My "Beautiful Christian"

Christabelle, my daughters life

Warning: what follows is graphic and distressful. I did not water it down nor did I pull punches. My daughter deserves to be recognized more than you deserve to be protected. I wrote this for her, not you.

Doctors and nurses raced around me as if I weren't even there. Machines and alarms and a cacophony of overlapping yelling voices turned into unintelligible noise. Blood pooled and dripped from the sides of the hospital bed. Chaos lived here.

Yet, as if standing outside of time while it blurred around me, all I could do was look at the baby girl I held in my hands. I could literally see her heart beating through her underdeveloped chest. Her head moved to press her face against my hand. Somehow she knew it was me.

My daughter was the most beautiful girl this world never knew.

Not long after I was released from prison, my wife informed me that she was pregnant. I was excited in ways I can't even begin to describe. I was the husband who shouted and jumped up and down and yelled the news to strangers.

In hindsight, given that prison had excluded me from everything with my only biological child, her birth and childhood, this hit me extra hard. I was going to get to do and be all of the things I couldn't with her. My wife wasn't just giving me a child, she was giving me a chance for redemption.

We started immediately into building a nursery. It had an 80’s theme. From the cradle to the curtains to the toys, everything was vintage Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears and Rainbow Bright. We both knew we were having a girl long before an ultrasound told us so. We never even discussed otherwise.

My wife had pregnancy cravings just like any woman did though hers were mundane by many standards. Reece's Peanut Butter cups. She woke me one night asking if I'd run and get her a pack from the corner store. I came back with a brown grocery bag filled with them. I'll never forget how she opened one, took a single bite from it, set the rest on her nightstand before smiling, kissing me on the cheek and rolling over to go to sleep. It was simultaneously the most annoying and adorable thing I had ever experienced in my entire life.

Things progressed as any normal pregnancy and we were well into the second trimester when something concerning occurred. I'm not going to get into the medical jargon nor pretend that I even remember those details correctly. What's important is that I took no chances and rushed her to an emergency room.

As a doctor explained in terms I could understand, the membrane of her womb was thin. Too thin. Prone to leak and rupture prematurely. Explaining that there wasn’t anything they could do, we did the only thing he said we could do.

My wife was bed ridden from that moment forward. I took time off from work and we did whatever we had to do. Days turned into weeks as we approached the end of the second trimester. We just had to make it to viability.

We were so close.

When her water broke something else went horribly wrong at the exact same time. I don't remember what it was called and I'm not so callous as to ask her to remind me. It was like a catastrophic and cascading system failure.

What I do remember is the sound of her screams echoing through the house. Seering into my memory like the piercing stab of a glowing fireplace poker. Screams blending both her pain and terror. I fell up the stairs and ran on all fours like an animal to reach her.

There was so much blood already. My eyes darted between the sobbing contortions of horror on her face to the pool forming on the mattress. I had never been frightened by the sight of blood until that moment.

I had never known true powerlessness until that day.

The medics arrived to find me laying in the bed with her. Covered in her blood like a maniac. I had been too afraid to lift or move my wife in any way, so I climbed into the bed next to her. I climbed into the carnage and held her to me. I held her as if I could keep her there with my will alone.

Her screams had devolved into a lower pitched wail of desperation and fear. Slipping from her distorted mouth like damned spirits escaping her body with each breath. I can still feel the warmth of her life leaving her body and cooling against my skin as I write this.

“No, no, please god no.” she had prayed whimpering and I knew it wasn't her own life she was begging for.

The hospital was a blur of fluorescent lights and wide eyed nurses. They tried to remove me initially and quickly understood that enforcing such an order would involve manpower they didn't have to spare. I stood in the corner and did the only thing I could. I watched.

I watched as they plugged bags of blood into her arms. I watched nurses attempt to comfort her. I watched doctors yell and bark orders to people who were standing only a couple of feet away. I watched my wife slipping in and out, falling silent for moments and then rousing to cry out all over again.

I watched my daughter be born.

I watched my daughter be born.

I saw a nurse shaking her head regretfully as she handed my little girl to another to be placed in a hospital bassinet. As if in a trance I moved to intercept her. The nurse looked at me, what was left of me in that moment, and she understood. She handed my daughter to me and I wonder if the pain in her eyes was mirroring mine.

Everyone's attention returned to saving my wife and I stood there outside of it all looking at the most beautiful baby girl I could have ever hoped for. I could see us, my wife and I, in her features. She looked so peaceful. She was so small, so very very small.

Then she moved.

My body made an involuntary sound that couldn't even be described as a word. I had meant to speak yet it came out as some kind of cry of pain like a wounded animal would make. I had thought she was stillborn. I grabbed a nurse by the front of her scrubs top, a fist full of the thick material, and pulled her to me. Why was no one doing anything?

I still couldn't speak yet her wide eyed shock turned to understanding and sympathy as she looked at my daughter. As soothingly as she could, this nurse explained that she'd been born too soon. That there was nothing they could do for her. She kept saying “viability”. One of the doctors, overhearing her, stepped in to confirm what she was telling me. He was less gentle.

“There’s nothing we can do.”

My wife was stabilizing and the energy of the room was lowering to match. She was unconscious, not that there was anything either if us could've done. So I shuffled to a seat and sat there with my baby.

Her eyes couldn't open yet I could see them. Her tiny nose, her mouth shaped like her mother's. She had little gummy toes. Her arms curled up to her chest. Yet more than anything, I can remember literally watching her tiny heart beat.

I talked to her while trying to hide the pain I was feeling as if I were afraid I'd worry her. I didn't know what I was doing, I just rambled. I wanted her to hear my voice though I'm sure she couldn't yet. I told her how beautiful she was and how I wasn't going anywhere. I told her about her siblings and I talked about her mother.

I was grateful she couldn't open her eyes. Though I tried to control my voice, I couldn't stop the spasms heaving in my midsection. It convulsed as if something were trying to push its way out through my diaphragm.

A nurse came to collect her and I shook my head. “She's still alive” I said and they left me be. My little girl was such a warrior, I was able to turn them away like this three separate times. My daughter stayed with me for over an hour.

I called her by her name. Christabelle. She turned her head to lay her cheek on my palm. I wasn't there to comfort her, she was here to comfort me. With everything that was happening, it was as if she was the one trying to show me it was going to be alright.

I watched the exact moment as she passed away.

I felt it happen independently of my senses.

It may have been brief but I put a lifetime of love into the time we stole. My daughter was gone but I can say she never knew a moment where she wasn't loved unconditionally. She could say her daddy held her for her entire life.

My wife didn't wake for hours. To this day I am grateful she can't remember anything. The blood loss had been enough that she didn't even recall an ambulance coming to get us. I made sure I was the one to tell her what happened. It had to come from me. I had my wits about me again. I was able to be her shelter as the news caused the sky to fall.

I handed her our daughter and we mourned. As I learned, there was a local photographer on call who did charity work for these exact circumstances. She came and took pictures of our baby so we would have that of her. It seemed macabre at first however I will absolutely attest now to how helpful it was to have someone else see her and to have images to keep forever. Per our request, a family friend brought doll clothes from our house for Christabelle to wear. I'll be damned if they didn't fit perfectly.

It took a little effort on my part however I was able to get the hospital to step outside of protocol and issue my daughter a birth certificate. Everyone kept telling me that they don't issue them in these situations, however I'm very convincing when my mind is set on something. She deserved to be recognized as having been here.

We held a funeral at a local state park in a shelter next to a clear pond. It was a beautiful fall setting and the trees were at their peak autumn colors. She deserved nothing less than the most spectacular color array nature could provide.

I purchased a young cherry blossom tree and spread her ashes into the roots where I planted it. There she grew tall and strong in my backyard. I talk to her when I do yard work, telling her about my week. I tell her stories, much as I do on here, when I'm in the grill shelter I built right next to her. To this day I sit under her branches when things are tough and she comforts me now as she had comforted me then.

She can do that because I didn't lose my daughter that day. I'm just not with her yet.

This is the life of my daughter.

My “beautiful Christian”, my Christabelle.