Through her, I have glimpsed the vast perspective of the universe, which gained new poignancy as I reach middle age and my parents’ generation begins to recede: In the context of eternity, there really is no difference between a life that spans ninety years and one that lasts five days. The distinction is in the impact that life has on others. -LBC

Had plans to go to dinner with my mom, aunt, and uncle last night and it took us forever to decide on a place. Finally we came to a decision, and what do we see when we walk into the door of the restaurant? A girl having her baby shower for her baby girl. Opening presents. Balloons and decorations. Smiles all around the table. My heart sank. My aunt chose a table in the back, but I should have just walked out the door then and there. I sat down and immediately got up to go to the bathroom and cry. I took 10 minutes or so try and compose myself, but shortly after I sat down at the table again I lost my appetite and started bawling and I fell apart and I left the reataurant. They took me home.

I should be helping to plan my baby shower, I should be picking out all of your things. I shouldn’t have to be grieving this devastating heart wrenching life altering loss of my baby girl whom I love so dearly. Why did this have to happen? I can understand why the Jewish religion doesn’t do baby showers, I understand the superstition all around it. I was so guarded about you at first Noa, we didn’t even announce our pregnancy with you until I was 19 weeks along after the anatomy scan confirmed you were perfect and healthy and normal. After that good news, I felt “safe” to announce you to the world, we were just so excited about you, Noa! We also found out that you were a little girl at that appointment, we were so excited! And we knew we could use the name Noa that we both loved so much for a baby girl, it’s a name I’ve always loved!

Now I know that there’s no such thing as “safe.” I know that anything could happen, at any time, and it’s beyond my control. I have no control over anything. I feel powerless, like I’m just a pawn in this life. I don’t know why G-d took you from us. I don’t know why we have to suffer every day over your loss. It’s so hard Noa, so so hard. But there is still joy, when I look at our pictures of your perfect little face.  Dad and I laugh together over this one picture of you, my favorite, because it’s just plain old ridiculous how cute your face is!!! So yes, there is joy amidst all the pain. I am so blessed to have been able to hold you and cradle you for those 18 hours after delivery. We have those memories forever. Those memories are all we have left, baby Noa. It’s not enough, it’s not even close, but it will have to be because G-d didn’t give us a choice. He took you from us and we’ll never find out why so long as we are alive on this earth, in this body, in this form. We pray one day we will see you again and understand why this happened, why you died, why you were taken from us before we even got to hold you.

My pain over seeing that girl having her baby shower was a painful reminder of all I will miss out on with you.  Dressing you, diapering you, feeding you, comforting you when you cry, falling asleep with you, waking up to you, seeing your first smile, hearing your first laugh, watching you fall head over heels in love with your wonderful daddy (Noa, one day soon I will dedicate a post to telling you about your daddy and how much he loves you and what a wonderful man he is! He is my strength through this and he is the reason why I put one foot in front of the other on days when I can hardly breathe because I feel so suffocated by my grief.)

It would be easy to wish this never happened, that I never got pregnant with you, but I don’t wish that at all. Can you imagine a love so strong that it makes all the pain and suffering worth it? I would rather know you in the way that I did, for the short time I did, than not know you at all. You have brought so much joy into my life! You have opened my eyes to what it means to love someone! Your dad says I am different person since you, he says I’ve changed for the better and he loves me more now. I love him more now, too. My days are hard, and they often seem meaningless and empty, but I just have to remind myself that my pain and suffering are worth it because I got to have you and love you, and I always will. There is nothing that can ever take that away from me, from us.

 

 

Your candle is lit and it gives us comfort and let’s us feel close to you. But you are gone forever, at least in this life, in the world here on earth as we know it. We sat and cried together as we often do, longing for you, wondering if and when we’ll ever see you again.  I said to your dad, that in my version of Heaven, I am holding you and the three of us are together once again, and you’re breathing and your heart is beating. That is really all I want. He believes this will happen for us one day, and I pray to G-d every single day that it does.

I wish I knew where you were right now and what kind of existence your spirit has, in what form? I just long for you, Noa. My pain is so big and I don’t understand the purpose of going through this. None of it makes sense. Your dad and I, we were brutally robbed. I’d give anything and everything up to see you, hold you, feel you, kiss you, smell you, cuddle you again. What pain is bigger than this? What hole is deeper? And what love is stronger?

You carved a space in my heart greater than anything I’ve known. Now that I’ve lost you, that space just sits empty and I’m broken. It’s too big to fill with the trivial aspects of my former life as I knew it. I come up with ways to waste time and pass the minutes of the days. My hope is that the days turn into weeks, the weeks into years, and then we are old and tired, and we can finally enter your world, be with you, have peace, and be whole once again, the three of us together, that is my Heaven.

You’re all around me. I saw you today in a leaf blowing in the wind on a tree, the way it was waving, directly at me, I just knew it was you. I was crying but I was smiling inside because I knew it was you. I just knew! Other times, I’ve seen you in a ray of light when it hit the ground and cast shadows on the earth. I’ve seen you in the corner of my eyes when I turn my head just ever so quickly to make shadows appear, and then I look again and nothing.

Thank you for being with me today, especially.

Because in just a few short hours we will place your body with the earth and rest your soul, and I will fall apart. I will fall apart, just as I’ve been doing all day, every day, at the most random times, since we said hello and goodbye at the same time 6 days ago. But I will remember that you were with me today, giving me strength and offering me peace, on the kind of day that no mother, no person, should ever have to endure. I love you.

 

Waking up is the most painful part of my day, even though all parts are painful. Now that you’re gone, I wake up in a cold sweat and immediately a wave of anxiety and sadness hits me and paralyzes me. I feel my longing for you all over my body. My heart hurts, it throbs for you, and it doesn’t quit. I think of you all the time and that’s ok because what else is there to think about? It’s only you, now. There is nothing else. Noa, I miss you so much. My whole body heaves when I cry for you. I want to turn back time so badly and all I want is to have you in my arms again. I miss your smell so much. Your delicate little skin. I want to kiss you all over. I don’t know if I can go on like this without you, Noa. I only got to hold you and be with you for 18 hours, but you have changed me, you have changed my life forever.  I don’t want to stay here on this earth in this body anymore because I don’t have you. I want to free myself from all this pain and suffering and I want to go where you are. Please, Noa, can I just come be with you? Tell mommy where you are, give me a sign somehow, tell me what I need to do, and I will come to you.

Noa Eve,

You were the most beautiful thing that I have ever laid eyes on. I have never known a love like this, and you have already changed my life forever. I am not the same woman I was before meeting you. Everything is different now.

Right now, I just can’t stop thinking about how perfect you were when I first met you. You had the cutest little face I could have ever imagined! And a full head of hair, already! I saw your eyebrows and your fine little eyelashes and it melted my heart. Daddy and I laughed because we both saw that you had his nose. I love daddy’s nose and I’ve teased him about it before, but you just wore it so perfectly on your round little beautiful face that I could not stop smelling and kissing and loving on. And the shape of your lips were perfect, they were so full and so beautiful, as was your tiny little pink tongue! We were in awe at your beauty, baby girl, and I will never forget every perfect little inch of your body that I studied when I held you in my arms.

You had all 10 fingers and all 10 toes and the cutest little nails I have ever seen. You had mommy’s collar bone for sure, you wore it just as mommy does, very proud and pronounced. And your legs were so long, also from mommy! You’d have been such a tall girl my baby Noa, and I’d have taught you how to rock it and how to exude confidence like the little beauty queen you are.

I couldn’t stop smelling you and kissing you and I miss you so much. The ache in my heart from missing you is a sting like I’ve never felt before. When I met you on July 1, I learned what it was like to be a mom and to love a child, and let me tell you baby girl, there is nothing like it in the world, in this life, that even remotely compares. Daddy often described to me what a parent’s love for a child was like while you lived in my belly for those 27 weeks. He said “one day soon, you will know.” I couldn’t have even imagined it if I tried, Noa. Because it’s not something that you can describe to another, it is only something that you can experience one you feel it for yourself.

I felt, and still feel, so honored to be your mommy and I feel so lucky for the gift you have given me. My time with you was vey short. I met you at 5:25 in the evening on July 1, and we had to say goodbye the very next afternoon. We will set your soul free soon when we lay you down to earth to rest in peace, but I know your spirit is with us for eternity. Daddy and I have beautiful memories of our brief time with you and we will never forget you. We can’t stop thinking about you, Noa. Your memory consumes my every waking moment! And though it brings me such pain to miss you like this, I want you to know that it also brings me so much joy because I got to meet you and hold you, and oh what a gift! Daddy and I fell so deeply in love with you, and because of you, we fell more deeply in love with each other throughout all of this.

We feel so lucky to have been chosen by G-d to be your parents. G-d has taught us that your soul was so special that you never actually made it to our world outside mommy’s body while you were alive, before you were called back to Heaven. You see Noa, we have learned that some souls, like yourself, are so special that they finish their mission on this earth before even entering our world, and then they get called back to G-d. Though it is painful for us in ways that are indescribable, we know this was done with hands and a will much bigger than ours.

One of the first questions mommy had was, “why?” I just wanted to know what happened. Why did your heart stop beating? Was there something wrong with me? Was there something wrong with you? I wanted tests and I wanted answers and I definitely did not want to have to go through labor and delivery because I already knew you were gone. Some day soon I want to recall every detail of my labor and delivery of you because I never want to forget. Even though it was the most emotionally painful experience I’ve ever had to endure, it was still very special to me because at the end, we got to meet you! You are my greatest gift, and every part of the journey is special to me. Some day, I will recount those 20 hours of labor for the purpose of my own healing, and for other mommies out there who will inevitably be forced to go through the same, a still birth. But for now, I just want you to know two things.

First and foremost, there was nothing wrong with you! Noa, as I have said, you were perfect!!! Absolutely perfect. As soon as you were delivered, it was apparent that it had been a cord accident that caused your death while you were inside of mommy, and that there was nothing mommy could have done to prevent it or protect you from it. This was simply G-d’s will, Noa. I am unbelievably heartbroken, but I just have to accept that this was G-d’s will. I wanted to tell you this, because as I repeat it, it is a source of comfort to me as I grieve your loss. Mommy did everything that she was supposed to do to keep you safe. The doctors and nurses have told me time and time again how I did not cause this, how I could not have caused this, how this was an accident. I don’t know why this happened to our beautiful little family, but I am trying not to blame myself for this loss, even though sometimes I can’t help myself from thinking that somehow it was my fault.

The second thing I would like you to know is that there is nothing medically wrong with mommy. I was tested for clotting conditions and other complications that my doctors at first thought could have led to your death, but this was before we discovered what happened with the cord once I delivered you. Everything about my ability to carry a pregnancy to term turned out to be normal and healthy. The fact that the cord got wrapped around your neck was not your fault, was not my fault, was not anybody’s fault, Noa. Even if it could have been discovered on ultrasound before your passing, there would be nothing that anyone could have or would have done to change it. My doctor has seen babies with cords wrapped around the neck five times with no adverse effects on baby, and she has seen cords wrapped just once that have led to a fetal demise, as what happened in your case. But regardless, there is no way to go inside the womb and unwrap it or change baby’s position or the cord position.

Oddly, part of discovering this after your delivery was reassuring to me, in the sense that a) we learned there was nothing we could have done to prevent this, and b) daddy and I made the most perfect, beautiful, healthy little girl. At first I had wondered whether you had a genetic condition that led to your demise that maybe was never detected. You see, daddy and I had chosen to forego any genetic testing throughout pregnancy. We chose this because we had faith that G-d would handle things the way He saw best, and we would just trust in G-d that everything would turn out how it was meant to be. Noa, there was nothing wrong with you. What happened was a very rare cord accident. But even if there had been something wrong, it would not have changed how much your daddy and I love you. Looking back, I don’t know why I was so focused on the “why’s” of what happened, because now I know that nothing could have changed how much I love you and nothing could have changed how much pain we are in as we grieve your loss, no matter the cause.

Yes, I did get some answers, which seem futile now, but the part that I still struggle with is why G-d chose to take you from us too soon in this way. Why did this accident have to happen to you? Why did I have to leave the hospital empty handed? I just want to hold you again, Noa. Because above and beyond all the “why’s” and “how’s” and details of what happened, the fact remains that it happened, and now I just miss you. I miss you like crazy, Noa. I feel it in every bone in my body, in every ounce of my flesh. Daddy and I both miss you and love you and think of you every second of every day. I stare at your pictures and I study your face all day and all night. What I wouldn’t give to hold you again in my arms, on my chest, skin to skin, to kiss you again, to breathe you in again! I don’t want to bury you Noa, I want to hold you in my arms forever and smell your sweet baby smell! But I know that we must put your soul to rest, and I know that we must now leave the rest in G-d’s hands, just as we’ve always done.

My time with you was too short, but the memories of my brief time with you is forever, and for that I am so, so grateful. I will always miss you, I will always love you, and you will always be right here with me, though not in the physical sense. May your soul rest in peace, my beautiful, perfect, sweet baby Noa Eve.