Dear Baby,

I hoped and prayed for you for many years. I was beyond ecstatic when you revealed yourself with a faint blue line on that plastic stick I held in my shaking hands. I excitedly shared the news with your daddy. We lived in rose-colored bliss for several weeks, planning the life you would have. 

That life was cut short a few weeks later when the doctor revealed you had no heartbeat. I believe, in my heart of hearts, that your heart did, at one time, have a beat. We share an undefinable bond. Your being, your soul, your initial beginning in this world. While I never got to hold you in my arms, you taught me many lessons about the mother I would someday be to the children I did get to hold.

Dear first baby, you taught me about loss and letting go. While it was not my plan to say goodbye, there was a greater plan waiting to unfold. I grieved for you. My body yearned to bring you into this world and hold you in my impatiently waiting mother’s arms. You were my first devastating heartbreak.

I want you to know your presence in my life will never be in vain. 

You paved the way for the first child I was meant to hold on this earth. If it was not for the loss of you, my sweet Heavenly child, I would not know my firstborn son. Your brother. My rainbow baby. 

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Your loss taught me to fully appreciate the conception, growth, development, and perfect health of my first earthly baby. I value this child in a way I may never have known had I not lost you first.

Sweet baby, my life was forever changed the day I discovered you were knit together in my womb. Then, it was irrevocably changed when I found out you were not meant to be held in my arms. Loss is never easy. Learning to let go is essential in this life. I learned that lesson from you. 

I learned about grief and acceptance.

I learned about forcing myself to feel those painful emotions when all I wanted to do was hide under the covers and deny the painful truth. I learned about hope, healing, and starting over. I learned about not giving up and putting my faith in God even for things I do not understand. Especially, for things I do not understand. 

My first baby, even though I never got to hold you, you paved the path, you provided the strength, you defined the role of mother I wanted to be to you. Through your loss, I found a part of myself that made me the mother I was meant to be to the children God chose to provide in His perfect timing. 

Someday I will meet you in Heaven. The reason for your loss on earth may be revealed. It may not. Knowing you are in the arms of my Savior and that He placed in my earthly arms the two sons that complete me like none other gives me a spirit of peace. A comfort knowing God in His infinite wisdom chose to take you home and provide my empty mommy arms with two healthy, beautiful sons. 

My heart is full, my hands are full. I often think of you; wondering who you would have been;  what you would have looked like; if you were a boy, or girl. I am now a boy mom. A thought that terrified me before your brothers were born, but now is the single-most defining factor about me. And I love every single minute of this life…with boys!

Precious baby, I release you while I hold your memory in the depths of my heart.

I will never cease to wonder what magical lessons you would have taught me had you lived. Even in the few weeks you were hidden in my womb, the lessons you taught have radiated throughout the years that followed.  

You taught me to appreciate the present, to value the precious life that surrounds me, to take nothing for granted. You taught me that loss, though painful, is an integral part of life. Without it, we would never experience growth. 

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You taught me how to love without fear and that that loss does not define me. Hope after tragedy, faith in what I cannot see, and love as the essential healing ointment in life—these are the spiritual gifts that define me. 

Your time on earth was very short. But it was enough. Enough to teach me about loss, letting go, moving forward, and opening my heart and empty arms to receive new miracles. Your time in my womb defined the mother I would someday be. 

Thank you, baby.