I would like to take you back to October 15th of 2012 of my life. My wife and I closed on our first house together that morning. We had spent a taxing ten months looking at every house that came onto the troubled real estate market. We were fortunate enough to finally step into one and know it was home. We knew this was where our family would grow… and so it did.

Two months prior to finding our new home, we had started trying to get pregnant again. It was two days after we held our new house keys, that my wife came to me with the news of a positive pregnancy test. I spent the remaining week and half painting and preparing for our move after work each day. I’ll be the first to admit, it was an overwhelming time for all of us.

During the days of moving our material lives from one place to the other, my wife called me on her way in to work and hesitantly told me that she just didn’t “feel right”. Neither of us wanted to believe that anything could be wrong. After tense days of blood work, doctors visits and unbelievable anxiety, we received the call that we feared. It was October 31st, Halloween, as we were getting our two kids ready in their costumes, in our new home, that we knew our family wouldn’t be growing as soon as we expected.

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I cannot pretend to know the truth of how a miscarriage affects the mother. I’ll say this… watching my partner, my love, go through it, broke my heart every day. The doctor said we’d need to wait at least two months before considering trying again. Emotions ran high as we entered the holiday season and remained as strong as we could for each other and our two children.

After Christmas passed, we decided to continue trying. I believe we both shared an unspoken fear that this road may end in heartache once again. Knowing that were both unwilling to give up and that no matter what happens we had two wonderful children that brought us so much joy, we knew it was the right decision.

Eleven months came and went as twenty seven days of hope followed by one day of knowing that this month wasn’t the one. November 17th 2013, my wife’s birthday, that 28th day brought something different this time. I’ll never forget being woken up by my teary eyed wife who had just seen the test results that she thought she may never see again. I hadn’t breathed that deeply in over a year.

Thirty four weeks later, seventeen days earlier than expected, my wife came home from work and began having contractions. Her scheduled appointment for a repeat c-section wasn’t for ten days. To say we weren’t prepared would be an understatement. It was just past midnight when we decided to head to the hospital.

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Among the few things I managed to grab on our way out the door, was my smartphone. The obvious reasoning was to be able to contact family and friends with updates from the hospital. What I didn’t consider at the time, was that I’d be able to capture a timeline of moments from this unexpected event. The images shared here are of both significant and mundane moments during our early visit to the hospital…

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About Author

Josh St. Germain

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