers who have served many years, it is a job. It is something where we know sometimes I forget how powerful the work is, but I think emotionally I always I feel like I always connect. What if I receive a call from the hospital and I'm informed are and I'm informed that it's that the early fetal demise is due to a pregnancy termination. This is definitely one we need to address because everybody has their own personal opinion on abortion. This is a statement that I wrote early on. When I built this organization with Cheryl. We were trying to solve this problem because very quickly we were being faced with photographers who found out one way or another through the hospital that the termination was due to an abortion. So I want to read the statement first, and then I will share with you my personal opinion. My opinion is, unless you walk a mile in those parents shoes, you should not judge them for their choices. To me, the fact that they're calling us means that they must love this child and truly want images to remember him or her by Each photographer must make their own decisions and follow their hearts when dealing with this matter. So my personal opinion and this is one I counseled with my own father. And he is the one really that told me this and I had to really think about it. If a family is calling you, um, there is a great love for that child. Nobody would be terminating a pregnancy and want to photograph it if there wasn't love. So in almost all cases, and I would assume all cases early termination would be due to the risk that the mother has in most cases. So whether she wants to do this or not, if it's putting her life at risk, and if her family and loved ones have made that decision to terminate this pregnancy, then we have to be respectful of that wish. So to be very honest with you, the best thing to do is to not ask. First of all, it's not appropriate to ask, and if you somehow and typically you would not be given that information. But if for some reason you hear a nurse or somebody mentioned something, I always say, just close your ears and just try to ignore it. You're there as a za representative to serve that family because they love that child, and that's really to me. All you need to know. We don't want to get into politics and try to argue points. There's no win on that. It's really just a matter of at that time you're serving that family, and in most cases when a in all cases that we've had, if a family is terminating a pregnancy. It is due to a terminal condition that that child has, and that child's life is not gonna be compatible after birth. And, you know, again, it's, you know, the parents choice and your choice of the photographer. But, you know, it's it's a hard decision that any parent really, really has to make. And on the other side of it, if you do not want to take that session, it just say no, you don't have to take a stance on how you feel about it or what we're doing or what we're providing. It's just more appropriate to decline politely and then find if you can. Someone else. A za nonprofit organization now let me down to sleep does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, sexuality or personal choice. This information is confidential. Patient information is protected under HIPPA regulations, which health care providers and institutions are obligated to follow. This question should not be asked of the nurse or other health care workers calling to request our service. However, you may be inadvertently told unsolicited and confidential patient health information. Please use discretion. Taking care of yourself is also a really important part to this. And this is one that I feel like I had an a moment in my life that I realized how overwhelming this work can be. We have been at this for a couple years, and I had photographed just an enormous amount of babies and losses, and I had gotten much better at being, you know, keeping it together. And I cry. You all know I cry for everything, but I cry for happiness and sadness and everything in between. But in this case, I felt like I had a good handle on providing the service, and we did it regularly. One day I was in a regular photography session at my studio, beautiful six month old baby, and she was giggling and laughing and having such a, you know, just adorable session. Everything was perfect about this, and I remember very vividly I could even see the day, the light, the situation I was photographing from a ladder, and I remember she was on a sort of a bean bag and she was kicking and giggling. Should the cutest laugh in the whole world that I called up the ladder and I remember looking down at her and she just let out this huge scwill and just started giggling. And for whatever reason, and there was no reason for this whatsoever. I remember looking at her and like a flood. All of these babies, that and families that we had served all the sudden I was seeing their faces. And I remember very vividly thinking those parents will never hear a giggle like that and it shut me down. I stood there and she was kicking and I was trying to catch my breath and remember the mom looking at me and saying, Are you okay? And I said, Hang on just one second and I could feel that this I was about to lose it. And so I crawled off that letter. I said, I am so sorry. I just need to step out just for a couple minutes in. I didn't even get out the door, and I was completely, totally at a loss was hysterical crying, and it had nothing to do with the day or the moment or anything I had seen. It was just so random, and it actually scared me. It was something that I couldn't. I went to the back and everybody was like, What happened? What's wrong? And I said just I don't know And it took me a good 20 minutes to just compose myself. And of course I came back swollen. I didn't get this. Mom probably thought I was complete fruit, but she looked at me and she said, You okay? And I said, I am so sorry. I don't know what that was I explained. I gave her the 12th version, but she was very aware of the work that we do, and she gave me a big hug and said, It's OK, it's going field. But I just remember that as being my first intersection of realizing the burden that we take as a photographer for this organization. And it's not gonna be like a textbook. Okay, months three, baby 42 you're gonna feel really sad. It is something that can blindside you. It's something that builds up inside of you. It's something that every person handles differently. And at that time I took a leave of acts absence because I realized that I needed to address a few things that I needed to just maybe step away from shooting as much as I waas and just focus on my family and my Children and take a big breath. So, um, it is important to talk about how you feel. We do have a lot of medical professionals. When we started this, it was really important for us to talk to psychologists and, you know, just physicians and anybody that would help us understand what we would be going through. And we got a lot of great insight. We posted it on the Forum, and I think we've really you know, we're always on guard, making sure that our volunteers are healthy and safe. And if you're feeling uncomfortable, if you're feeling sad and overwhelmed, you know, do find somebody to talk about, find a friend. I know. I would say the majority. A good portion of our members don't talk to their spouses. I know that my work was far too hard for my husband at the time. He couldn't he just couldn't do it. And he didn't even want to hear it. And it wasn't that he wasn't supportive. It just he couldn't. He is very emotional person and could not go through that process. So, uh, out of all the sessions I've done. He attended one session. It was the one that I forgot the cards, but But he came down and I'll never forget. He stood in the back of the room, and at one point I looked over at him and he was so hysterically was biting his lips, trying not to fall apart. And I gave him a motion of go out because I knew this was hard for him, and that's honestly the only time he ever went. And the only time we ever talked about it. So finding somebody that you can talk to is also very important, and they don't have to be a member. But do be prepared for those unexpected emotional moments.

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