“He was on his knees at his wife’s bedside. Like a ton of bricks, it all caught up with him. He deflected his own grief to make sure everybody else was okay. But we all knew that deep down, this was tearing him up.”
‘Her 17-minute life was filled with nothing but love. Dads, you are allowed to cry, too.’: Couple shares ‘life-shattering’ moments their preemie daughter is born, dies in their arms
‘We were forced into an abortion. ‘Don’t hold her too close. Your warmth and heartbeat will confuse her into staying alive.’ We were left alone with our baby as the staff waited for her die.’
“I was given 2 tablets. At 3:43 p.m., I delivered a baby girl. The image seared in my mind is of her little arm stretching into the air. She was alive. ALIVE. Surely, the nurse wasn’t going to let her die, right? But as our girl fought to stay alive, nobody on staff seemed to care.”
‘I stood in line, filling the medication that would remove the life within me. I looked at my fiancé. ‘I’m going home and grabbing my camera.’ If I didn’t do this, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.’
“I headed to the hospital. I remember being in the room, feeling blood dripping from my body. I watched my friend’s body bleed simultaneously, signs of life, as she waited to bring her baby into the world. A life leaving and a life beginning all in the same room at the same moment. I was transfixed.”
‘I got pregnant too early in my relationship. I went home on my lunch break, positive test in my pocket. I was terrified to hand it over to him, but knew I had to. What were we going to do?’
“I started feeling ‘off’. I burst into tears. Everyone insisted I was just anxious. All I could do was pray my blood pressure went down, and my placenta hung in there. 30 seconds into my scheduled ultrasound, my doctor told me she was taking me to the operating room.”
‘Today is the day I get to meet Abigail!’ I’m excited! Her tone is bleak, she begins to cry. ‘Abigail didn’t make it.’: Father’s anguish over losing child, ‘drifting apart’ from daughter’s mother after ‘trauma’
“A text comes to me about 11:24. It reads, ‘Are you at work? Can you call me?’ Abigail’s mother no longer wanted to be around me. I was a reminder of our trauma. It was devastating because now I feel completely erased from her life as if nothing ever happened. I constantly dream of the family that almost was.”
‘There’s not just one healthy baby. There’s TWO!’ My husband fell to the floor in shock. I had a huge pit in the bottom of my stomach. ‘There must be some mistake!’
“She stepped out of the room to give my OB a call. My mind went crazy. She must’ve been calling for backup. I was crying in complete confusion. Two? TWINS? No one gets pregnant and thinks ‘Yay! I’m going to have babies!’ It’s always, ‘Yay! I’m going to have A baby!’ But I had this strange feeling in my chest.”
‘I want to try for another baby,’ I told my husband. I was so scared. I took a test and it was positive! I felt fear creep in. At night I couldn’t sleep.’
“When I saw our sweet baby moving on the screen, I felt like I could breathe again. After that, I started to feel our baby kick. I was finally able to believe this baby would live.”
‘We knew it was time to go. We wheeled Sophie down to a cooling room. We could see past her imperfections, her peeling skin and her bluish tint. To us, she was our baby and she was perfect.’
“She had so much brown, curly hair. She had her daddy’s nose and her mamma’s lips. Her perfect little lips. I wanted to kiss those lips every day.”
‘There is a lot of fluid in there. I am going to get your doctor.’ My heart sank, and I debated calling my husband, but just sat there, numb, and decided to wait.’
“I trusted my doctor dearly, so I knew she’d have something good to say. She always did. She did not this time.”
‘To the nurse who held my stillborn baby, unfazed by the appearance of a tiny child born 20 weeks too soon. You stroked those itty-bitty fingers and toes. You talked about those eyes.’
“You told me my baby was beautiful, although the rest of the world would likely have disagreed. As you placed my breathless baby into the palms of my hands, I too became breathless.”
