Today is Infant Loss and Awareness Day – and the 15th one I’ve observed as a mother who lost her child.
The little boy at the top of this screen is my son.
He was born the day before my 23rd birthday – the second of my three children – fifteen years ago this past August.
He was beautiful and a fighter and had these intense ‘old eyes’ that felt like they could see into the depths of your soul.
But he also had Trisomy 18 – a chromosomal abnormality similar to Down’s Syndrome that causes each and every cell to end up with too much genetic information. In Jeremiah’s case – and in the case of the 1:3000 live births with Trisomy 18 – this meant that Jeremiah’s chances of reaching his first birthday alive were less than 10%.
So I slurped up every ounce of my baby, knowing that his time was limited, but with no knowledge of exactly how long we had.
Until one day I knew.
Heather R. Morgan 