Four Years In Heaven | Losing Lucy and Finding Hope
Oh my baby, how I miss you. Every day, every minute for these past four years I have ached for you. That chamber of my heart that is only Lucy shaped remains empty. I know how your biggest brother Liam feels in my arms, how your big brother Asher feels in my arms and how your baby sister Nora feels in my arms, but I don’t know how you feel and my arms ache for you. A mama’s arms belong around her babies. I wish you could be here to play with your little sister Nora, you would love her so much. Your absence in our family is felt every single day. I see the space where you should be that nobody else sees. I miss you.
I miss you.
It has been four years since Lucy’s heart stopped and mine was irreparably broken. It is a feat, surviving four whole years without your child. I feel like I should be awarded a medal just for still being here, four years later, without her. The beautiful thing about living this life with my God is that He has more for us on this earth than just surviving. The past four years have been the saddest and most difficult of my entire life, but they have also been the most beautiful, the most redemptive, and the most productive years of my life.
As most of you know, when Lucy died I was told I could not have any more babies. It felt like an extra cruel blow because of who God had created me to be. He made me very maternal from infancy. I have always been obsessed with babies. They were the best thing in the world to me. My undergraduate degree is in Early Childhood Education. I was told that a degree in Elementary Education would be more useful so I eventually agreed to go one more semester to also get my Elementary Ed degree, but all I really cared about was getting that Early Childhood degree because I just wanted to teach the babies. My whole life I waited and dreamed about having a baby of my own. I wanted to fast forward time until I held my baby in my arms for the first time. My greatest wish for my life was to have a big family; LOTS of babies. For God to allow my baby to die and then to leave me with a pregnancy condition that would repeat itself and make my pregnancies “fatal” seemed so cruel. It felt like a custom made attack, designed to destroy the most beloved part of who I was.
I couldn’t even look at babies after Lucy died, they physically nauseated me. During my counseling sessions I had therapy for PTSD and had to work through the most terrifying scenarios like, “You’re at the grocery store and suddenly a woman comes around the corner carrying a baby, what do you do?” I remember being on a flight only a couple months after losing Lucy and there was a baby next to me on the airplane. I felt like I was going to have a panic attack. Every sound she made caused a physical pain in my chest. I could not believe how agonizing this adorable baby next to me was. My pain originated from my deep love for babies, especially my love for my baby girl who had been killed by my own body, and the love I had for my future babies who would never exist because of anti-kell antibodies. Every baby I saw reminded me of my dead dreams for my family and my dead daughter. And if I’m truly honest, they represented the lie that for some reason God loved those other parents more than He loved me because their babies were alive. The parents of the baby next to me on the airplane seemed to sense my discomfort. They probably thought I was just one of those adults who gets irritated with loud babies on planes. If only they knew the truth.
If only I knew the truth, that God was not using my tragedies as a custom made weapon to destroy me. God was going to take my little Lucy’s life and my tragedies and He was going to fashion them into a custom made ministry just for me. And guess who God has me ministering to now? Women and their BABIES. Beautiful babies who are possibly in danger like Lucy was. Babies in Pakistan, babies in Canada, babies in Australia and Egypt, babies in the UK and the US, babies in Germany and Israel, Cambodia, Switzerland, Russia, France and even babies right here in Alabama. I get to help babies every single day and it is some of the most rewarding work I have ever done. I get to encourage and empower women who have babies in the womb, women who have babies in heaven, women with babies waiting in their future, women with newborns and women with broken hearts. I love these women, and I desperately love their babies. God uses every single one of these parents who reaches out to me and He uses every single baby to restore a small piece of my broken heart and to restore my hope in Him.
Here I am four years later, and now I am able to look at a baby and see redemption, hope and the greatness of God. Oh the redemption that God has brought through these babies and their moms!
And so, without any more delay, here are some of the beautiful babies that have been helped through Lucy’s story and my blog. Thank you Jesus, for each one of these lives that has been touched by my Lucy’s.
COOPER 
CLAIRE
EVA
JESSA JADE
TYLER
JACOB
KRISTIAN (in heaven with Lucy) and MIKAH
JULIA JOY
SAGE (in heaven with Lucy)
KETHRYN
ROSE with big brother and sister Logan and Haven
SHUA, ARI and MOSELLE
LIAM
ELLIE
MILA
MATILDA
LUCY ANNE
GABRIELLA GRACE
OSCAR
WESLEY JAMES
SKYLAR ROSE
AVA
BRIANA ANNE
LANGSTON
OWEN BLAKE (being born right now, on Lucy’s birthday!)
HADRIAN
BABY BOY ROBILLIARD
ASAIAH
NYAH
And of course, NORA JULIET who would not be here if it weren’t for Lucy
And this is baby Hudson, whose mom did not come across my blog until a few days after her son was stillborn this past December. This is why I push so hard to get Lucy’s story out into the world, because Hudson would be here today if only the doctors had provided the right monitoring and treatment. Lucy would probably be here today if she had been given the correct monitoring and treatment too. I will keep telling our story and fighting for the Hudsons and the Lucys who deserve to be here with us.
“I wish I had read your blog whilst pregnant because I would have had the knowledge I have now and possibly could have saved my baby Hudson who was born sleeping on 29th December 2016 due to Anti-K antibodies and having no close monitoring – I was totally unaware of what most of it all meant until I read your blog.”
HUDSON
The love I feel for these babies is unreal. The very tragedy I thought would push babies out of my life has brought so many babies into my life that I have a deep affection for. They are my “yes” from God.
For anyone who feels like God has turned His back on you, for anyone who has suffered unimaginable loss and for those whose lives have not turned out the way they planned, just decide to trust God anyway. Because I am convinced that when there is great loss combined with great trust in God, miraculous things happen. Yes, even a one pound baby girl who never took a breath outside of the womb can leave a legacy that reaches throughout the world.
Happy fourth birthday in heaven, Lucy Dair. I am proud to be your mama. You were worth it all. Four years closer to having you forever. Despite all the pain and agony of waiting to have you, I absolutely love being your mama.
