This week’s blog post shares the journey of celebrating our son Stanley’s life, blending love, grief, and gratitude. We discuss how planning his celebration became a healing space for us to honor him through family, shared memories, and symbolic rituals. This post offers a gentle reminder that commemorating loved ones can be done in unique, personal ways, creating a beautiful legacy that brings light to even the hardest moments.

This post reflects on our only night with Stanley, filled with love, goodbyes, and small moments of joy amidst immense sorrow. From sharing him with family to spending one precious night together, I recount the bittersweet moments that brought comfort and the overwhelming reality of leaving the hospital without him. This experience taught me that grief and love can coexist, allowing me to carry Stanley’s memory forward with both pain and peace.

This post captures the day we delivered our son, Stanley—a day marked by fear, grief, and ultimately, love. As we walked into the hospital knowing we wouldn’t be bringing our baby home, each moment felt surreal. Every detail, from being guided through the induction to the kindness of our midwife and MFM doctor, remains etched in my mind. Together, we navigated the painful steps of labor, and finally, with one last push, Stanley arrived. He was placed on my stomach, and as I held him, I felt a mixture of joy, sorrow, and pride. The quiet confirmation that he had already passed brought a bittersweet peace; he had left the world safely cradled within me.

The day held many emotions, but I find strength in sharing it—giving a voice to our experience, to Stanley’s story, and to the deep love and grief that exist side by side.

In this blog post, I open up about the emotional journey of my last week carrying our son, Stanley. From making difficult medical decisions to choosing his name, my husband and I navigated a wide range of emotions while creating precious memories with our baby. This post aims to foster conversations about grief, love, and the choices families make when faced with unimaginable loss, providing a space to honor both the sorrow and beauty of these experiences.

Nothing prepares you for hearing the words that will change your life forever. In this post, I share the heart-wrenching moment when we were told our baby’s diagnosis: hypoplastic left heart syndrome. It was the beginning of an emotional journey full of difficult choices, overwhelming emotions, and the realization that our path to parenthood would be anything but typical.

What started as a joyful anatomy scan quickly spiraled into the darkest moment of our lives. In this post, I recount the phone call that shattered our dreams and the words that left us frozen in time: "incompatible with life." This is the story of how Taylor and I began to navigate the hardest decision we would ever face, and the heartbreak that followed.

In the beginning, everything felt perfect. Taylor and I were newly married, excited to start our family, and filled with joy as we embarked on the journey of trying to conceive. But what we didn’t expect was how little we knew about the process—and how quickly our expectations would be challenged. Join me as I take you through the first steps of our hopeful, blissful start.