The other side of joy

My book, Cryo Kid - Drawing a New Map (www.cryokid.com), is centered on the exponential transformation of the family in my lifetime and, specifically, the infertility issues surrounding the birth of my granddaughter, Samantha. Also touched on are the courageous repeated attempts (11 in all) to get pregnant with the help of assisted reproduction technology by another daughter, Susan. Eventually she conceived and carried a child, a little girl, almost full term. It has been a joy-filled pregnancy and, perhaps because she was so happy, an easy one. Sadly, a week before the due date, the baby strangled on her umbilical cord in the womb, an accident of birth that defies modern technology, and was delivered stillborn by Caesarian section.

 

Our grieving family will bury the baby on Sunday in a private ceremony. We are all tasting the other side of joy. For Susan, there are no words that can console her loss, but, nevertheless, she is trying to put this sad event into a positive framework: She has had the joy of nurturing a child, she says, who at least had a happy aquatic life, a life that Susan experienced, for almost nine months in her womb. She delivered this child, held this perfectly formed baby with a beautiful face, this baby who did not survive to take her first breath of life, in her arms and loved her, and she became a mother. She remains a mother, one who has lost her child, and now she will bury her. She has given her child the name intended for this baby, and every Mother's Day for the rest of her life, perhaps every day of her life, Susan will remember that, for a brief time, she was a mother, and she will remember her child, my potential grandchild, Sienna Rae, with love.

 

God willing, Susan is determined to try again. She is a woman of valor.