A Letter To My Unborn Baby Angel

Angel Statue

To my Angel Baby,

My dear sweet little angel, I am writing this to you because I want you to know that I loved you since the very first moment I knew you were growing inside me. I still love you, even if you stopped living and are no longer inside me. My heart still feels heavy and tears come to my eyes every time I think of you.

I found out you had died when I was 11 weeks pregnant. One day after my birthday. You had stopped growing at 8 weeks, but my body did not wanted to let you go. It held you inside, covered and protected, even if your little heart had stopped beating. I had a first glimpse at you in an emergency radiology room and my heart broke to see you so little, so sweet, and yet so still. Even if I was bleeding and having painful cramps, I still hoped for a miracle. The ultra-sound machine though was merciless. You were no longer alive.

That evening, driving home on the highway, the sky was so beautiful, so full of eerie light, in a way that I had never seen it before. It was the last night I was carrying you inside me and the sky knew it. The light was waiting for you my baby angel. And at that moment I told you that I was ready to let you go. But that I was waiting for you to come back to me in your own time, healthy and good and strong.

The next day, a rainy one, I was scheduled for a D&C. Waited for 12 hours in the emergency room, as this is how it works in Philippine hospitals. It brought me back a little from my emotional suffering, as the frustration against a health care system so inefficient took over. Both days I had to go to work. I hid my pain under a mask, as I am someone who does not like to put the weight of her suffering on others. It’s maybe an error, and I will look at it latter. But for the time being this is who I am. And it was also my way of not thinking about what I had lost for at least a couple of hours. My way of evading the reality.

Your daddy, who loved you so very much and who loves you still held me in his arms and told me how much he loved me and that it was ok to cry. We slept in each other’s arms trying to find strength in that embrace. And we did. Life went on.

And here I am, seven months after my miscarriage, still thinking of you. The blood of my first period brought me to tears, as it was yet another confirmation that you were gone. I trained and while punching and kicking that punching bag I was punching and kicking Death, telling her that I hated her, that I hated her with all my being, that I resented her for taking you from me. And yet Death is intricately liked to Life and part of it.

I spoke to God, I begged him, I yelled at him, and then I thanked him for the gift of allowing me to have you even for such a short time. I keep thinking that in this there is a bigger lesson that I need to learn. To not take things for granted, to enjoy every present moment, to celebrate Life in every aspect of it and to love with passion, as if every day would be the last. A lesson that somehow God and Life wanted me to learn. A gift so heavy and so hard to forget. But a gift nonetheless.

We will be trying to offer you brothers and cousins, here on Earth. And we will wait for you my baby angel to come back to us, when God decides the time is right. And do not forget that Daddy and I love you so very much and that we miss you.

Your mom.

Jen Jen with love.