While the cultural centre at Saddle Lake is often times a place where the community comes to mourn, last Thursday, it was transformed into a place of celebration and joy.
Babies were everywhere, sitting in bumbo chairs and being fed, having diapers changed, and toddling around while playing with balloons.
This was Saddle Lake’s sixth annual baby celebration for the reserve’s babies born in 2015, with 56 babies and their parents, grandparents and caregivers in attendance.
“This is the biggest turnout we’ve had,” said Charity Wenger, a community health representative with the Canadian Pre-Natal Nutrition Program run out of the Saddle Lake Health Centre. Wenger, along with fellow health representative Gloria White, helped to organize the event that she said was meant to be a “positive” event.
“There’s so much sorrow, so much tears, so much crying,” said Laura Makokis, the baby nurse who does home visits, of the community’s losses to suicide and other deaths in 2015. The annual baby celebration gives new parents a chance to enjoy themselves, celebrate and move past the losses. “For them, they can forget about that for a few hours.”
“It’s good to honour new life. This is what we’re doing,” Makokis said, saying this was the message of the elder’s prayers on the day.
Each baby received a memento at the event, a star baby blanket, made by Flora Jackson, while several door prizes were also handed out.
Twenty-four-year-old Cree Makokis was a first-time mother, who gave birth to Braelyn Makokis-Dion last July. Finding out she was expecting came as a surprise.
But once she got over the shock, she welcomed the news, since she had tried to conceive for two years before unsuccessfully. “I was filled with joy because I didn’t know if I could have one.”
With high anticipation of her baby’s birth, Makokis went through the Saddle Lake Health Centre’s pre-natal program, and she, along with her partner, did her best to prepare for Braelyn’s arrival.
“It feels really good to see all the parents I was in the program with,” she said, adding she got to chat with them and find out about their baby’s milestones and growth. She was glad to be included in the event, saying it was great to see the health centre “recognizing all the parents doing a good job of raising their kids.”
The community’s 2016 New Year’s Baby was also honoured on the day. Benjamin Dion-White was born at 5:33 p.m. on Jan. 5 at the St. Therese Health Centre, to father Cashton White and Alyssa House, and he received a number of gifts, donated by community programs and businesses.
While celebration was on the agenda, the event also recognized the babies born that did not live to see the New Year. Families and parents that had lost children in 2015, either through miscarriages, stillbirths or the death of a baby, remembered their children, with each one releasing a pink or blue balloon into the sky.
