Despite the jingle belling and everyone telling you to be of good cheer, the holiday season can still be the most stressful time of the year.
Especially for those who may not have all the support they’d like, it’s hard to imagine facing an unplanned – or perhaps unwanted – pregnancy at a time of year when even normal family tensions can often lead to heightened stress or depression. It’s not hard to imagine how a teenage girl (or a woman of any age) could feel overwhelmed in that situation.
That’s where the Cochrane Pregnancy Care Centre comes in. The centre can fill the gap, providing the kind of support they’ve now been offering in town for 30 years.
Organizers were thrown a last-minute curve at their Raising Hope Fall Gala fundraiser on Nov. 18, when scheduled master of ceremonies and keynote speaker Jessica Jansen had to cancel due to an illness. The author of Bring the Joy, Jansen is a well-known motivational speaker from Calgary, with a passion for helping others unlock their dreams.
But the last-minute change to the event’s programme didn’t stop executive director Danelle Schwab from stepping up to the microphone and delivering a riveting, inspiring, and heart-wrenching address, where she shared her personal life story.
“I was the direct result of an unexpected pregnancy,” she told the crowd.
Schwab’s story helped explain how and why she decided to make Cochrane’s pregnancy centre her life’s work, and how the butterfly came to be the theme of not just the evening at the Nov. 18 gala, but of the idea of transformation that drives the centre’s core philosophy.
In 2018, Schwab was a labour and delivery nurse at Calgary’s Rocky View General Hospital with two little girls of her own. She had already experienced a complicated miscarriage, and found herself pregnant again.
“I was wrestling with my identity and trying to figure out how to balance my career and my call to be a mother,” she recounted.
She saw a plastic butterfly on the ground, and bent over to scoop it up, turning it over in her hand. She said the butterfly gave her hope in that moment.
“As I looked at the figure in my hand, I saw beyond the beauty, and I saw the journey the little caterpillar had to take to get here, and I instantly connected to that,” she said.
She likened the caterpillar's journey to her own, with all the twists and turns she’d experienced to get to where she was at that point.
“The butterfly represented a transformation that I was experiencing,” she said. “I was being molded and shaped into something new and beautiful.”
But two weeks later, on New Year’s Eve, she had another miscarriage.
A couple of months after that, she boarded a plane from New York to Toronto, when her blood pressure suddenly dropped, her eyes rolled back and she went unresponsive. She had experienced a bleeding stomach ulcer.
And she found out she was five weeks pregnant.
She let go of her nursing career in 2020 to help care for her mother, who had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Her mother is now in remission. Schwab also supported a friend who died of cancer in 2021.
Through it all, she said the butterfly served as a beacon of hope.
“I believed that something beautiful would come from each of these challenges,” she said.
A greater understanding of her worth, her value, and her purpose led Schwab to becoming the executive director of the Cochrane Pregnancy Care Centre in 2021.
“I stepped into this role as executive director where I can bring that transformation into someone else’s life,” she said.
The centre was launched in 1993 as a response to community needs, providing education, resources and support to those experiencing unexpected pregnancies.
Schwab said they create a safe environment for clients to make a pregnancy decision that is fully informed, evidence-based, and free from external influence.
They use a counselling-based approach to meet women’s emotional and practical needs during and after an unexpected pregnancy – no matter what decision she makes.
“We want our clients to know they’re not alone, and that we’re here to walk with them on their journey for as long as they need support,” Schwab said.
In addition to the counselling aspect, the centre also provides clothing, toys, food, and other practical items to clients
As might be expected, butterflies are seen everywhere at the centre. They also were the theme of the primary auction item at the Nov. 18 gala – a painting by Mindi Oaten called “Wings of Hope.”
Susan Hastie – clearly not a trained auctioneer – kept the crowd entertained as she added a twist to normal auction rules. As the bidding steadily exceeded her starting estimate of a market value of “at least $2,000,” Hastie offered a suggestion to those who wanted to donate but were reluctant to enter the bidding process.
Many were persuaded into adding $100 to the standing bids, effectively teaming up with the highest bidder. The end result was a winning bid of $10,700 for the painting, which was then donated back to the centre to display at their facility at 208-100 Grande Blvd.
The Cochrane Pregnancy Care Centre is a non-profit organization. To learn more about their work or how to make a donation, go to cochranepreg.com.
