Noah’s Story 

My son is Noah Riley Harkins. He was born sleeping on 08.30.2010. He was perfect. There were no noticeable issues when he was born, so we decided to have an autopsy done, especially if there was an issue we needed to be aware of for future pregnancy’s. They could not find any reasons for his death. That is the hard part. With stillborn deaths 50% of the cases are for unknown reasons. I think not knowing can be hard. I will never know until I see him again. Which I believe at that time it won’t even matter anymore because we will be back together! I was 38 weeks pregnant. It was the day before my scheduled c-section (he was breech).

I went in for one last non-stress test and they could not find his heartbeat. At first I wasn’t worried because he was always difficult to find. Even when they took me to another room to do an ultrasound, I thought he was fine. My husband made it to the ultrasound room after parking our car. The nurse had trouble and had to have someone else come in. Then they couldn’t find it either and that is when it started to feel off. Then a doctor finally came in and scanned around. He said “I am so sorry, he has no heartbeat.” What do you mean?!?! I don’t remember much after that except crying out “no, no, no, no, no!!!” and screaming my husbands name, “Jeremy, Jeremy, no, no” It was 8am in the morning. They made me wait until 1pm to have my c-section since I had already eaten. Waiting was terrible. When he was born, they wrapped him in a blanket and let me hold him. We held him in the recovery room, where my mom came to meet him and hold him. The chaplain came in and baptized him with a little seashell with holy water. She shared she had lost her son. I just couldn’t stop staring at him. By the appearance of his skin the doctors told me he had been deceased for over 24 hours. HOW DID I NOT NOTICE?!?!?!

So many what ifs rushed through my head in the early days and weeks, but I HAD to stop them or else I would have gone mad. I knew deep down that God was a good God and he didn’t cause this (and it wasn’t my fault), but I definitely had questions and had to find my faith. It took me almost 7 years! My faith wasn’t very strong at all back then. I didn’t know what I believed. We spent hours with him in the hospital. My parents and in-laws were able to hold him. They offered to take pictures of our son and I am so glad we said yes. I actually haven’t seen most of them, but I think this year I will finally open his tote of things. We eventually had to say goodbye. Since we knew we weren’t going to stay in Florida forever, we didn’t want to bury him there. So we decided to have him cremated. His tiny urn is in our family room with a picture of his hand holding a teddy bear.

My only regret is I never unwrapped him to look at his tiny body, his toes or tiny fingers. I feel like I could write a book on everything we went through, so this is just a start. We speak openly about Noah to our daughters. They know they have a big brother watching out for them. I even made a picture book with his birth story a few years ago for them to look through. Holidays and milestones can still be hard sometimes. The grief and longing for my son hasn’t disappeared, it has just changed overtime. I am stronger for it and a much better person. My son, even though his life was short, has had a huge impact and helped make me who I am today and for that I am grateful.