5 months

Dear Angel

It has been five months since we lost you.  I think about you every day.  The hurt of losing you will never go away.  I read somewhere that the burden of losing a baby is like carrying a brick around in your pocket – the heaviness of the burden is always with you.  I am trying to learn to cope without you, as much as I wish I didn’t have to.

I think in many ways this loss doesn’t seem as real for others as it does for Jeff & I.  This is understandable, because none of our family and friends met Angel or held her like we did.  Sometimes I wonder if we made the right decisions on that day.  It might have helped me, in the long run, to have our close family meet Angel and feel the realness of the loss.  To see how big she was, what she looked like, and how she was a real person, that was 16 inches long, with big eyes, with a sweet little mouth, and with Jeff’s nose. She was a preemie size, but in another couple of months, she would have become a chubby full term baby.  If she had been born alive, she may have survived with the help of NICU treatment.

Here are some pictures of a growing baby at 31 weeks:

For those that really want to get to know Angel, I can share her photo with you also, when we see each other next.   

I write this entry because I suppose I want to try to make Angel more real for others. 
 

Our society is often uncomfortable talking about death.  The death of an infant makes people even more uncomfortable.  Years ago, people rarely spoke of their stillborn children.  They were made to feel as though they ought to forget the trauma...to move on.  I believe that every child's story is worthy of telling, no matter what the circumstances or outcome.

Angel was born still, but she was still born.  Her story deserves to be told and her life deserves to be acknowledged.