We believe that every parent deserves a beautiful picture
to remember their child by.
There are many ways to commemorate a loss. All are beautiful, bittersweet and personal in their own way.
Some bereaved parents find solace in writing poetry, while others put up a cherished photograph in their living room. Some craft ornaments and soft toys to bury alongside their child and some seek comfort in support groups. There is no right or wrong way to grieve.
A Possum Portrait increases the commemorative options available to parents and therefore exists as a complement to services like loss photography. We want to give parents who feel that their grief journey is supported by a visual keepsake the opportunity of memorialising their child with a drawing.
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We understand that just because your child is not here to be seen by us, you still think about your baby and want to have it as near as you can. You may also suffer from the fact that the photos you do have are, for whichever reason, not fit to be openly displayed in your home.
A Possum Portrait is a hand-drawn portrait of your baby, based on one or more photographic reference pictures which you provide with your application. In concert with our resident artist, you decide the way in which your photo(s) will be adapted into a drawing.
Thanks to our donors and sponsors, upon completion of the process you will receive the portrait drawing of your angel baby along with a high resolution scan of your portrait free of charge.
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1 in 4
pregnancies
in Australia
ends in loss.
How common is perinatal loss?
We currently operate in Australia, by most metrics a thriving and developed country. Even so, 6 angel babies are born here every day. 2 babies are lost to neonatal death, and a miscarriage occurs every 3,5 minutes. *
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Unbeknownst to most people, approximately 80% of all pregnancies never reach full term. The majority of these losses occur in the first trimester. A woman may not even have realised that she was pregnant.
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As of about 12 weeks gestation however (a full-term pregnancy lasts around 40 weeks), the foetus has reached a stage of development so that, should a loss occur, there exists a baby with distinct human features. Therefore, babies as of approximately this stage of gestation can have their portrait drawn.
By the time a pregnancy reaches the 2nd trimester,
the rate of miscarriage drops significantly. It now hovers around 10-15% and keeps decreasing as the pregnancy advances. Still, over two thousand families are affected by a stillborn baby each year, and about a third as many have babies who die in the neonatal period, which is understood to be up to 28 days postpartum.
We want to offer our bespoke bereavement care service to every loss parent who wishes to commemorate their baby with a portrait drawing.