The Story that Started Something to Hold

A part of the Sikma’s Story —

My husband Luke and I spent years trying to grow our family. By the spring of 2018, we had been trying to get pregnant for nearly three years. I had a blog at the time called Our Blue Abode, where I shared about our little fixer-upper and, eventually, our infertility journey.

Opening up online felt vulnerable but healing. I discovered a small community of women who were walking through the same heartache, and I began to see how powerful it is to let others into our stories.

After 14 failed rounds of fertility medication and two canceled attempts to get to IUI, we felt led to take a break. That fall, we sold our home, moved into an RV, and drove from Indiana to Florida to reset. While there, something miraculous happened—we got pregnant naturally.

But just as quickly as we celebrated, we found ourselves grieving. That baby, our first, didn’t stay. We called them Storm, and we clung to the hope of heaven and the truth that our story wasn’t over. Though the loss was deep, our faith carried us.

This may have started from the story of the Sikma family, but God used a collection of stories in our community for this to be something. From our family members (& their family members!) giving so much of their time & resources, to our Board of Directors wholeheartedly serving this mission & every volunteer in between — Something to Hold has become a family in itself.

The baby that started the blankets —

We moved back to Indiana in the fall of 2020, bought another fixer-upper, and started rebuilding our life. Exactly one year after saying goodbye to Storm, we found out—on that very same date—that we were pregnant again. This little one we called Blueberry. We saw the heartbeat. We shared the joy with family. We believed this was the baby we would hold.

But at our medical dating scan, we were told Blueberry’s heart had stopped beating. I miscarried naturally two weeks later, after carrying the weight of both life and loss through Mother's Day and a family wedding. It was a grief unlike anything else.

That loss opened my heart in a new way. Blueberry taught me compassion—how you never truly know what someone is carrying when you pass them in the grocery store.

After that goodbye, I ached for something to hold. I had no babies in my arms, only babies in heaven. That summer, I found myself making a simple fleece tie blanket—something I learned to do as a child. It brought me peace. It was tangible. It gave me comfort. I didn’t know it at the time, but that blanket was the seed of what would become Something to Hold.

Four months later, I was pregnant again. As we waited and prayed, I shared the story of that blanket on our Instagram page on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. We asked if anyone knew a family missing a baby that day—and eight names were sent to us almost immediately.

We couldn’t choose just one. So we asked our small online community if they’d help us make and send eight blankets. Within 30 minutes, the cost and help were completely covered.

It was clear—there was a need, and people were ready to meet it.