quick clicks

article archive

expert q & a

community & groups

research baby names

prepare a birth plan

content channels

ip channel rss feeds

read birth stories

read parenting stories

recommended books

e-newsletters

safety recalls

ip diaries

ip store

mom of the month

dad of the month

editor's letter

letters to the editor

Matt Logelin

By Kelly Burgess

Each month, iParenting.com spotlights a father who inspires and moves us, who embodies the qualities that we all admire in a person, a man and a father. Above all, the Dad of the Month is dedicated to his children. Rich or poor, famous or not, he shines as an example of what fathering is all about.

In the midst of his greatest happiness, Matt Logelin was devastated by an unthinkable loss. Just 27 hours after giving birth via C-section, Matt's wife, Liz, was leaving her hospital bed to hold her newborn daughter, Madeline, for the first time. She said she felt lightheaded and passed out. Doctors and nurses rushed to her side, but nothing could be done. A fatal blood clot had traveled to her lung. She was just 30 years old.

Logelin was in shock, but he says there was some part of him that knew he had to hold it together. "A couple of hours after this happened I was in a room with a few of the nurses and a social worker and I was comforting them," he says. "Somehow I knew I needed to be up and dealing with things. I'd already lost a wife and didn't want my daughter to have a father who was not fully functional. That was my point of focus."

Logelin will never forget his first sight of his future wife at the Minneapolis gas station where they'd both stopped to fill up. "She picked me up," he says. "This beautiful woman picked me up. I guess I charmed her by holding the door."

Although they went to different high schools, they had mutual friends, and within a day after their first meeting they'd asked about each other and started dating shortly thereafter. They were together from then on, through their college years in different parts of the country and grad schools and jobs that kept them apart. Finally, in 2005, they married and settled in Los Angeles where Liz worked in management for Disney.

They had been looking forward to starting a family, so everything seemed perfect when Liz became pregnant. Logelin said even as she battled morning sickness they talked about eventually having another.

Liz developed complications several weeks before Madeline was born and was put on bed rest to stave off an early labor, but Madeline still made her appearance seven weeks early, small but very healthy. The new parents were ecstatic, and then the unthinkable happened.

Logelin says he spent the first few weeks in a bit of a stubborn fog. He felt there were people who didn't think a man could handle this adversity as well as a woman could – be as good a parent as a mother would be – and he was bound and determined to prove them wrong.

"My goal became to be the best parent ever, better than anyone else has seen," Logelin says. Eschewing the services of volunteer nurses and doulas, he began to care for his child. Weighing 4 pounds when she came home two weeks after her birth, Madeline was a fairly typical infant in that she kept her father up with her frequent feedings. He says the hardest thing was not learning how to do what he needed to do, but having the confidence to believe he could do it.

While learning both the practical and the emotional part of parenting, Logelin was also still dealing with an overwhelming grief. And he was worried about his family and Liz's family back in Minnesota, concerned that they would began feeling cut off from Madeline after losing their daughter. He had been keeping a blog for them to update them on Liz's pregnancy, and he went back to that online journal for comfort and communication. Renaming his blog Matt, Liz and Madeline (www.mattlogelin.com), he posted his grief, his joy in Madeline and reports on her progress, and he looked for support in the sometimes confusing world of new parenthood.

His blog, almost poetic in its unstructured prose, is photo-rich, showing a beautiful, growing little girl who is obviously the center of her daddy's life. The pathos of his story has attracted hundreds of thousands of readers and connected him to other grieving parents. They've formed a sort of loving bubble around him, supporting him and honoring and memorializing Liz's short life. Fans of the blog began to send Matt and Madeline gifts, and one group began organizing fundraising events for the family such as the Liz Goodman Logelin memorial 5K.

It would have been easy for Logelin to just gratefully accept these donations. After all, Liz was the primary breadwinner in the family and when she died their income was cut by 60 percent. Because they were so young, they had minimal life insurance, so that wasn't something he could count on to make up the difference. But then he realized that many of the women who were connecting with him had it much worse than he could ever imagine.

"I heard from women who lost their husband and didn't have jobs at all because they were stay-at-home moms," says Logelin. "There are so many women left financially devastated when they're widowed. They lose their husband, that love and support, and lose all financial support as well. I knew that in comparison I was lucky; I still have a good job and an understanding employer who gave me the time off I needed to deal with Madeline after she came home."

Thus, the Liz Logelin Foundation (http://thelizlogelinfoundation.org) was formed. Logelin gave away the money that had been earned from the 5K and other fundraisers, and quickly realized that this was something he could do on an ongoing basis to honor his late wife. Now, all proceeds raised in Liz's name go to the foundation and are disbursed to needy widows and widowers. One clever ongoing fundraiser the foundation sponsors is "$7 on the 7th." The idea is for people to give up one unnecessary expenditure in their life – such as a latte – on the 7th of each month and donate it instead to the foundation.

"Carrying on after you lose a spouse is not just about feeding and diapering," says Logelin. "You had a way of life and a standard of living and it's scary when that changes in an instant. It's more than just not being able to do the everyday stuff, and I really came to that realization the more stories of despair I heard."

Now, nearly a year after he lost his wife, Logelin is enjoying his daughter's transition into toddlerhood and his voice noticeably lightens when the subject turns to her and her development. She's mostly sleeping through the night now and verbalizing and getting her point across with smiles and gestures.

"I love when she wakes up smiling; it's the cutest thing I've ever seen," says Logelin. "That may not be a very manly way to put it, but it's such a great feeling and is part of the fun of her getting older and turning into a unique person."

Want to see more?

• Single with Baby: The Importance of Networking with Other Parents
• Single Not Solo: Resources and Support for Moms When They Need It Most
• Talk about it!