Deciding to start a family.

I think in order for the story of our daughter and this journey to make sense… You have to know how it first began. Here is how and where we were in life when we finally decided to start a family of our own…

It was about May of 2016… Marcus was in the Fire Academy and was set to graduate in June. He had finished school with his Advanced EMT and becoming a Firefighter was something that he had always wanted to do and worked very hard for. For me… I had finally settled into my new job in Interventional Radiology as the Lead Nurse. I had recently let go of my love for Critical Care, the comfort of my friends and familiar hospitals, and my love-hate relationship with night shift for a Monday through Friday 8-4:30 job. It was a big change and my latest adventure, but I grew a new love for IR and formed a new work family.

Anyone who knows me, anyone who truly knows me… Knows that I am a perfectionist. I am a planner. Marcus and I had dated. Graduated from college. Got married. Moved in together. Settled into our careers. Bought our first home… By this time, we had been married for three years, together for nine. We had successfully navigated through the highs and lows of life, marriage and friendship together and had built an unbreakable bond and love between us. We were building the whole time and setting the foundation for our future and our family. No one could have planned it better. Things could not have been more perfect. We had done everything right, and in the right order… And it was finally time… We were ready.

Little did we know what would happen in the next coming months… From finding out we were going to be parents to experiencing the ups and downs of pregnancy to being admitted into the hospital early Thanksgiving morning to grieving the greatest, deepest loss any human being can fathom. We would experience great joy and discover a new love as parents. But with that new love, a new pain would be unearthed with the loss of our daughter. A pain deeper than we could have ever imagined. And this perfectly, planned world would come crashing down around us.

“Where there is deep grief, there is an even deeper love….”