Evangeline's story. Our journey with T18

  It has been 8 weeks since the day we said goodbye to our precious baby girl. The day she passed seems like a distant memory already, but maybe that is because it is too painful to fully remember the heart wrenching moment where we placed Evangeline's tiny little body in the funeral directors car knowing it was our final moment with her. Watching that car drive away broke our hearts like nothing else could. A week later we picked up her cremated body in a tiny pink teddy bear urn. As I held that urn I felt two things; disbelief and sorrow. I wanted to sob my heart out but at the same time I almost couldn't believe that the teddy bear held the ashes of our baby girl. Over that first month we had many reminders from receiving her birth certificate and then her death certificate. Receiving cards, and gifts from friends and charities. Having her photos arrive in the mail. Each of these things reminded us this wasn't some bad dream but this is reality. I felt strangely numb the...

Evangeline’s Memorial was on Saturday the 3 rd  of February, 1 month after she was born. We had a small private ceremony to honor her short but impactful life. What follows is the speech I shared with friends and family. It hit me as I sat down to write about our beautiful daughter Evangeline that this isn’t the usual funeral speech, or even one I ever thought I’d have to write. I don’t have years of memories to choose from. We don’t know what kind of person she would have been, what her personality would have been like, what she would have liked and disliked. I can’t stand here and talk about her quirks or tell funny stories about the things she did. To be honest the lack of memories is one of the saddest parts of all. When I saw those two pink lines on the pregnancy test, I began to imagine our future as parents, the sleepless nights, the new learning, our lives forever changed. I imagined what our baby would be like, and wondered if our first baby would be a girl or a boy. I...