Chapter Five: Cora Anne

“The Lord takes many away, even in infancy, that they may escape the envy of man, and the sorrows and evils of this present world; they were too pure, too lovely, to live on earth.”
-Joseph Smith Jr.

When Nate and I were first married, we lived in a converted garage that my Grandpa had built when his oldest daughter came home after moving out. Nate didn’t consider this to be a violation of his principles of self-reliance because my grandparents were old and he could help them around the yard and house. My grandpa, on the other hand, had let his newly married grandkids live there if, and only if, both of them were in school. It worked out well for us.

Because it was an older area with a lot of cheap apartments, the church we attended was considered what those of us who frequent the sin of levity call a newly wed/nearly dead ward. Everyone was either talking about their grandkids, having babies, or on fertility. This is where we met Justin and Stephanie.

They were a young couple set on a specific career path. Stephanie was working on a degree in psychology and Justin was taking classes to become an airplane mechanic. They had discussed and set out on a family plan. They knew when they would each graduate and exactly when they would try for a baby.

There are two conversations with Stephanie that stand out in my mind from that period. We had been friends for some time before I became pregnant with my first baby. But, for some reason, I remember best a time when I as pregnant. Nate had found a kitten in grandpa’s yard. Knowing that I liked cats, he opened a can of tuna and enticed it into our little house. When I came home, I found him and my sister playing with the kitten. He picked it up and handed it to me. He said, “I found this in the back yard and thought, ‘Oh look, a kitty for Amy.’” It was one of the most genuine, sweet things my husband has ever done for me. Perhaps someday, he’ll be able to afford to buy me an expensive gift. If that day ever comes, it won’t mean more than that kitten.

Stephanie also wanted a cat, and her husband wanted to give her one. But they lived in an apartment where pets weren’t allowed. For some reason, despite all the conversations the four of us had, the one that stands out was the one we had when she found out about our kitten. She shot her husband a furtive look and said, “Oh sure, Amy gets a kitty and a baby.” She followed it up with a nervous laugh and blew the whole thing off, but I caught her meaning. She wasn’t having any easier of a time with the concept of “establishing a career before having a family” than I was. She was just less vocal about it.

The other conversation happened after all of us had moved out of the ward. We kept in touch and occasionally got together for dinner. I don’t remember whether Sean was born by this time or if I was just expecting him. But I remember being greeted by a beaming Stephanie, who laid out the details of their five-year plan. The exciting part was that it would only be a little over a year before they could start trying for a baby. She was much more excited about that than about graduating with her degree, or her husband getting his.

Skip ahead to the summer following Nate’s first year of medical school. He had a couple of months off, so we flew to Salt Lake where he got a temp job at a medical waste incinerator. I began suspecting that I might actually be pregnant again. I tried to put the thought out of my head since I had promised Nate that the reason we had Sean was so we could wait until he was through with school for more. Besides, what was a few missed pills? I missed pills all the time during the two years before Ryan, and I never got pregnant. I had come to the conclusion that those pill packs worked pretty effectively, even when you weren’t exactly diligent in taking them at the same hour each day.

When the signs became too much to ignore, I went to my sister. It’s horrible, but if I was pregnant I wanted someone to be happy for me and my husband was incapable of that. He didn’t want a child when we could support ourselves because he anticipated that someday we might not be able to. Imagine how he would feel about having one when we couldn’t even afford medical insurance. Amber looked at the pregnancy test before I did. She gasped. I knew why immediately. It was so dark. I was having another baby. How would I ever tell Nate?

A couple days later, I broke down and told him. He just said, “Ya, I figured.” We didn’t talk about it again. But he pouted for a couple weeks. I’m sure most women fantasize about their husband’s winning a Nobel Prize, or something equally grand. I just want him to smile, just once, when he finds out he’s having a child. I suppose that’s about as likely as the Nobel Prize. *sigh*

I didn’t get any prenatal care until I was 18 weeks along because I couldn’t find anyone willing to accept Medicaid. The doctors my friends had used told me they weren’t doing that anymore. But other than that, the pregnancy progressed normally and soon became just another part of life.

I was thrilled when I got the e-mail from Stephanie saying that they were expecting a baby the beginning of January. Her due date was a month before mine. We had been less than diligent in keeping touch since I had moved away, but our communication was resurrected when we discovered the experience we were sharing.

Right around twenty weeks, Stephanie found out she was expecting a little girl. She and Justin decided to name their daughter Cora Anne, a name they had pulled out of their genealogy. I didn’t find out until I was nearly seven months, but I happily reported that I was also having a girl. We would name her Chloe Joy, after my mom and Nate’s.

I was due February second. Both Ryan and Sean were born during the thirty-seventh week, but I really wanted to go home for Christmas, so we planned a trip. Stephanie was excited and immediately asked us to plan a time to see them during our trip. I told them we’d come over to their house, if we had to. I was hoping to see them and their daughter in the hospital, though. She would be thirty-nine weeks before we left.

We met at their apartment the week between Christmas and New Years. They were planning to move to Florida for work a few months after the baby was born, so many of their baby things were packed into boxes. It was good they were going to move. They were living in a basement and it was very small. The baby things stacked up against all the walls. They showed us where they had a pack and play set up for Cora to sleep in until they moved and could put up the crib.
It was a wonderful dinner. We joked about how long it had taken for them to finally have a baby. Justin is a huge sports fan and he proudly showed us tiny little outfits with the Miami Dolphin’s logo on them. He told us how he would watch the football games with his daughter on his knee.

As we were leaving, I turned to thank Stephanie and she pressed her huge belly against mine. She said, “Who had thought we’d be pregnant together?” We hugged and I asked her to have the baby in the next few days because we would be leaving right after the New Year. She promised to try.

A few days later, Nate and I pulled into the driveway of my parent’s house after saying a final goodbye to his family. My sister, Amber, met me in the driveway. She said, “Amy, Stephanie called.” My first thought was that we wouldn’t have time to see them again and I regretted having to call and tell her so. But Amber continued, “She called from the hospital.” My worry turned into excitement. We would certainly find the time to visit her and her baby in the hospital.

I started to exclaim, “Oh, she had the baby…”

Amber cut me off, “They lost her.” I will never forget the way those words hit me. There was no instant sadness or anger or anything you would expect. I felt disbelief. It just didn’t seem possible. She was within a week of her due date! I had seen her only days before, glowing with the thrill of becoming a mother.

Amber gave me the phone number Stephanie had left. I stared at it for a while, not sure I knew how to be a good friend right then. I told Amber I didn’t think I should call. Wouldn’t I be the last one she wanted to talk to? Still, she had called me. Amber was certain she wanted me to call. She told me of the short conversation she had with my friend. “She said she was sure you would want to come see her.”

I called and spoke with the nurse. But it was after hours, so all I could do was leave a message. I was astonished when my friend called me back a few minutes later. The day before, she had started to feel nervous when she realized it had been several hours since she had felt her daughter move. They called their doctor and then went into the hospital as a precaution. The nurse couldn’t get a heartbeat. They did a rudimentary ultrasound and were pretty sure the baby had died. But, they did another, more high tech one, to be sure. After that, they gave her a vaginal insert to soften her cervix.

She stayed in the hospital over night and they induced her the next morning. She endured a long, torturous labor without the baby actively moving to help things along. And then, she and her husband had to call family and friends. Instead of announcing their new baby’s eye color and temperament, they were talking about plans for a funeral.

Cora Anne was perfect. The umbilical cord was not wrapped around her neck. She didn’t have any deformities or obvious signs of trauma. Justin and Stephanie would never know why their baby daughter had died days before her due date.

I didn’t know what to say. I am certain whatever I did say was the wrong thing. We had one more day before we flew home and I promised her we come to the hospital. She wanted to rest; we said goodbye.

I went down to the room my husband and I were staying in. I curled up into as much of a ball as I could, considering I was huge. I sobbed for hours. Poor Nathan came down to bed and tried to console me. He even promised that I could have a fetal heartbeat monitor if I was so worried. He would put it on the credit card and we could worry about how to pay for it later. What he didn’t understand is that I wasn’t worried about my baby. I was a little anxious, but mostly sure that I would be holding a happy, healthy baby girl in a month. I was sobbing because Stephanie wouldn’t.

All of our family members had already returned to work. That meant that there was no one to watch our little boys while we went to the hospital the next morning. Nate was convinced we shouldn’t go. He reasoned that there really wasn’t any worse way to help them heal than to throw two rambunctious kids and a very pregnant woman into their small hospital room. I told him what Stephanie had said, “They will want to come see me.”

I do not have the writing ability (perhaps language doesn’t have the words) to describe that visit. Stephanie was lying in the bed with her husband by her side. She looked exhausted. They told us the details of their experience in dry voices. Stephanie said she was “All cried out.” They told the story as if they had told it before. I just listened.

In truth, I wanted to offer words of comfort. I really wished I had the ability to say the right thing. But, I was forced to admit to myself that there was no right thing. So, I listened. During the conversation, my kids started getting a little stir crazy. Justin calmed them down by offering them cookies and cheetoes. At times, Stephanie chided him for giving the treats without expecting the boys to earn them by behaving. It was odd hearing them discuss parenting philosophy. They were prepared in every way for the child they had lost. Justin said that it helped them to see our kids. I didn’t know whether I could believe that.

Remembering something a friend had told me about a couple who had lost a baby to SIDS, I asked to see pictures of Cora Anne. Stephanie smiled apologetically as Justin handed me their digital camera. She said, “She’s a little blue.” I didn’t know how to respond to that.

The first pictures on the camera were of a pregnant, smiling Stephanie holding up a piece of paper that said how many weeks along she was. It broke my heart. How she would have cherished showing those pictures to her grown daughter while she awaited the birth of a grandchild. I didn’t have any pictures of myself while I was pregnant. Suddenly, I regretted that. After the one that said “39 weeks,” there were pictures from the hospital. They took pictures of each of them holding their daughter.

People like to say at funerals that the deceased looks like they are peacefully sleeping. She didn’t look like that at all. Stephanie declared that she had her mother’s nose and her father’s lips. My heart ached as I thought about how we had hastily made such decisions about both of my boys, only to have them change a hundred times as they grew.

There was much more to this visit than an explanation of what had happened. Somewhere in between the sorrowful stories both parents managed to say the words that I should have been saying to them. They bore certain testimony that they would see their daughter again. They spoke of telling their future children that they had an angel watching over them. And they even talked about how this experience would strengthen their faith and dedication because now they had to be righteous. They would be better people so that they would deserve to be reunited with their perfect Cora Anne.

I often wondered, before this time, why we were friends with Justin and Steph. Of course we liked them, but we had absolutely nothing in common. As I said, Justin was a big sports guy. Nate never watches sports. Stephanie and I were complaining about homework one day and she said it bothers her because she’d rather be cleaning her house. I would much rather be doing homework than cleaning. Still, they were great friends and we always managed to keep in touch. Suddenly, I was profoundly grateful to have known them.

We flew home the next day and didn’t get to attend the funeral. I kept in touch with our friends through e-mail. I wanted them to know what their strength had meant to me. I sent Stephanie an e-mail that included this passage: “I was talking to another friend of mine about you and I told her about the beautiful testimony you bore and how absolutely amazing you were. I also said that it really made me happy because when I heard about your baby I worried that it might shake your testimony like it would for so many others. My friend said, ‘I would be worried about that too. I don't know Stephanie, but just hearing her story has shaken my testimony.’ I have thought about that a lot. I want you to know that it was just the opposite for me. Our Heavenly Father has promised that we'll never have to endure a trial we can't handle. I think if our situations were reversed, I might be certain he had broken that promise. I can't even imagine what you must feel. But so many people talk about the blessings of an eternal family without really understanding what it actually means. I have felt the spirit testify that families are forever, but I think you know the truth of that principle better then I can imagine. Just listening to you and seeing your strength has strengthened me. I will always be grateful for the day we met you in the foyer of the Miller Ward. I think I better understand Heavenly Father's plan because of the two of you. Naturally, that can't make this any easier on you. But I thought you should know anyway.”

She wrote back, in part, “I will say that even though my breasts are constantly leaking, my pelvis hurts and I have to wear these ‘sexy’ panties for a while longer, it is not in vain. I know that my little girl is worth everything I am going through now and I will get to see her soon. This life is so short and she will be with me soon enough. I am so thankful for the opportunity the Lord has given me to carry such a perfect little angel and to have her apart of our family. I can't wait to share her beautiful pictures and memory book with our future children. The only troubling thing is that even if we can get pregnant in May/June/July this year, I still won't have a little one of my own to hold a year from now. However, when the Lord does bless us with another special child it will be the right time.”

It took a little time before she decided it was okay to show me the side of her that was in real pain. In another letter, she wrote, “I just want to hold a little one of my own so badly. In the book that I am reading, ‘Running with Angels,’ she talks about how her arms ache to hold the two little ones that she lost. I feel that so often and wish that I could have those moments of a little one screaming. I know you get tired of all the screaming, crying and fussiness that your little boys bring, but I would give anything to be in that position. So for my sake, please enjoy those precious moments you have with your little ones.”

Less than three weeks after the death of Cora Anne, I was blessed with my perfect little Chloe. She was born during my thirty-seventh week, just like both of my boys. To me, it was another small miracle.