At a checkup at 31 weeks I was told they couldn’t find my son’s heartbeat. I texted my husband at work to tell him he had to come to the doctor’s right away.

We waited two hours for an opening at the ultrasound lab to confirm that he was gone. I think I screamed when the tech left the room. We drove home to pack a bag to go to labour and delivery and to tell our parents that their grandbaby was dead. I don’t think I even remembered to bring a change of clothes. I couldn’t think at all. After going back in and getting induced we were in labour for 23 hours. We watched a marathon of Chopped over and over because every other channel was news of Donald Trump threatening to nuke North Korea. A nurse came in and sat with us and cried. I don’t know her name, but I still think of her and hope she’s okay.

When our son was delivered a nurse cleaned him up and wrapped him in a quilt that somebody had made. In our hospital volunteers donate baby quilts for every family to take home with their little ones. That person will never know how important that blanket is, how many times it’s been hugged and cried into.

I couldn’t bear to send that quilt with him into the retort at the funeral home, So I made him another one to send him on his way. It was soft and had elephants on it, it was the only fabric that made sense when I went into the fabric store. Elephant mothers stay for days with their babies if they die, even try to carry them. 

A few months after that we lost another baby at nine weeks.

We figured we’d give it one more try and that’s all our hearts could take. I kept bleeding, but the baby kept hanging in there. To keep my hands busy and to keep from losing my mind I made her a quilt. I fully expected to lose this baby too, but whether she lived or died she would need a blanket. That seemed like a reasonable amount of hope to me. It’s navy and I embroidered stars and constellations onto it. It lies on the foot of her bed today, she just turned five.

—Erin