This is my very first post…..ever. I find myself here because I need to write. I need to write about Quinn. At a time when everyone I come face to face with would know of his existance…..suddenly no one will know of him. Thus my need to let people know about him. You may have heard of him already. If you have read my husbands posts about him and the events leading up to my need to write about him now, than you know of his all-to-short existence. If you haven’t, than here is my version.

Quinn is our baby boy. When we found out I was pregnant in the middle of October with our 5th child we were EXTATIC! Everyone asked us if we were crazy. I mean we already have four beautiful daughters. We just told them that we couldn’t be happier. Then the next question always followed…..”are you hoping for a boy this time?” In a way we were. OK, we both really hoped it would be a boy and in some ways I knew. But ultimately we hoped for the same thing we hoped for with all of our girls……..just to have a healthy baby. We always had healthy babies in the past, why would this be any different? This one WAS different. I felt VERY different with this pregnancy. Everyone said “oh, maybe this is your boy”. I was very sick and just exhausted ALL the time. I had wished for that part of pregnancy to over with. Once I got through the first trimester (past 12 weeks) I should have been feeling a bit better…..the worst part of pregnancy was supposed to be over. I should have been feeling better, my energy level should have improved and I was out of the “danger zone”. Unfortunately the worst part of this pregnancy and the worst day of my life were just ahead. On Jan. 21st at 16 1/2 weeks I had a regular Dr. appointment. All was going well until they couldn’t find a heartbeat. I kept telling the doc. “I know it’s there, I saw it on the ultrasound at 6 weeks!” That didn’t matter. There was no more heartbeat……..my baby was gone. I have never in my life experienced such heart wrenching sadness and grief. I have lost loved ones in the past but this was different……..this was my child, my own flesh and blood. There is nothing I can do to bring him back and there was nothing that I could have done to save him. I can only tell you about his all-to-short existence.

We found out that I had an infection, a virus (something my Dr. thinks I picked up at work, I work in a hospital) that if you get it for the first time while you are pregnant it can be fatal to the baby. On top of that he had down syndrome (most of the time a death sentence in itself for a fetus. something I did not know until now is that babies that make it to birth with down syndrome are miracles). We will never know which one made his heart stop beating or whether the combination of the two was just too much for his tiny body to handle. What we do know it that yes, our baby WAS in fact a boy (our first we hope), and that he was loved just as much as any other child and that he will never be forgotten. I would trade anything to feel as nautious and exhausted as I did 3 weeks ago when I was still pregnant with our baby boy Quinn.