Hannah’s Story
We do not always get to choose the roles we must play in life, but we do get to choose how we will play the role we have been given. Our youngest daughter, Ellianna Grace, was born on March 2, 2011. It was a Wednesday; my husband Mark was at work and I was home with our 3-year-old daughter when the contractions started. I did all the usual things to try to make them stop—rested, hydrated, soaked in a warm bath—yet the rhythmic tensing of my belly continued and grew in strength. Our previous daughter had been born at 30 weeks, so being just 29 weeks and a few days I was feeling anxious, but I also did not want to overreact if it was just Braxton Hicks. After several hours, however, the contractions were still strong and regular, and just as my husband arrived home my water broke. We quickly made arrangements for the three big kids and made the five-minute drive to the hospital.
Despite the impending situation, I remember feeling calm. Though our last baby had been born early, we had had an amazing NICU and perinatal team, and we had every confidence they would again be able to slow my labor and keep me pregnant longer, as they had done our last go-round. As they confirmed I was in labor and my water was broken, we started talking about things we knew well from before: steroid shots to help mature the baby’s lungs and magnesium sulfate to stop the contractions. We were confident everything would be ok like last time. Just a few minutes after I received the steroid shot, however, I started bleeding a frightening amount. There was no time to wait; I was experiencing a placental abruption and the baby had to be delivered right then to prevent both of us from bleeding out. In less than ten minutes I was prepped and on the table for an emergency c-section. Just a few minutes later the doctor held a tiny, scrunched up little baby face above the barrier for me to see. Her strong cry was encouraging to us, and we had absolute faith that the NICU team was giving her the best care possible.
Ellianna’s NICU stay was a roller coaster, as many are—a slow dance of three steps forward, two steps back—but she made slow and steady progress growing, eating, and thriving. The biggest issue she had was a brain bleed due to the traumatic delivery and her fragile state. After weeks of careful watching and waiting, it became clear that she would need surgery to place a VP shunt in her brain to help her body drain the spinal fluid properly.
Handing my baby girl over for brain surgery was one of those defining moments for me. I had never felt so fearful and so completely out of control, yet I had no choice but to surrender to what was going to be her story. For me it was also a time of really searching what I believed about God and if He was the good Father I believed He was, regardless of what we might face in the days ahead. I chose to believe that I could trust God with my daughter and with His plans for her life. Surgery went well and she improved, and before we knew it she was ready to be discharged home, right after Easter Sunday. She was welcomed home with great joy by her older three siblings, and there were often waiting times for who would get to hold her next. Out of state family also took turns coming out to meet her, and she was content, growing, and flourishing.
Though her shunt was working well for her, we knew at some point as she grew she would need surgery again to place a different, more permanent type of shunt. We reached that point when she was about 4 months old. Although it was difficult to see her go through surgery again, she did well and was back home within a few days. We were ready to begin the rest of her life and soak in the down-in-the-bones joy of raising another daughter. Our roller coaster journey through life in the NICU and multiple brain surgeries had challenged and strengthened our faith in God, and it brought a new closeness in our marriage as we learned to take each day as it came and find the little gifts in them, even when it was hard.
Over the next few weeks, our Ellie was not herself. She was increasingly fussy and was not sleeping or eating well. It took a few visits to the doctor to be taken seriously that my mom-gut was telling me something was wrong with her shunt, and by the time someone listened she was in bad shape. Ellianna was admitted to the hospital where it was confirmed that her shunt was not functioning properly. Once she was stabilized with a blood transfusion, our girl was taken to surgery twice that night. The first time was to fix the shunt, and the second time was to take the shunt completely out because they had discovered she had a serious infection in her brain that had already spread to her blood and other systems. After surgery she remained on a ventilator and was not responding.
I remember very clearly feeling like God was asking me if I would be willing to give my daughter back to Him if it meant that someone else would come to know Christ as a result. I was angered at the thought, and immediately responded, “no!”
The next day she continued to decline, and we watched as CPR was performed on our little baby girl. My soul has never cracked deep open like it did that day. Twice her heart stopped and they were able to get it started again. After painstaking hours of watching Ellie fight to live, I was suddenly completely overcome with peace at letting her go. I was angry that I even felt that peace, but it stayed. To this day words cannot describe the depth of the peace I felt at saying, “Ok, Jesus, she’s yours; please take her home.” We knew we did not want her to continue being put through the battering her poor tiny body was suffering each time she went through CPR, and so we had the nurses disconnect her from everything and place her in our arms. It is holy, sacred ground to hold someone close as their soul meets Jesus. We were given much strength and peace in those moments as we surrendered our daughter back to the arms of our heavenly Father. I could not remember a single new song I knew, but all the hymns I had grown up singing were fresh in my mind and I sang to her every song I could think of. Her daddy held her tiny hand in his and sang “Twinkle Star,” a family bedtime tradition which was a first and a last for Ellianna that day.
The grief of losing a child is a hurt that has changed me in ways I never could have imagined. It brought me to the end of myself, and when you reach the end of yourself you find the beginning of your truest and deepest self. I am so thankful for the opportunity to find myself there because I’m not sure I had ever known the true me before. It has given me a new and important perspective on what truly matters in life, as so many meaningless things drop away when you are clinging to the bare bones of who you are and what you believe. Small talk and competition among friend groups becomes so unimportant as you are searching through the ashes of your life, trying to find what is still good. The truth I have found is that life still can be good; perhaps a different good than before, but good nonetheless. When you continue to focus on finding these small daily graces throughout your days, you find a whole new beauty in life perhaps overlooked by those who have never been stripped bare to the juxtaposition of where joy and grief coexist.
There are some hurts in life that hurt you, and there are some hurts in life that change you. Having watched my little girl breathe her last breath has greatly increased my compassion to help others who are walking in my shoes. It has allowed me numerous opportunities to connect with fellow hope moms and help them find hope when they need it the most. It has helped me find the words when there are none to say. The need to communicate about our feelings has pushed my husband and I closer together, as we have determined to strengthen our understanding of each other and how each of us have our own unique needs and timetables to our grief. It has helped our family better understand and be able to bring comfort to others who are grieving. There are many painful moments, but I feel so honored to have been chosen to be Ellianna’s mama. I learned much from her short but mighty life, and while I wish we did not have to go through that pain, I would not change the person I have been allowed to become because of her.
- Hannah
Hope Mom to Ellianna Grace and Two Precious Babies
Hannah enjoys artistic projects, photography, and the outdoors. She is a retired paramedic firefighter living in Ohio with her husband and children; 4 on earth and 3 in Heaven. She is author of her own blog at https://choosinghope.live/.
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