Magnolia

My name is Holly Ann: a wife, mama, daughter, teacher, photographer, Swifite, lover of tacos, iced coffee, and all things pink. Another title I have that I had no idea would be such a large part of my life is griever.

You see, grief is something I used to be a stranger to, but now know all too well. I’d like to open up my heart and share with you my journey of both grief and hope.

My husband and I, high school sweethearts, were celebrating our third wedding anniversary when we found out I was pregnant with our first baby. The two lines on that pregnancy test brought so much excitement. We were expecting a baby girl and landed on the name Magnolia Eloise. Every ultrasound and every appointment were as normal as could be, and our sweet girl was healthy. I was eight months along and we had just put together the crib and began decorating the nursery. Everything was going as planned, until it wasn’t.

I’d like to share with you my writings of those intimate moments when grief crept into my life for the very first time.

It was a quiet drive to the hospital after hours of not feeling her move.

When we arrived, a nurse prompted me to change into a gown. I wonder now if behind her kind eyes she had an inkling my world was about to collapse. Babies shouldn’t stop moving. She knew that, but I didn’t.

She placed the doppler gently onto my belly and the room fell silent. A second nurse entered the room and then a third followed as they exchanged concerned gazes while desperately searching for a sign of life.

Quiet tears streamed down my face as I fixated on the ugly wallpaper that lined the ceiling. Seconds felt like hours as I pleaded with God for everything to be okay. Please God, let her be okay.

I turned to one of the nurses and asked if it was normal to take this long. She gently put her hand on my shoulder as she paused and shook her head. “No.”

And even though I heard her words, I held onto a false sense of hope that the doppler was broken. It had to be broken.

We waited on an ultrasound to confirm the results we had been desperately waiting for. The screen was tilted just enough for me to see a flat line where zigzags of life once appeared, and in that instant, I knew she was gone. That moment was followed by the words that I can still hear to this day:

“I’m so sorry. There’s no heartbeat.”

The nurse announced our fate through tears of her own as she wrapped her arms around my husband.

I watched the two of them, strangers before this moment, sob in each other’s arms over the life, over the future, over the baby that we lost seemingly in a matter of seconds.

I felt as if I had left my own body, my mind too numb to feel; almost as if my heart had stopped alongside hers.

Soon after receiving this devastating news, we were presented with two topics that should never be discussed together: giving birth and funeral arrangements.

My mind couldn’t wrap around the idea that my womb now knew both life and death.

And after the worst phone calls of my life, telling the people we loved most that the baby we had all been anxiously waiting for was gone, I couldn’t escape the reality that despite wanting to crawl into a hole, I had to prepare my body for delivery.

As I laid in the hospital bed preparing my body to deliver my baby whose heartbeat had unexpectedly stopped, the overwhelming emotions of fear, sadness, and confusion washed over me. I had never given birth before, let alone to a baby who would never take her first breath.

Yet, even in the midst of unimaginable pain both emotionally and physically, there was still a part of me that was eager to meet her.

It’s almost as if I had memorized every inch of her little body as she kicked away inside me all these months; the way her hand would caress the inside of my womb or how her tiny feet were strong enough to make my belly protrude in certain areas.

I felt like I knew her so deeply even though I’d only seen her in black and white pictures through scans on a screen. Our souls felt so interwoven, so connected.

Though nothing could have prepared me for what was to come, I began the journey leading up to the heart-wrenching moment where I’d get to hold her in my arms for the very first time.

After laboring for over 36 hours, Magnolia’s body entered the world, but her soul did not.

As she was placed on my chest, I had never felt more love than in that moment and yet simultaneously felt the crushing weight of grief, coming to the realization that she would never open her eyes, that I would never get to hear her cry, and that the chance to watch her grow up was ripped away from me so suddenly.

But through the tears, through the devastation, through the darkness, I still felt so fortunate that she chose me to be her mom. As I caressed her cheek, and wrapped her tiny fingers around my own, the world I had known before came to a halt and changed forever.

I soaked in every detail from the taste buds on her tongue to the smallest fingerprints I’d ever seen, in awe that my body could create such a perfect angel, and confounded that it couldn’t bring her safely into the world.

Though hardly weighing anything, holding a baby in my arms that I’d never get to take home felt astoundingly heavy.

And as much as it hurts to relive the pain of walking out of the hospital empty-handed, I’d do it all over again just to get that time with her. 

You can learn more about Holly Ann at www.bloomlikemagnolia.com.