Five Years After Their Son Beau Was Stillborn, Sabrina and Brenden Miller Brought 17 Comfort Bags to a Michigan Birth Center for Grieving Mothers

In Marshall, Michigan, nurses at Oaklawn Hospital’s birth center received 17 hand-packed comfort bags on May 4, the fifth birthday of a baby who never came home. Sabrina and Brenden Miller, whose son Beau Anthony was stillborn, assemble the bags each year for mothers who go through the same loss, according to an InvestigateTV report carried by WRDW on Nov. 5. The delivery itself took place in May, as Oaklawn’s own account of the visit shows.

Seventeen bags on Beau’s fifth birthday

Oaklawn Hospital reposted a May 12 story that WILX News 10 first reported on May 11. It says the Millers deliver the bags each year around Beau’s birthday, May 4, and brought 17 this time. Each bag holds socks, lotion, a notebook, a water bottle and other self-care items, and nurses in the birth center give them to mothers whose babies were stillborn. The family assembles the bags at a children’s table in their home, according to WRDW.

Sabrina Miller told WILX that she hopes the bags simply sit in the room gathering dust, meaning that no mother will need them. At the same time, she said, “someone’s going to find comfort in them, it’s bittersweet.” At the hospital that day she said of her son: “He is 5 today.”

The couple, who live in Mason, Michigan, per the hospital’s repost, have four other children. Sabrina Miller said Beau remains part of the family’s count of children and that the family celebrates him every year. Brenden Miller said the deliveries are a chance to spread his son’s name a little further.

Two bags from friends that started it all

The project is called Beau’s Bags, and WRDW reported that the name came from care packages the Millers’ two best friends brought after Beau’s death. Beau was stillborn in early May 2021 at Oaklawn’s birth center. In a July 2021 story on the hospital’s website, Sabrina Miller, a preschool teacher, said friends filled two large bags with a blanket and snacks after Beau’s birth. A few weeks later she began journaling and decided to do something similar for other mothers.

She paid for the first bags herself and later accepted donations. The first bag went to Oaklawn in early June 2021 and was given to a mother at the hospital. Most bags at that time held a water bottle, relaxing hygiene products, a blanket, a journal, a pen and a note listing resources for financial and emotional help.

Tracee Hathaway, a charge nurse at Oaklawn, said then that the Millers’ kindness at the birth center had been overwhelming. The 2026 coverage quotes another nurse, Jill Hays, who works at the birth center and said the bags give mothers something prepared by a mother who has been through the same process or journey to hold onto.

What stillbirth means for the families who receive the bags

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines stillbirth as the loss of a pregnancy at or after the 20th week, and says it takes a serious toll on families’ health and well-being. The agency also advises anyone who is pregnant and notices something unusual to talk to a doctor.

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health, says stillbirth is the death of a fetus at or after 20 weeks and can occur in the womb or during labor and delivery. Its page lists care after a stillbirth as part of the topic, notes that care typically includes supporting the family, and links to groups that offer information or support.

For the nurses at Oaklawn, the bags give a practical way to say something in a room where words are hard to find. For the Millers, each delivery is a yearly marker of a son who is still counted among their children.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Ad Meskens – CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons