LOVE

 

Baby’s Short Life Brought Family Joy

 

Editor’s note. This incredibly powerful post appeared at LifeZine, an Irish pro-life site.

Hilary and John with Margaret

Hilary Ní Lorcháin, a 33-year-old Dublin historian and her husband John were looking forward to the birth of their first child when they discovered their baby had Edwards syndrome and would not survive more than a few days. Margaret was born just before Christmas. Hilary has written a moving account of the precious short hours they spent together, which was published last week in the Irish Independent. The following extracts require no further comment, but it is well worth reading the whole article.

“There was no sound, no cry – just a whimper as the midwife put her into my arms. Our Margaret. We had waited a long time for her. Serious and wide-eyed, she was looking straight up at me. It must be hard just being born, confusing to be out in the world, I thought.
“‘Minutes to hours,’ the doctor murmured gently.

“What a thing to hear as you gaze at your first-born, who is quaking and wide awake and you are just noticing that she has dark-grey eyes and perfectly lovely fingers and toes.
“But the doctor was proved wrong, for Margaret was stronger than she seemed. She lived for two-and-a-half days, all 4lb 10oz of her. Small but spirited, we like to think.”
“We left for the hospital with a sort of dread of what might happen, fearing that she mightn’t make it to birth after all, that we’d never see the colour of her eyes.
“But she did make it. She made it against huge odds.
“People ask what she was like. All parents are ridiculously partisan and perhaps we were too. But truly, Margaret was a joy for her two short days.”

“Obviously, we had looked forward to welcoming Margaret and knew that any time with her would be precious, but in the end, the very best thing was the most unexpected.
“At a time of the greatest anguish and emotional strain, when every instinct was in chaos and every feeling was in mutiny, Margaret made us not just smile but actually laugh.
“I had imagined that she would be desperately ill and helplessly needy but never that she would have the most amusing expressions. Sometimes she looked at least 1,000 years old and wise and sometimes she looked utterly newborn and pleasantly vacant.”

“So she stayed with us all the time, our very small girl, and we made much of every fragile moment.
“I know that some people think hospices are about giving up on life. A place of defeat. But in reality, they are about living life to its natural end with courage and dignity in a community where the value of peaceful endings is recognised. But what’s that like for parents of a newborn? How do you deal with that? There was no map, no manual that could help us, but something wonderful happened while we were there, something that we shall cherish always. I don’t think it could have happened anywhere else.”
“Was it worth it? Of course, we say, she’s our baby daughter

“She died later that evening, peacefully, in our arms, having never known anything but love.
“There’s no consolation except the rational consolation of having no regrets, of feeling no guilt or angst, of knowing that we made the most of our time with our daughter and that we did everything we could for her until there was no more to be done.”

“Sometimes it hurts to find things broken beyond repair. Sometimes it hurts to realise just what we can’t do. We are so used to fixing things, solving problems, making outcomes better.
“There’s always another one in the back of the shop or we can order it in. There’s a pill, a friend of a friend, a website, an expert out there, a healer, a technology, a magic wand. . .
“And then sometimes, there’s not. There’s just not. We have to recognise our limitations. We can’t give babies like Margaret an education or a cure. But we can give them something much better than either of them. A big welcome. And a little loving.”

Source: NRLC News