Corban Elijah

On the day I found out I was pregnant I wrote a letter to my unborn baby. Looking back at that letter from almost 3 months ago I kind of chuckle because I hear the nervousness and uncertainty in my voice. I ramble a lot, give a lot of unnecessary details and kind of abruptly end the letter as if I was out of useless details from the day to spew so I decided to just stop writing. I did end it by saying "I now realize this life is no longer about me, but about you."

Later that night I decided to write to him again and this time the letter, while short, was a bit more heartfelt. I explained that I would be his mommy and promised "to love him from this day forward, with all the love I have to give." I told him that Jesus loved him very much, told him that I loved him almost as much, and expressed my excitement that he would be coming soon.

The next day I wrote in my letter to him "today I woke up like no other day in my life; I woke up as a mother." I continued to write to my baby, not daily but periodically, as I wanted to remember this pregnancy in all its realness. But then the letters started to decrease in quantity but increase in emotional quality. I was having a rough time and something inside of me was scared to keep writing for fear that I would loose him to miscarriage, I didn't want to get too attached until I knew I had reached the "safe zone." I didn't know that that safe zone would never come.

On March 11th I had an ultrasound that screens for genetic abnormalities by measuring the amount of fluid behind the baby's neck, any findings are considered only "soft markers" for chromosomal abnormalities and many babies with an abnormal amount of fluid behind the neck are born perfectly healthy. My baby's fluid size was large, on the highest end of the scale, but everyone kept telling me they've heard of "stories" where babies with this particular marker survive all the time. However, my letter to my baby that night reflects my realization that I knew my time as his mother would be short. Here it is:

Hi my baby,

My heart hurts so bad right now, so I thought I would just write and let you know how much I love you. I miss you, I'm so sorry I haven't written to you lately, it's been a hard couple of weeks. And today we found out that things might be a little rough for you as you develop into a strong little baby. And that's what breaks my heart. I don't want you to have to suffer or hurt in any way. You're all I care about and I want you to know that nothing in this world could ever make me love you any less. God picked me to be your mommy and your father to be your daddy because He knew how much we needed you and how much we would love you. We will give you all of us forever. We and so many people are praying for you my love. Thank you for being our perfect little baby.

Love,

Your Mommy

I remember when I was writing that letter that I was trying to be strong, I didn't want to scare my baby or make him believe that anything was wrong with him. Don't get me wrong, I know he was just a little bean at the time and unable to understand my words, but I was still careful to not say anything that might cause him to be fearful. But inside I was dying, my heart was breaking to pieces and I couldn't stop crying. I was unable to write to my son for the next three weeks as the testing proceeded and we waited for answers. I was too scared and too sad, and in such unbelief that I didn't allow myself to express how much I loved this child, because I thought the more that I loved him the harder it would be to say good bye.

Once I received the heart crushing, fatal results of the tests I gave myself a few days to accept the diagnosis and let the fact that my baby would soon die sink in. I wasn't ready to write to him again until I had named him, I had decided that I would not withhold my love for him due to his short life sentence, I was going to love him like any mother carrying a healthy child would love her baby. So I wrote to him to let him know we had decided on his name:

My Sweet Baby Boy,

Hi son! It's your mommy, and I think I know what I am going to name you! It's not for sure yet though, so forgive me if it changes and God gives me a different name for you okay? -Corban Elijah-  Corban is a Hebrew word meaning gift or sacrifice consecrated to God. Elijah was a prophet in the bible who never had to suffer death because God loved him so much that He was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind on a chariot of fire.

We now know that you my love will not be here on earth with us very long, if at all. But don't be scared! If I am not the first person you meet in life, then it means that Jesus will be the very first Person you ever meet, and He will meet you at the beautiful gates of heaven with His loving arms ready to embrace and hold you. Remember the book I read to you about heaven? Heaven is full of little children and babies just like you, and you know what? Jesus loves children very much, probably more than anyone else ever created! So you are going to have so much fun up there, and you will be so loved, in fact you will be loved perfectly with the divine love of God!

I am sad that I might not ever get to hold you, or kiss you, or hear your sweet little cry and this makes me cry a lot. But please know baby that you aren't making me cry, you are perfect and so special to me. I only cry because of how much I love you and how much I'll miss you. You are my ultimate dream come true. All I've ever wanted my whole life is you, a sweet baby boy, and now I have you! Even if it's only for a short while. But I know God has a life prepared for you far better than I could ever offer you. He already has everything prepared for you in paradise, and you get to live there forever, without ever having to shed a tear or be sad! That's how much Jesus loves you son! I promise to teach you as much as I can about your Father in heaven while you are still in my belly so that when you get to heaven you can help Jesus teach all the other little children that are up there.

You've already taught me so much and will continue to teach me all the days of my life. There's not a minute that goes by that I don't think about you or that I forget about you, and for the rest of my life I will always think about you and remember you. You are the very first person to hear my heartbeat from the inside, and in my heart you will always be, you will forever be a part of me. No one will ever take your place either, you are irreplaceable, you are my first baby and the one who fulfilled my greatest dream.

Well my sweet love, it's time for mommy to get some rest now, hopefully you will too! I will write to you again soon. Oh! Tonight we are going to learn about Moses and how much his mommy loved him, I can't wait to read you the story! I love you Corban Elijah, with my whole heart, and I always will.

Love,

Mommy

I must now open up a bit more and expose the realness of the pain that I feel. To even go out in public takes a lot of energy, mentally. I have to prepare myself for the pregnant women I will encounter, the newborn babies I will see being pushed in strollers and the sound of babies crying that I will hear. The exposure to each of these elements has a 50/50 chance of sending me into a full on breakdown complete with tears and and water works. I have even had to stay away from browsing the feed of my Instagram because I am sure to see a picture of a pregnant belly, an ultrasound or an uber cute little baby. I get triggered very easily lately and am having to, for the time being, stay away from things that cause me to go into distress. Sadly, the hardest place for me to go is to my home church, where a good handful of my friends are currently pregnant, have babies under a year old or have a child that loves and adores them. I haven't yet gotten to the stage where I can be happy and share my excitement over their blessing from God, as I am still mourning the imminent death of my child.

I want people to know that I have already experienced the death of my son in a sense. When a woman finds out she is pregnant she instinctively starts dreaming of her unborn child and the life that her child will have. For us it was blue dreams of baseball games and playing catch on the front lawn, swimming lessons in adorable little trunks and fort building with cardboard boxes. When we received the diagnosis of Trisomy 18 all of those dreams died. The child we dreamed of died. He will never ever be able to live that life. In fact he only has a 5% chance of surviving past birth and after that a 1% chance of seeing his first birthday. This diagnosis is concrete and confirmed. There is no chance that he will not be born with this syndrome or that he will be born with it but will be the first child in history to live a normal life. So I need the people around me to understand that I am currently grieving the loss of the life of my son. And it's such a hard place to be in because I still have a growing life living with in me, but at the same time that little life is getting closer and closer as the days go by to his day of death. It's hard to be excited about his life when I am expecting his death. It's like being on two opposite sides of the emotional spectrum at the same exact time; I am experiencing both the excitement of life and the pain of death all at once.

The hardest question to answer these days has been "how are you?" Sometimes I answer with whatever I feel will make the person asking least uncomfortable, other times I answer honestly and am then told "I don't know what to say to that" and on a few occasions I have answered sarcastically "how do you think I'm doing?" Many times I just don't answer. Sometimes I explain how rough my day has been and I get a "I've had a rough day too due to x, y and z" and because x, y and z, doesn't involve losing a child or carrying a child that you know is going to die soon I get annoyed and angry. It's so hard to not be angry at everyone and everything. I find myself very short tempered and lacking patience with people such as the Subway girl or the Starbucks barista. The past two weeks I have been "holding it all together." Very few tears have been shed during these weeks as I have been busy meeting with specialists, health professionals and even funeral information officers. That is until last night. I had visited Forest Lawn to inquire about prenatal, still born or newborn burial services the day before as I have decided to control everything I can in this pregnancy and be completely prepared for what will happen as what I really want is out of my control and unattainable. Being told one price for burial over the phone only to walk in and be told a much higher price, a thousand dollars higher, only further angered me. "Why do I have to be making these decisions, why does Corban have to die, why am I not planning a baby shower and a nursery instead of a memorial and a funeral....Why God...WHY?!" I thought to myself. After spending a beautiful Easter at my parents house with extended family I got home only to have reality hit me like a ton of bricks. This was my first and last Easter with my son, and I began to cry, the cry then turned into weeping and wailing and didn't end for four hours.

This is the rawness of the depth of my pain that I am giving you a small glimpse of. It's not so that you will pity me or feel sorry for me, but more so that you might understand what I am going through and be able to be sensitive to my current state of mind. I feel like many people I have confided in have made me to feel that my faith is not big enough because I am preparing for his death and not expecting a healing miracle. My answer to that is talk to me when you have talked to at least 5 medical professionals who specialize in genetics, fatal fetal diagnostics or perinatology. Once you do that, or have gone through it yourself, then come and tell me that I need to have faith that God will heal my child and that I need to be excited about this pregnancy. Statements such as "you never know what God can do" do not help. Telling me that "doctors are wrong all the time" offers me no comfort. I have had to accept this diagnosis and have to learn to work through and past this fatal diagnosis. So when I hear comments like that it's like I regress and have to work through the acceptance stage all over again. My son's grim, fatal prognosis is not up for debate, it is what it is and I am learning to accept that as the days go by. It actually is more helpful for me to talk about his fatal diagnosis with reality and acceptance from those I am conversing with as it helps to ease some pain. Given the circumstance, I am as excited as I can be. I'm so glad I have written these blogs because I have to periodically return to them and reread them to remind myself of what God has shared with me and the comfort that He wants me to feel. Because I don't always feel the way I did when I wrote the previous blogs. That's why they are monuments to me that I have to return to so that I can remember what I felt at that time when God was speaking to my heart that I might return to that place of peace.

I believe that my God gives beauty for ashes, strength for fear, gladness for mourning and peace for despair. But I do believe it's a process and it's not that once I move from one to the other that I must stay there and be over the former, it's a constant back and forth between the extremes. Most of the time, day to day, I am at peace, I am rubbing my belly and reading to Corban and going about life normally. But sometimes I am in the depths of despair and feel like I'm drowning in pain and unable to go on any further. But I know to be still in those times, because it is then, when I am at my weakest, that I am closest to peace and comfort and the strength I need to go on. He has never failed me, I know He never will. But my faith is not yet ironclad, it is not impenetrable and always at it's greatest. I get weak, depressed, angry and inconsolable at times. But I am so grateful for the love and support of my family and friends. People that I can call at 4am crying hysterically without even being able to speak and they are there to comfort and console me. Friends I can text at any time asking for prayer as I am in a dark place and they respond, even if at 5am, and tell me they are praying and offer comforting and uplifting words. My parents, my brother and sister, my handful of close friends and my pastors have been the very arms of God to me, embracing me, loving me and supporting me through this journey. I am so blessed by the support system I have and can depend on during this storm in my life.

I will end this post asking for prayer, for Corban Elijah first and foremost, and then for me and my family, as it's not just me losing a son, it's my siblings losing a nephew, my parents losing their first grandchild and I'm sure to my husband it's him losing his son but also having to watch his wife endure a pain that he doesn't understand. We are literally in the valley of death and the only reason we are able to continue is because we believe that God is who He says He is, that He is the same as He was before we found out Corban's fate and that He will always be. Faith. It's all we have right now. So your prayers for us are invaluable and appreciated in a way that I can not express with words.

"You have lost a child - a lovely child; but, my sister, you have not really lost your child. You call him lost who is in Christ's keeping? You call that babe lost that is up among the angels? If your child had been taken to be a prince in a palace, you would not have said that he was lost; inasmuch as he has been caught away to be with Jesus, say not that he is lost. You are the mother of one who can see the face of God! -Charles H. Spurgeon taken from Sermons on Women of the New Testament

Corban Elijah. Our gift from God to us, offered back up to Him from us,

never having to suffer death, but will be taken up to heaven by angels

who will introduce him to Him who made him and holds the whole world

in His hands. My sweet boy, I love you so much baby.