To my sweet Sophia

 

Sophia.

 

Sophia, Sophia, Sophia, Sophia.

I love your name so much.  I love you so much.

 

Baby girl, the longer I get to spend with you the harder it is to imagine losing you.  We’ve been in this together for 29 weeks…203 days…4,872 hours.  Every minute that I’ve known you were inside me has been like a wonderful dream come true.  I prayed for you for so long, you finally came, and now I’m so afraid of losing you.

I don’t like to cry about you.  I feel like it’s not good for you to hear me crying.  I feel like I need to be a strong mommy for you, but sometimes it is just so hard. 

Most days I don’t think about losing you.  Most days I just hope and believe that you are going to be absolutely fine and I will be able to hold you one day.  On those days I imagine what your soft skin will feel like and what your cry will sound like.  I wonder if you will have my nose or you daddy’s nose, and whether or not you’ll have his eyes or a mixture of mine too.  I imagine holding you, kissing you, singing to you our song…”How He Loves Us.”  I can see us napping on the couch together, snuggling under a blanket, and just breathing in each other.  On those days I am so excited to meet you. 

But then I have moments where all that excitement and hope seems to be so far away, and I’m left with the intense sadness where I imagine coming home from the hospital with empty arms.  That emptiness is the hardest part to imagine.  I don’t want to think that one day I won’t be able to feel you in any capacity—either kicking me from inside or clinging to me from the outside.  That emptiness seems so unbearable.

This journey that I’ve been on since we first heard the devastating news of your diagnosis has been such a rollercoaster ride.  I’ve been in the lowest of lows, and then been lifted up by my Savior’s strong arms to the highest of highs.  Now that my pregnancy seems to be so close to ending I start to see that I’m going to be transitioning to another season of my life very soon.  I hope and pray with every ounce of my being that you will be in that season.  I beg God that He will be merciful on your sweet body and will continue to allow you to live.

God has been so merciful to you so far, my sweet Sophia.  Although your brain has not developed properly, so much of you has!  Do you know how lucky you are to have a strong heart that has no defects?  Do you know that many babies with your condition have kidneys that don’t function nearly as well as yours?  The fact that you get the hiccups all the time proves to me that God is allowing you to “practice breathing” inside of me, something that some babies never do on their own.  You don’t have any extra fingers or toes and your spine looks perfect.  So much of you is so perfect and for that we have to thank God.

I do thank God for you.  I thank Him that He chose me to be your mommy, because you are such a special girl.  You are a girl that has already stolen the hearts of people everywhere and you were chosen to show this doubting world that miracles can happen and that there is a God who is Sovereign and in control.  The fact that you are still alive and kicking shows just how good God is.

So Sophia, forgive me for the moments that I doubt you.  Forgive me when I’m weak and don’t believe that God is going to be good to us, because He is good.  Even if He chooses to take you to heaven right away, it’s all because He loves you and just wants extra time to spend with you.

For now I’ll just continue to cling to the hope that one day you will look into my eyes and know that I’m your mommy and will know just how much I love you.

I love you to forever and back.

-Mommy