Our Lost Angel
Posted by Joseph Cianciotto
Now that I was able to tell the story of becoming a first time dad, I had very much planned on this next post being about the birth of our second amazing daughter Sophie. And well, writing this just now I find myself somewhat frozen in my tracks. Sophie was technically speaking our third angel. Our second angel was lost to us 6 weeks into Jen’s second pregnancy. And as we learned, after living through that experience, it is an all too common tragedy for those trying to conceive to experience a miscarriage. That doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking, but it was of comfort to know that we weren’t alone in that struggle. I guess part of why I’m writing this now is so if anyone happens to read this who is going through it, you too, will know you are not alone.
I also believe our little daughter, who was with us so briefly deserves to be celebrated as much as any part of our family. I’m sure you’re reading this thinking how could I possible know it was a girl, and well I really don’t have an explanation, but somehow I just know.
The way it all happened as well was as upsetting as you would imagine. Back in 2013 Jen and I were lucky enough to conceive a second time. We found out in early March we were pregnant and saw the opportunity to celebrate it. I had a conference coming up in Fort Lauderdale for one of my clients and it seemed like a great opportunity to have Jen and our daughter Hannah, who was almost 16 months-old, tag along and fly down for the week. Given the weather in NY in March, it was phenomenal to be down in there in the 80°+ climate. We checked into our hotel, which was one of those timeshares, and after what felt like forever we were able to settle down into our suite.
Some time the following day I headed down to the conference facility to rehearse my presentation and do a dry run. While waiting to start, I got a call from Jen who was back at the hotel and she was upset and quite scared. She told me that she had some light spotting and was worried about the baby. I calmed her down a bit and googled to see that while anything was possible it wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for this to happen. Unfortunately it continued into the evening accompanied by a fair amount of discomfort for Jen. After speaking to the doctor about the frequency and amount of the spotting it quickly became clear that we were losing our baby. What happened next is even a bit too private for this blog, but by morning Jen miscarried. I remember having to process this tragedy and at the same time wipe my eyes and give a presentation to 300 people. I hightailed it over to the convention center, performed my part, smiled and quickly went home to my family. What was probably the hardest part for us was knowing that we came down to Florida with our newest angel and we would be going back to NY without her.
When we got home we shared the news with our family and were happy to have their comfort. We met with the doctor who gave Jen a clear bill of health and set about trying to live our lives again. This was not exactly the kind of news I looked forward to sharing with friends, but the more I did the more I realized how common an occurrence this tragedy was among others. However what was inspiring was hearing about how many of them recovered from this and how quickly they went on to have their next healthy baby. For Jen and I, it really helped to shift our focus.
After more than a month we began to try again to conceive once more. And fortunately within two months time we were pregnant again. It was bittersweet, we loved our new angel but still mourned the one we lost. Jen had wanted to plant a tree in her memory which was a great idea but something I never quite found the time to do with my travel schedule and ridiculously horrible job. What we then both realized was that at least our newest addition would have a guardian angel watching over her during Jen’s pregnancy. It’s funny how things work out. As it would turnout almost a year to the day we first conceived our second angel, God brought our third one, Sophie, into this world.
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