"The scars you share become lighthouses for other people who are headed to the same rocks you hit."

There are always worst case scenarios that you hear throughout your life, but what happens when you become one? What happens when suddenly you're a statistic to the ultimate worst case scenario-child loss? 

For years I'd hear stories through the grapevine; complications, a devastated mother, an empty nursery, baby furniture that was never used. My heart would ache for them, and selfishly I'd worry about my own future pregnancies. However, not experiencing it first-hand at the time, I never heard what happened after those mom's left the hospital, after they returned home, after they were expected to continue on with their lives. 

Then there I was. I was that mom. I was the mother faced with the unimaginable-I was losing my baby. I had arrived at my prenatal appointment expecting good news. For weeks I had been battling a subchorionic hemorrhage, and it had finally subsided. Rather than hearing that all was OK and that I should go home and continue to rest-the ultrasound didn't look right. The ultrasound tech looked concerned. She left the room to get the doctor and when I saw the look on his face, I knew it was bad. He held my hand as said, "I am so sorry. You are out of amniotic fluid and it is too early. Your baby's lungs are far too underdeveloped to survive outside of the womb and the hematoma surrounding your uterus is just too big. There is a risk of you having a massive hemorrhage if we don't induce you." 

The days to come were a blur. I took the weekend to collect my thoughts and make decisions, to discuss options with my husband and our families, and to pray for a miracle. Monday morning I made the difficult walk in to the hospital to face my worst nightmare. I started induction and labored for 43 hours, internally struggling with wanting Maggie to be here, but the ache of not wanting to let her go. The moments leading up to me pushing, her silent delivery, the fear of seeing her precious face and knowing she couldn't stay here on earth. "She was just too beautiful for earth." The faces-of my husband, my parents, my family, my friends-full of pain. A time that should have been a celebration was robbed from all of us. That moment, the moment I had to kiss her goodbye. I had to hand my beautiful gift back to the nurse and watch her be carried out of the room-forever. More silence. So much silence. The sun rose the next morning and soon it was time for me to be escorted through a "secret exit" so I could avoid the happy endings in Labor and Delivery at the hospital. I carried a box full of memories instead of my daughter. This was the most painful walk of my life.

How would I tell my boys their sister didn't make it? For months they had been celebrating. Each morning my youngest would talk to her through my belly and ask her when she was going to come out and play with him. My oldest would ask me questions, "Will she look like me?" "What's it like having a little sister?" As if it wasn't hard enough for me to wrap my head around this tragedy, how could I explain this to her innocent brothers. 

I began my search-for books, blogs, articles, quotes. I needed something. I needed advice. I needed mantras. I needed to know that I would survive this. Up to this point, I had never known true heartache. Those worst case scenarios I had heard over the years? I was all wrong. They were much more painful than my naive and innocent mind had ever imagined and I felt so alone in my agony.

If you ask me to describe the early days after Maggie's passing, it's like there is a dark fog surrounding my memories. Everything hurt, everything was dark, there were so many tears. It felt as though someone had knocked the wind out of me and I couldn't catch my breath or try to move on. I was changed. My life is now broken in two parts-before Maggie and after Maggie.

Two months passed. I didn't leave the house too much and had minimal desire to socialize. That's when it happened. A friend reached out because her sister was facing the unimaginable. Her daughter had passed at 41 weeks and she had to deliver her beautiful girl in that same haunting silence that Maggie was born into. She wanted advice and needed my help. I was still so early on in my lifelong journey with grief, but knew that she needed me, because I needed someone when I went through it. This was the first mom that I connected with that lost their baby after me. I reached out and we talked and for the first time I felt like I had connected with somebody. She was so new in her grief and facing all of the same firsts I was. We instantly bonded over our girls. Looking back now, this was my first stepping stone in my "new normal" life. 

Over the next 6 months I connected with two other angel moms. We began talking regularly and finally planned a night to all get together. It had been nine months since I had said goodbye to Maggie. I was still in a very dark place. What you don't know unless you've experienced something as awful as this is the guilt you feel. Guilt that you did something to cause the loss, guilt that you didn't do enough while you held them, guilt that you aren't honoring them enough in your life, guilt if you go out of your home, and guilt if you catch yourself laughing or having a good time. I struggled with this a lot last year. But then it happened. As the three angel moms and I sat in my living room, we laughed. We had somehow made a joke and all of us started laughing-and laughed hard. It was such a release. I couldn't remember the last time that I had laughed and felt so carefree. I looked around at those brave women sitting around me and we were all laughing-and it was OK. It was OK. Maggie would want me to laugh. She wouldn't want me stuck in that stand still.

These girls taught me the importance of making connections when you suffer a loss as extreme as this. Losing a child is the most unthinkable pain, and it leaves you feeling so isolated. I remember thinking that I would never find life beautiful again. I believed I'd be stuck in the trenches for the remainder of my life-and I will-but when you have people beside you, fighting the same battles, it makes you stronger. Since then, I have continued to make connections. I am open with my loss. I want people to know it's OK to reach out to me to talk, to get advice, to help. By helping others, I'm helping myself. I'm growing and I'm gaining strength. I encourage other moms to do the same.

Maggie is the reason I have met some of the most amazing women in my life. These women support each other, validate our grief and our rituals, vent, talk about our babies openly and freely without any hesitation, and, as an amazing mentor of mine once said, "walk the same path but may just have a slightly different view." Once you know you aren't alone, your life can start to move forward-and don't worry-it does not mean you are leaving your child behind. Your child will continue to grow in memory with the love and support of those walking with you.

As Ernest Hemingway once said, "We are all broken. That's how the light gets in."