A box sits on the top shelf of the closet in my children’s playroom, and in it is a picture of a baby boy. No one has ever seen the photo other than my husband, me and the nurse at Georgetown University Hospital who took it the night I delivered him, stillborn, eight years ago.
The box is pink and blue and contains other keepsakes, as well—a swaddling blanket, a teddy bear, tiny but perfectly formed footprints. They give you the box so you don’t leave the hospital with empty arms. But of course it does little to fill the hollow in your heart.
In the days and weeks following the loss, I added whatever else I could—the sonogram pictures, the sympathy cards, the lid from the petri dish in which he was conceived.
The pregnancy had been hard-won, making its unsuccessful conclusion at six months all the more difficult to accept.
We had begun the journey to Georgetown University Hospital 18 months earlier. In late 2003, after six years of marriage, my husband and I were ready to start a family. I’d had hormonal irregularities since I was a teenager, so I found my way to a reproductive endocrinologist fairly quickly. I arrived with energy and optimism. We hadn’t been trying long, and though I wanted a baby, I wasn’t consumed by it.
We underwent the typical battery of tests. Conceiving naturally wasn’t a possibility for us, we were told, but with medical assistance it could happen. After a few failed attempts with low-tech procedures, we moved on to in vitro fertilization. I became pregnant on the first round. I was 33. All things considered, we felt we had gotten off easily.
Like many expectant parents, we proceeded with cautious optimism. We waited to tell out-of-town friends and family until well into the second trimester. We didn’t make plans for a nursery; there was no daydreaming in pink or blue. Six months in, there was still a long list of names, for both a boy and a girl. We wanted to be surprised. But not like this.
My husband and I had lots of questions in the days that followed our son’s stillbirth. Each year, half of the more than 25,000 stillbirths in the U.S. go unexplained. But in our case, there were answers. A blood clot in the placenta had restricted intrauterine development, so the baby had stopped growing. We were thankful to learn that blood thinners and close monitoring could significantly reduce the risk of a recurrence in a subsequent pregnancy. But we had to wait awhile before we could consider trying again.
In the meantime, I grappled with a question no one was able to answer. Was I a mother? I didn’t have the baby to define me as such, yet that night I had held my child, however briefly, and loved him still.
When I came home from the hospital, I placed the box on the closet shelf and carried on. Occasionally I’d peek in it to remind myself that my grief was legitimate, that my son had once existed in a place other than my expectation.
Six months later, we went back to the fertility clinic. This time it took longer for me to become pregnant. But in December 2006, I returned to Georgetown University Hospital, and this time walked out with my heart and hands doubly full: twins James and Hannah, the loves of my life.
There’s no question that I’m a mother today. Even if you catch me out on rare occasions without one or both of them, the perpetually harried but happy expression gives me away.
Sometimes I wonder if my first baby would have shared my son’s infectious laugh, my daughter’s mischievous smile. I’ll never know. But I do know he had a giving spirit; he gave me joy. And in holding on as long as he did, he gave doctors the key to bringing my children safely into the world.
I haven’t looked in the box for several years now. It’s hard to reach, given all of the toys, puzzles and stuffed animals that have taken over the closet. But it’s also because I no longer need the reminder that my first son was real. The evidence is right here with me. My family simply wouldn’t have the shape it does today without him.
Rebecca Glicksberg Skipper is a communications consultant who lives in Cabin John with her husband and 7-year-old twins, James and Hannah. To comment on this story, email comments@moco360.media.
