10-03-2015, Capture Your Grief - Day 3 - In honor - hopes and dreams

I am doing this in memory of my fourthborn, my stillborn daughter - Abigail Miriam Cunningham, 8-25-2015. We wanted another child, we've known since we got married that we wanted four, maybe more, we are both the oldest of four. But life has had many curves, unemployment, moves around the country. We wanted to wait till the "right time" get everything in order this time. So we waited, and we waited, and we expected to welcome another beautiful baby into our family New Year's Eve. (But hopefully a few days sooner.) Instead we went to our gender ultrasound two days before 22 weeks, and discovered that she had passed away sometime before.

I had hopes I would finally get my red-headed child, with hair like mine. In all honesty though we hadn't truly begun to have hopes and dreams. When you get to your fourth child, you are every bit as excited for this baby as you were for your first, and it really is disappointing when everyone else is not. When you get comments like when are you going to stop, or was this planned, or you know what causes that don't you? It is every bit as exciting, but there are also other demands on your time. You plan and day dream, but you also have three other children whose needs are more demanding. With the first we had weekly post with photos, with the first we talked to him every night in the bed before we went to sleep, with the first he consumed all our waking moments for nine months. Who would he be? What would he like? But this time we hadn't really begun to do that. We were waiting to find out if we were having a boy or a girl. Now, our dreams are of one day in Heaven, meeting the beautiful woman she now is.

Photo of me meeting our daughter, 8-25-2015.