Arily Faith Kinsella
O'Halloran
Arily's Story
A
sonogram on
May 18th showed us
a beautiful, if stubborn little baby and we never expected that
anything was wrong. She was a little smaller than expected,
but we
listened with relief when we were told that it wasn't anything abnormal
and it was nothing to worry about.
On June 9th, we
had a follow
up sonogram to track the baby's health. The doctor was quiet
as he
checked and double checked her. Then he told us that our baby
hadn't
grown as much as expected, and there were problems that didn't show up
during the last sonogram. We opted to have an amniocentesis
performed,
we needed to know what was wrong.
The preliminary
results came
in at lunch time on June 13th. I don't remember much, just
'trisomy
18', 'Turners syndrome', 'not compatible with life', 'I'm
sorry'. You
never think it's going to happen to you, but this time it
did. No
matter how low the odds are, it's always 100% for you if your child is
affected.
We chose to say
goodbye early, it felt like the right
thing to do. But at the last minute, we couldn't comprehend
doing what
we were about to do to our daughter, and chose to carry on until the
end came naturally. We found ourselves at peace with our
decision.
The tears slowed and we found strength to get back to some sense of a
normal life while we still had her with us. We were still
devastated
at the loss of our dreams, but we chose to enjoy every last second we
had left with her, hoping that we would have a lot of time before we
had to say goodbye.
On The Saturday,
which would have been the
day I delivered her after her death, I was woken up early, Arily had
hiccups! Even though, I was groggy and tired from being woken
up so
early on the weekend, it felt so good to feel that, to feel her moving
inside me and makes me smile to think about it even now.
We had
a follow up check up two weeks later, and we heard her heart beating
strong on the doppler. Our midwife, Karen, smiled and told us
that she
was a fighter. She's made it that far with so much stacked
against
her, we were so proud of her!
Two weeks later
again, on July
6th, we saw her for the last time on a sonogram. There was no
movement
like the last two times, and we didn't see any sign of her heart
beating. The technician said nothing, but rushed through some
basic
measurements and told us that the doctor would be with us
shortly. We
were left alone in the room, and we knew that she was gone.
He came in
and scanned a little more, and confirmed that she had passed
away. We
were devastated, we hoped so much that she'd be one of the lucky ones
to make it to term and maybe even a little longer to open her eyes and
look up at us, but it wasn't to be.
Arily came into
this world
silently at 12:05am, on Saturday, July 8th, 2006, weighing only 14 oz,
and measuring 10.5 inches in length. At 26 weeks gestation,
she
measured smaller than a 20 week baby, but she was perfect in every
single way. We spent 12 hours with her before we said our
final
goodbyes, but it hurts to know that we'll never have the opportunity to
hold her, feel her soft skin, smell her beautiful baby soft smell
again. There's peace in the knowledge that she chose her own
time to
leave us, and we feel lucky to have known her and to have been chosen
to be parents of such a strong, amazing, beautiful baby girl.
Always in our
hearts Arily, we'll never forget you, we promise.
Mummy and
Daddy