By Taraneh Kerley
@taranehwrites

"What is her birthday? I want to put it in my phone." 

I paused. Of course, I knew my daughter's birthday. I just hadn't thought someone would ask about it.

"January 13th."

My friend, Grace, someone I met after we lost our daughter, Elanor, to fetal death, made a note on her phone. We finished our lunch and went home to our sons and husbands. I felt weary, and light, all at once. It is a feeling I know very well.

I thought about her question on and off throughout the day. As I cut an apple for my son's snack, I thought about it. As I walked the dog, I thought about it. As I sat with my husband watching our son race around the yard before bathtime, I thought about it.

"Grace asked for Elanor's birthday today," I said.

"She did? Wow," came my husband's soft reply.

"Exactly," I said. "Wow."

In the time since we lost Elanor, very few people had asked about her, or about what happened. My husband and I are open about all the babies we have lost. We don't pretend they were never with us, or that we never lost them the way we did. We are believers in God's ability to move, heal, encourage, and help through the stories of other people. I have written about it before. Still, very few people ever ask questions or bring them up. Whether it is politeness, awkwardness, or distaste, I am not sure.

But then Grace asked, "What is her birthday?"

It wasn't just that she asked, that she cared, that she wanted to support us. Those things were priceless on their own. What truly struck me was that she asked about her birthday. It acknowledged something so important, so precious that it had given me pause—she'd been born, not just lost.

That question acknowledged all at once that I had labored. That I had brought my daughter into the world. It acknowledged that we'd held her, wrapped her in a swaddle purchased in anticipation of her arrival, and kept her safe until we entrusted her to the funeral home. It acknowledged the decision I had made to have her, not remove her. It recognized all the grief, the love, the loss.

What we have is a different kind of birth story. It isn't pretty. It includes a chapter of me being driven to the ER by my husband as we sang “Amazing Grace,” blood soaking through my pants, my jacket, the blanket underneath me. It includes coming home to a bathroom smeared with blood. It involves choosing a tiny casket. It is a horrible story. But it's her story, her birth and death all wrapped up and neatly arranged beneath a headstone.

We lost Elanor in the second trimester. I was supposed to be about 12 weeks pregnant when I called my doctor to ask for a visit. For medical reasons, determining the date of conception was difficult, so we'd made a guess. But, this was my third pregnancy, and I just knew I was further along. I knew I had felt movement, I knew my belly was bigger than it should be. What started out as an appointment to determine her fetal age ended with the pronouncement of her fetal death.

They estimated she was between 19 and 23 weeks. To realize I had had her with me longer than we'd known filled me with joy right before the air was punched from my chest. We had heard her heartbeat just nine days earlier. She had passed sometime between. What, dear Lord, had happened?

My husband was at work when I called him. I hated making that call, almost as much as I hated waiting at the hospital, alone, for a confirmation ultrasound. When my husband came into the room, I felt like the rain had blessed the desert. We held each other, wordless. We saw her, unmoving, still, on the screen. We felt the room shift around us. They gave us options, and we made our decision. I remember a surge of deep, inexpressible adoration for my husband when the decision came effortlessly, both of us on the same page. More than a decade of love and commitment filled in the cracks developing in our hearts, a rope of three strands strengthening us.

She came six days later. My body, for some cruel reason, unaware that she was gone before, now roared to life. And when she came, I gasped. Not because she was horrible to behold, but because she was a small, perfectly formed baby. This was Elanor. Whatever reason we lost her, it was not something we could see with the naked eye.

We performed the rituals of parents who lose children, yet Elanor was an uncomfortable in-between. Only we had seen her. She wasn't even a baby, or a person, to some. There was too much to explain, and too little energy for any of it. We decided her funeral would be small, just us and our parents. The decisions we made to keep our grief quiet is not something I regret. Still, perhaps, my unwillingness to share the details more openly at first created the very walls I perceived later on.

How do you talk about that? How do you share the details without your heart falling out of your chest? How do you share your thoughts on natural labor when people know your "only" child was born via C-Section? How do you visit the cemetery and bring it up casually with the people you see that day? You don't, so then it starts to feel clandestine. How do you explain the joy and gratitude you feel for the life you have, while also wishing for the life you never got to have? 

 We have both been told that we have carried this well. But I am not sure I want to, some days. Sometimes I want to scream. Sometimes I want to disappear. Sometimes I want to lay down on the cold stone headstone and cry until my tears soak into the ground. There was never time for crying out and the rending of garments. There are no pictures of Elanor because I hesitated at the thought of how uncouth it might be to have a dead baby in a picture frame. But now I wish we had them, just for us.

She was our baby, and she was born on January 13th, 2019. Whether that is a birthday, or an angel day, or a memorial day, I don't care. The day I met her and said goodbye were one and the same, and that is the date I gave to Grace.

This year, when January 13th arrived, we still hadn't decided what to do to mark the meaning of that day. As afternoon came, I had an idea. I grabbed a tiny white and purple birthday cake from a local grocery store. After dinner  my husband, our son, and I remembered Elanor with a birthday cake. We savored the sweetness of the cake, knowing it wouldn't last, the same way we had savored the miracle of little Elanor. The last thing we can do for her until God calls us home is to remember her. We may have felt helpless to save her, but we will never forget her.

And thanks to a note on her phone, perhaps neither will Grace.

Guest essay written by Taraneh Kerley. Taraneh is first and foremost a passionate disciple. She is married to Justin and a homeschooling mama to Beren. She carries her three angels, Aspen, Elanor, and Henry, in her heart. She's an observer and a lifelong learner who is probably craving quiet at any given time. She leads a bible study, loves to assemble charcuterie, and has rescued too many animals. She either has a coffee or book in hand, shares her husband with the Army, and is a passionate advocate for parents experiencing pregnancy loss, stillbirth, and infertility. She's also a freelance expert on mocha lattes and is always up for a walk. If you're ready, ask what she's been curious about lately. She's been published on the Well Watered Women blog, The Mighty, and Her View from Home. Find her on Instagram at @taranehwrites.  

Photo by Lottie Caiella.