For most of Jenny Burghardt’s life, everything unfolded just as planned.
A Knoxville native and Bearden High School graduate, she met her husband while attending Clemson University. The couple moved to Aiken, South Carolina, where she worked in tourism and settled into a carefully imagined five-year plan. Time to enjoy the newlywed life, followed by the desire to start a family. When she became pregnant with their first child, Ruthie, everything seemed to be falling perfectly into place.
At 35 weeks pregnant, she noticed something strange. Ruthie wasn’t moving.
She went to the hospital to make sure everything was okay. But as soon as they did an ultrasound she could tell something wasn’t right. Ruthie’s heart was no longer beating and there was nothing they could do. She was induced on a Sunday morning, and Ruthie was born Monday morning. She was stillborn.
Family and loved ones rushed to be at the couple’s side.
“Going home was the hardest part,” she says. Leaving the hospital without her baby was a pain she never could have imagined.
Just weeks before, Jenny’s sister saw a segment on the news about The Precious Prints Project, an organization through UT College of Nursing that creates fingerprint keepsakes for families experiencing child loss. She immediately called, secured a kit in Knoxville, and drove it down to South Carolina. Before leaving, her sister took Ruthie’s fingerprint and told her that a charm would be coming.
That small, tangible piece changed everything for Burghardt.
“She was real,” she says. “Here is a piece of her.”
That moment did not mark the end of grief, but the beginning of carrying Ruthie’s life forward in a different way.
Not long after Ruthie’s passing, she became pregnant again with their son, Jones. While the joy of new life was real, it was layered with unanswered questions and quiet fears. She had never known what happened to Ruthie, and yet, through it all, she felt the steady presence of the Lord.
Jones was born three days before Ruthie’s first birthday.
The joy was overwhelming but also complicated. “I was so thrilled to be pregnant again,” she says. “But it wasn’t Ruthie.”
She wrestled with how to carry Ruthie’s memory well while welcoming Jones fully. How do you tell a child about a sister they never met?
She searched for a resource that could help but couldn’t find one, so she created one.
From the beginning, she read her own words to Jones. Cutting phrases, pasting them into an existing book, shaping language that a child could understand. She needed something tangible and something she could place in the hands of other parents walking the same road.
That need became a children’s book titled More Love to Pour Out.
“One in four babies are lost through miscarriage or stillbirth,” she says. “I asked myself, what is mine to give to the world? This book was that.”
Written specifically for families welcoming children after loss, the book reflects on her lived experience with child appropriate language. She didn’t want Ruthie’s story to become something unspoken or postponed until her children were older. “This is part of our family story,” she says. “I wanted my kids to always know they have a sister.”
Explaining miscarriage and infant loss to children can feel overwhelming, but her approach was simple: focus on love.
“The gift of that baby’s life brought love into the world,” she says. “And that love remains.”
Rather than centering on grief, the book invites families to unleash that love and to let it shape kindness, generosity, and compassion in everyday life.
A portion of the book’s proceeds will support the Precious Prints Project.
“They’re doing the same thing I’m trying to do just in different ways,” she says. “They honor these babies. They encourage families. They offer hope when grief feels overwhelming.”
And hope, she says, is everything.
For families navigating pregnancy and infant loss, her message is: don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to speak a child’s name. Don’t be afraid to ask how someone is doing.
“Good can come from even this,” she says. “Not as a way to minimize the pain, but to show that love is even bigger.”
For more information about More Love to Pour Out or to purchase the book please click here.
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CONTACT:
Kara Clark Cardwell ([email protected], 865-974-9498)