Madelyn Rebecca

It was raining the day my daughter was buried.

I know that might seem like a fitting atmosphere for some, dreary and dismal weather to match the somber moment when you lay your first child to rest.  But as I stood there, it came to me that with a different outlook, the rain might take on an altogether different context.  Where some might see the rain as the heavens mourning with you the loss of a loved one, new perception could show that it might be that Heaven was weeping with joy at receiving such a beautiful little angel as my little girl.

Four weeks ago last Friday, on August 28th at 10:22 p.m., my wife gave birth to an adorable baby girl that we named Madelyn Rebecca.  She weighed just over 3 pounds, and she was absolutely everything I could have dreamed of.  Due to lack of amniotic fluid, the cause of which we have since learned was underdeveloped kidneys, she didn’t have sufficient lung capacity to make it out in the world.  She lived for roughly 30 minutes, and every second that I got to hold her meant the world to me.  Life is a rare gift, and a child born into this world is a wonderful thing, especially when it’s your child.  It causes an ache that can’t be dulled to know that my time with her was so short, but having her was one of the single greatest moments of my life and I don’t regret for an instant the decisions we made.

We found out months ago, back in May, in fact, that the pregnancy was high risk due to an extreme lack of fluid.  It’s hard to describe the feelings of terror a person feels when you are faced with the prospect of losing your first born child, or at best months in the NICU and possible long term physical issues for your baby.  And then, when Maddy had gotten large enough, Heather went into the hospital so that she could be monitored twenty four hours a day.  It was difficult to take in, and even though I had moments of fear, anxiety, and dismay, through it all I also felt a sense of peace that God was with us.  The last two months, with Heather at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center here in St. Louis, was not an easy time, but I regret none of it.  It enabled us to get to know our daughter a little better, and for that I’m grateful.

She was a feisty one.  The doctors, I think, were quite surprised that she made it all the way to 34 weeks without showing any difficulties whatsoever, which is rare for a baby with no fluid.  But she showed us every day that she had a fighting spirit.  She gave us so many little memories which we can cherish forever…the day she kicked the “mean nurse” who was adjusting her monitor, scampering and squirming away from the ultra-sound techs, getting the hiccups on a daily basis, her heart rate jumping up so high when Bonnie guessed “girl”….I know there are memories that I won’t have of her that I wish I could have had, but for the short time that we had her, I’ve got a lot to be thankful for.

Heather has done a pretty good job of chronicling a lot of the high’s and low’s that we have had on her blog, and I don’t want to be redundant.  I do want to say thank you to everyone who made our difficult time just a little easier with your love and kindness…my family and my friends who were there for us, thank you all so much.  It’s been a difficult journey for us, and there are still a lot of questions we want answers to (some things we will never know for certain), but Maddy’s life has made a world of difference in me, and I’ll always cherish the time I had with her.