After losing her stillborn son, Japeth Peace, Felicia Cash shared a heart-wrenching post on Facebook, with the hopes of bringing to light just how complete, real, formed and alive a baby is at only 14 weeks gestation.
Felicia was three-and-a-half months pregnant with her precious baby boy when she miscarried. Through the heartbreak and devastation, the mother of five was amazed by how developed her stillborn son was at just 14 weeks and six days old. He was just as much of a human being then as anyone else.
“He is perfectly and wonderfully formed, right down to his amazing tiny toes and fingers. Even his fingernails are formed and visible. Tiny veins that carried his own blood to his precious body can be seen through his delicate skin, even his wonderfully formed muscles are visible. At less than half gestation he is very obviously human, not a cluster of cells, not a lump of tissue, not a blob of unformed flesh. He is a beautiful child, formed by God, and now gone to be with Him.”
Opening up about the loss of her stillborn son
As if opening up about the loss of her stillborn son gone too soon wasn’t painful enough, Felicia posted photos of her son to show his complete and perfect humanness.
“His tiny heart was beating within 16 days of conception, pumping his own blood. That is usually before anyone knows that they are pregnant. There seems to be a misconception that unless you can hear or see it, it isn’t happening, but that tiny heart is beating, even if it is too small to hear or see.”
Felicia and her husband desperately tried to get pregnant for 13 years, before making the courageous decision to foster children.
They took in three sisters, and adopted the girls just two years later.
Within hours of finalizing their adoption and officially welcoming their daughters into their forever home, the Cash family learned they would soon grow by one more.
“[T]he morning after we signed their adoption papers in court, we found out that we were expecting. Eight months later, our oldest son was born. A few years after that, we were blessed with another.”
Felicia never imagined years before that she’d have a family like this, much less biological children who she was able to carry, grow and birth herself.
In the spring of 2017, Felicia became pregnant a third time. This time, with TWINS!
But “complications” that began at six weeks were just the beginning of heartache for these parents. When Felicia started bleeding, she and her husband went to the hospital in fear of miscarriage.
Doctors confirmed one of the twins had in fact died. But the remaining twin was healthy and strong.
However, their fears returned when the bleeding continued later on. They were told it was simply remnants of the first loss, and a “hematoma beneath the placenta.”
But on July 24, Felicia woke to more bleeding, and even some pain.
She called her husband at work just 20 minutes away, but as soon as she hung up the phone, Felicia’s water broke.
“Within 10 minutes I had delivered my tiny son into my own hands.”
As she held her itty bitty baby in her hands, Felicia made yet another courageous decision to document those few moments of his tiny little life.
Sharing the photos was extremely difficult, but Felicia insisted, “I knew that I couldn’t let his life count for nothing.”
