Private Therapeutic Sessions in Los Angles

Dr. Ivy Margulies founded Angels Born Still to offer grieving families a place for grief support with a profound approach to healing after a pregnancy loss (including miscarriage, termination from any reason, late pregnancy loss, stillbirth, and infant death) can be possible.

Dr. Margulies is first dedicated to improving the care and information families need at the hospital. The heightened emotional moments after stillbirth, or miscarriage, compel families in shock to make profound decisions they may later regret. Hospitals are often impersonal and rush families into action, affording them only a few hours to spend with their deceased infant. The policy of some hospitals is to take the baby to the morgue right away, and the first time a parent sees their baby is in the cold and impersonal experience of the morgue. Although others will allow the baby to stay with its parents for a limited time, some will also qualify as much time as you need. There is little consistency to draw on, and Angels Born Still is available to help you navigate these difficult moments that honor the baby, the family, and this life-changing event.

Dr. Margulies is a certified death midwife. Death midwifery is an ancient practice, yet the term "death midwife" is relatively new. Just as a birth midwife assists the family in bringing a new life into the world, a death midwife helps educate the family on processes associated with the transition of life into death at any age.

Ivy's work is designed to create a sacred space for parents who have lost their newborns for reasons that are unknown and make no sense. She interacts with the mother and her partner to offer council and loving attention around their loss and guides the family in after-death care of the infant body; empowering families to create personal and deeply meaningful funerals, wakes, and memorials at home that can honor the life that has been tragically and suddenly taken from them.

Up until a century ago, home funerals were the norm. The modern business of the funeral industry often creates an impersonal experience for a family. The goal of Angels Born Still is to reclaim the ritual and offer an understanding of death as something to be revered, not feared.

Dr. Ivy will help you make the right decision for your family as relates to the body's final disposition and whether to do a traditional burial, cremate or explore the option of a 'green' burial. Dr. Ivy's work elevates the conventional funeral home because of its personalization and empathy. When there is a stillbirth or an infant dies in the hospital, parents are not aware of their legal rights; they can take their baby home for three days and conduct a memorial that allows them the time to say their loving goodbyes fully.

Today, our culture is conditioned to be death phobic, grief illiterate, and fearful of death. We often fear seeing it, holding it, touching it, and being with it. Death can often be viewed as morbid and not part of the circle of life. Angels Born Still believes in the life cycle's sanctity and helps reconnect us to the natural rituals associated with death and dying. Death is a universal connection no matter what stage life is taken; an embryo, an infant, a child, a young person, or an adult.

It is not fair in a modern world like ours to have stillbirths, yet there are one every 21 minutes in the United States. With every one of those tragic events, a mother needs loving guidance and support during those dark hours, days and months following this painful heart-wrenching experience. Mothers and their families need death support, grief support, and compassion. They need to be held emotionally and physically and know they are loved because although their child may have been stillborn, they are still born and matter.