Little Songbird
On January 5th, our beloved daughter Lily was set free.
I’ve always wanted to become a mother. Amongst all of the wild dreams I’ve had in my life, I saw motherhood as the most unique and sacred thing that a person could experience in their lifetime. So when my husband and I learned that a little life had entered my body, our hearts were filled with immense gratitude.
Autumn went by slowly. I got my dose of pregnancy symptoms, including morning sickness that made me work from the bed looking like a zombie and grow a love-hate relationship with potatoes, which at one point was the only thing I could eat. Pregnancy is hard. It’s full of unknowns. Yet, in a situation where I thought I’d be the most anxious, I felt a strong sense of peace and trust. I was so in awe of the life growing inside of my body and embraced every moment of it.
And then came winter. The season of festivities. We set up the Christmas tree and hung cute little ornaments, many that I had kept from my childhood. I lit up the tree every night, placed my hands on my growing belly, and told my baby how so thankful I was for her and how excited I was to get her own ornaments once she was born - stars, rocketships, fairies..she was going to get all the ornaments she wanted.
However, things took a turn on the day before Christmas Eve. A genetic counselor from the hospital called and told us that the results of the chromosomal screening test came back as high risk for Turner Syndrome (TS), a condition that occurs when a baby is missing a sex chromosome. I was shocked. I was definitely not expecting anything like this during my first pregnancy as a healthy 29-year-old. She said that it was something that occurs extremely rarely and completely randomly during the cell division process. We also learned that TS had an extremely wide spectrum of conditions - while only 2% of babies with TS are born alive, those who make it to term are sometimes able to live without life-threatening conditions. So I kept telling myself that our little girl will be ok because she had already been beating all the odds and was still alive after all this time.
A couple of days later when the rest of the world was eating leftovers from their festive meals, we went to the hospital for a detailed ultrasound appointment - an appointment I will be reminded of for the rest of my life whenever I see people dressed in scrubs or hear beeping sounds of medical devices. The technician pressed the cold device onto my belly again and again. She didn’t say a single word and left the room to get the doctor.
The doctor’s first words were “I’m so sorry”. Our baby was alive but severely sick. Her entire body was swollen and covered in fluid, there was an abnormally large fluid-filled sac in the back of her head, and her lungs were not functioning. He took a breath and said “The chances of her making it outside of your body alive is close to none. And even in the miraculous event that she did, her life will be brief and there will be a lot of suffering. You do not have to decide right in this moment but there will be a need for you to make a choice, soon.”
I barely remember anything that was said or done after that, but from that day, we were suddenly faced with the reality of needing to make an impossible decision. But how do you make a “choice” when the only options your child has is death or immense suffering? We talked to a couple of more doctors in hopes of getting another perspective but all we kept getting was bad news on bad news. In every conversation, all I heard were the words “incompatible with life” and “termination” being repeated again and again. I felt numb and powerless - I could barely open my mouth, however, I do remember collecting all the strength I had left in me and saying “...but she’s my child.”
I think one of the many misconceptions that people have about pregnancy loss is that losing a child before they are born makes the loss less difficult. I must admit there was a part of me that believed that until it somehow became my own reality. The sensation of the outbursting amount of love and the burning desire to protect my baby radiating throughout every single cell of my being is something that I could never put into words.
How on earth do you let go of your own child? As a mother, I so desperately wanted to hang onto that last tiny chance of a miracle. At the same time, because I was a mother, I had to take a step back, and analyze the risks and suffering associated with that sheer hope of mine and the unbearable amount of suffering it could cause to my daughter. Deep down, my husband and I knew what had to be done. Our hearts were cut open but we knew we needed to take on that pain so that our little girl would not have to experience suffering in her short life.
The procedure took place on January 4-5th. Any type of surgery is scary but there is normally something on the other end of it, whether that is recovery or a new encounter. However, in this case, there was nothing. I did not get to see or hold Lily - I will never know what she looked like or how it might have felt like to have her body touch my skin. My body entered postpartum although my baby was not in my arms. The first physical thing of Lily that I got to hold in my hands was her ashes that we picked up from the mortuary a couple of weeks later. My heart and body that were so willing and ready to provide everything that they could for my child suddenly had nowhere to go.
And that is when grief kicked in. One moment I felt completely numb and then the next I was having a panic attack on the kitchen floor. The world became a scary place that just kept moving without me and my child. A world where innocent babies can get so sick. A world where you can be called a murderer for making the hardest and least-wanted decision of your life. A world full of “should’ve been”s and “could’ve been”s. I noticed that I was not only grieving the loss of my daughter but also my identity as a mother that was forming so strongly, the future that my daughter and I were going to share, the trust in the universe that took me years and years to build, and the sense of innocence that I had within me before all of this happened.
There’s a huge part of me that has not come home since the day of that ultrasound appointment. While I’m still very much experiencing waves of grief every day, one thing I feel strongly about is that grief is the deepest form of love and pain that we’re able to tap into. And just like a mother’s love, it has no destination or ending.
As painful as this journey has been, I cannot help but recognize the beautiful gifts that Lily keeps giving me, even after leaving earthside. I often envision Lily as a little songbird spreading the purest form of love across the sky with her sweet and tender voice - and that brings warm tears to my eyes.
~Sayuri Valencia @midnightsongbirds