A State of Limbo [21 Weeks]

Thank You All

We cannot thank our families and friends enough for their love and support as we have walked through the darkest weeks of our lives so far.

Over the past few weeks, we have seen so many specialists and have had both horrible and amazing experiences. We have learned how to be not only the best advocates for ourselves, but for our sweet Isla Rose too.

While we now have a label to our nightmare - limb-body wall complex - the outlook remains the same.

I will carry our baby girl until her heart stops, and we will welcome her sleeping body into this world. We have no timeline. Our girl is strong. Our girl is a fighter. We could have a week - or we could have a couple of months.

As we adjust to our new normal, we know we will never get to celebrate her at a baby shower. We will never get to use her ‘coming home’ outfit. We will never get to be kept up all night with her crying. In fact, we will never hear her cry at all.

We have chosen the path of keeping her as long as we can. There is no suffering to her body, nor physically to mine.

We want to spend our remaining time with her as normal as possible. We will take pictures. We will watch her wave and swallow on the sonogram. We will feel her move and kick. We will talk to her and sing to her. We will celebrate the positivity that comes with each day our first child’s heart is beating.

We will share our story and our daughter’s life.

But we will also be preparing. No longer collecting diapers or perfecting registries. No longer selecting the right sheets for a mattress that has already been delivered. Instead, we will be preparing for how to handle death before life even had a chance. How to bury our first child before we had the chance to be her parents.

We don’t know why. We never will. There is no scientific “why”. There is no spiritual “why”.

Nobody can tell us that we were chosen for this path. How is that fair? We are here, and we are surviving at best. We have each other. We have our baby girl. While we could never have imagined this path for our little family, we will be forever honored to be her mom and dad.

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Please Share Our Story

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The Life of Isla Rose