Three Years, Three Months

This poem came from a lot of different emotions all colliding at once.

Yesterday we participated in Jog for Jude, which raises money for SIDS research. Standing there, surrounded by families, I couldn’t stop thinking about how different our story could have been. When Erin was just 10 days old, we found her not breathing. That moment replays in my mind more often than I’d like to admit. We were one decision, one night, one moment away from losing her back then. But we didn’t. I did CPR, and she came back to us. We got more time.

And that’s where this poem really lives. somewhere between gratitude and heartbreak.

Because I know there are mothers who say the same prayers I said. Mothers who fight just as hard as I did to have a baby. It took me 10 years and 11 losses before I had my girls. I know what it’s like to want a baby so badly it physically hurts. And I also know there are women still in that place who never get the chance to hold their child at all.

So while losing Erin is the hardest thing I will ever go through, I can also recognize something else at the same time, I was lucky. I got to be her mom. I got 3 years and 3 months with her. I got her laugh, her snuggles, her personality. I got memories.

Three years was not enough. It will never feel like enough. But it is still more than some ever get, and that truth is something I carry with me.

The poem is my way of trying to hold both of those feelings at once.The deep, overwhelming grief of losing her, and the quiet understanding that loving her, even for a short time, was worth everything.

If I had known how our story would end, I would still choose it. Every single time. Even if I only got ten days. Because being her mom, even briefly, is something I would never give up.

That’s what this poem is about.

Holding the pain and the gratitude in the same space.

Yesterday we walked for babies

gone too soon,

without a warning

families who went to bed one night

and woke up to a different world in the morning.

And all I could think about

was you.

I went back to that night

ten days old,

when I looked down

and you weren’t breathing.

No time to think,

no time to be scared

just hands that moved

and a prayer in the air.

And somehow…you came back to me.

We got lucky.

I know that now.

Because there are moms

who whisper the same prayers I did,

who wait and hope

and lose and lose again

and never get the chance

to hold their baby.

Ten years.

Eleven losses.

I almost didn’t get you.

But I did.

I got your laugh,

your snuggles,

the way you fit right into me.

Three years and three months

exactly that long.

Not enough.

Not even close.

But still…everything.

And if you asked me

would I do it all again,

knowing how this ends

yes.

Every single time.

Even if it was only ten days.

Because I got to be your mom.

I got to know you.

And that is something

so many are still praying for.

So I carry both

how lucky I was

and how much it hurts.

Because this kind of grief

doesn’t come from nothing

it comes from a love

that never leaves.