It’s a terrible thing when you can’t enjoy something that should be the most wonderful time in your life..your pregnancy and the birth of your child.
Beginning with the tempered joy of discovering the pregnancy,
Endless tests for both you and the child that is growing beneath your heart.
Passing one milestone, breathing a bit easier..only to be confronted by another possible problem.
You try to share it with your partner, after all it is his child as well, but deep inside you realize, nobody else really gets it. This fearful joy that you feel each morning as you wake, and each night as you lay down, silently thanking God for a day without issue.
And selfishly begging for another…and another.
The feeling of your child moving and growing within you giving you reason to believe in happy endings.
And when that day comes when something does go wrong, when that test does come giving you one more thing you must deal with, one more decision you must make you do what you can to keep yourself glued together.
Telling yourself that it will be all worth it, that you will have a child in the end, you may have to fight like hell, but you will hold your baby in your arms and in a couple of years this will all be just a crappy memory that you share with this child.
You hope. Even though life has taught you differently, you hope.
One day on a whim you buy something for the baby, knowing it’s probably a bad idea.
And then one day you find yourself with more and more “baby stuff” and slowing you convince yourself this will be ok. It has to be.
But what do you do when it’s not?
When you end up in the hospital very sick and to save your life, you give birth to this tiny being that is way too fragile for this harsh world. A child that a grown man can hold in the palm of his hand.
They talk to you of statistics and averages and worst case scenarios, but you look at this tiny being, your child and you cannot help but feel the stirring of that old feeling…Hope.
That your child will beat those odds. That your child will survive and you will bring her home and hold her in your arms and love her like only you can.
You will do ANYTHING to make that happen, you would give everything you own for that.
You spend hours sitting by your child’s side, you can’t touch her yet, but you know she can hear you, so you talk, about anything, sometimes you read to her.
And you are back holding your breath with every day that passes, only now your child is not growing within you, but battling for every moment, hour and day in the hospital.
But when all your begging and pleading and bargaining falls on deaf ears…how do you go on? When your child that you carried for twenty five weeks and six days, who struggled and fought for thirteen days finally surrenders the battle and dies, how do you face the world again?
How will you make sense of that loss? What words will comfort you?
This world is a harsh place. Do not take your blessings for granted.
If you have children, hug them often. Tell them you love them no less than twice a day.
Go home tonight and just hold them and thank whatever god you pray to for this day.
Because my coworker, and my friend would give anything to be in your shoes.
Instead today she is picking out a casket and making burial arrangements for her daughter.
Annabelle: born-08 March, 2008 died- 21 March, 2008.
May God Bless You All.
