Our daughter, Helen, was born sleeping on June 5, 2018, when I was 38 weeks pregnant. The term “stillborn” felt a bit foreign to me then, and it still does now — somehow that term makes me feel like other people don’t think our baby was real, that she was actually born. But we know better.
We know Helen was alive and well with me for nine months — that she was a beautiful 7-pound, 7-ounce baby when she came into this world. She was perfect in every way. She had a head full of hair, long toes like her dad and the cutest button nose I’d ever seen. Holding my daughter was by far the best thing that I have ever done in my life, and I long for the day I get to hold her again.