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Monday, September 15, 2008

It's for the best

One of the things we don't want people to say to us is that it's for the best. In fact, the lady who wrote the letter in my last post said it best:

"Don't say, "It was for the best - there was probably something wrong with your baby." The fact that something was wrong with the baby is what is making me so sad. My poor baby never had a chance. Please don't try to comfort me by pointing that out.

Every day I feel guilty that I wasn't able to do something to help my daughter. Momma's are supposed to kiss the boo-boos away, but Trisomy 18 is not an ordinary boo-boo. It's fatal, always. Nothing I could do would change that. It haunts me.

I should have been able to find a doctor to help her. Love should have been enough to save her, but it wasn't. Trisomy 18 was just too much for her to overcome.

If love could have saved her, Jenna Grace would have lived forever. She was loved by a lot of people before she was even born.

Jenna didn't have a chance. From the moment sperm fertilized egg, she was doomed to be incompatible with life. Like the writer of the letter, I don't need to be reminded of that. I will always know it, because she isn't here with me. She's dead, and even though I have said myself that it's for the best and know it to be true, I wish it wasn't. I wish she didn't have to be sick at all.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Tamara,
I have followed your story since before Jenna's diagnosis on babycenter. I wanted to tell you how your story has touched me and helped me understand what it means to lose a baby and how that has allowed me to reach out to a cousin of mine. He and his girlfriend had a baby girl in June who was very premature. I'm not exactly sure how far along she was, but I think it was around 26 weeks. The baby was a little over a pound at birth. She died a few weeks ago after 2+ months in the NICU, after many medical interventions and complications due to pretmaturity. When I spoke about it with my dad a few days after the baby passed, he said exactly your blog post title "it's for the best." I told my dad, no, it's not for the best. It's a tragedy and it's sad and for my cousin and his girlfriend it is a life-changing and very traumatic period in their lives. Even though this cousin is 12+ years younger than me, 1200 miles away and I've never been close to him, my own experience with a complicated pregnancy with my son and learning about this from you and other women allowed me to reach out to him and offer my thoughts, prayers, and blessings for his sweet angel girl. It's not for the best. It's sad. It's tragic. No one should have to go through it, and those who do shouldn't be faced with insensitive comments from ignorant people.

Thank you for helping me to reach out to someone else in a similar situation.

Unknown said...

When ever I hear anyone saying to someone that it is for the best I always respond (or butt-in if necessary) that of course it isn't for the best. The best thing would have been for the baby to not have whatever trouble it had. If I know it is a chromosomal issue I will say the best thing would be for that one damn cell division to happen properly so the baby could be spitting up on its parents right now.

take care,

zanna