Christina's Story

"In January of 2015, my husband and I were not only celebrating the beginning of a new year, but also the beginning of a new and exciting chapter of our married life together with the news that we were expecting our first child. We had been waiting to grow our family and had been preparing for a baby for 4 years until we felt we were as ready as we could hope to be. We truly couldn't be happier of the news. Our pregnancy was progressing beautifully without any sign of complication and through all the testing we underwent, our child, a son, we came to learn, was healthy and strong.

However, all of our hopes and dreams came to a devastating halt when on July 28th, my husband and I were given the news during a routine 3rd trimester appointment that our son had suddenly passed away. When we found out that his heart stopped beating, we felt ours did as well. In a matter of a few days, we went from making final preparations before his anticipated arrival in just 9 weeks to making his final arrangements. Everything we knew and everything we thought the future would hold was destroyed and all seemed pointless and hopeless. We had no thoughts of the possibility of a cord accident or stillbirth and at 31 1/2 weeks pregnant, we did not imagine that we would only be holding our beautiful son for a few hours and not for the rest of our lives, as we had dreamed.

There has been no pain like that of losing our precious Colin Philip. We have been tortured by the endless agony of firsts that will never come to pass and by the constant thoughts of the man we had envisioned him becoming, but through counseling, bereavement groups, as well as our unending support system of friends, family, and coworkers, which still a year later, surrounds us, we are able to integrate our loss into our lives. We continue to remember him in wonderful ways each day, through symbols, keepsakes, and through participation in special events throughout the year and in these ways, he is always with us.”

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