Hope & Passion’s Story

Here below you can find the short version of Hope and Passion’s story.

If you like details, you might want to read the following pages:

• Hope & Passion’s Story -Pre-Birth
• Hope & Passion’s Story Post-Birth
• Why Hope & Passion?

I’ve also written a guest blog for Return to Zero, a movie about the loss of a baby. Click here to read it.

A Story of Losing Hope but keeping hope

~~ 26 weeks ~~~

After being unsuccessful at becoming pregnant naturally we conceived in our first round of IVF, after implanting one egg, which subsequently split and graced us with expecting identical twin girls.

In our 19 weeks scan we were told that one of our twins showed abnormalities in her kidneys. After our scan the girls got fed up of being called ‘twin 1’ and ‘twin 2’ and we chose Angel cards to give them ‘names in utero’. Since then we have been referring to them as Passion and Hope – very synchronistic as twin 2 chose Hope and she’s the one dealing with her malformed kidneys.

Basically the doctors and specialists couldn’t say for sure but mentioned that Hope showed cysts in both of her kidneys. They gave us worst case scenarios which I basically just didn’t take on, knowing that this is just one moment in time and things can change.

I continued with the pregnancy knowing that the life I had inside of me was still very much alive. This was the time we had with the two girls and we were making the most of it.

On 1 September 2011 they were born at just 2070g (Passion) and 1740g (Hope). Both needed to be rushed into the NICU where they were on breathing support machines and in a humidicrib to keep them warm. Hope was struggling as her lungs had not matured past 24 weeks, which we didn’t see coming.

In her second night she struggled through a collapsed lung and we knew that she wasn’t meant to stay with us and grow up alongside her sister.

I held them both on day 3, the first and only time together alive as sisters in human form on my bare chest.

~~~~

On Children 

by Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

~~~~

We might have lost Hope and still be reminded to never be able to lose hope.

~~~ being with what is ~~~