In a couple of weeks we will take time to visit the grave of our infant son, Owen John George Suggs. He would turn 37 this year on April 1, a day we celebrate April Fools Day, which has taken on a completely different meaning for us and our family. Like most parents, we thought we could successfully 'plan' our family, and three years between kids seemed about right to us. Our daughter Anne turned 3 on February 4, 1989 and our baby Owen was due shortly after her birthday on March 26. My pregnancy was fairly unremarkable, and in part because I'd had a healthy baby previously without having had an ultrasound, so my doctor enrolled me in a national study to determine whether ultrasound should be a regular test for prenatal care, which was being conducted by Boston Brigham and Women's Hospital in conjunction with Harvard Medical School. I was placed in the control group of the study who did not receive an ultrasound, which turned out to be a fateful assignment. By my due date, which was just around Easter I'd become very uncomfortable and grown very large. I learned later that my baby wasn't swallowing in utero which caused some of that excess water I was carrying, and by the time he was a week overdue I had a doctor visit to check to see if everything was okay. During his exam, my doctor became alarmed and told us to head straight to the hospital. It turned out that Owen's movements in utero were not related to an increase in his heart rate, which suggested that they were seizure movements. So those terrifically hard kicks in my stomach were not my imagination - he had only been moving with seizures instead of stretching his little body in my uterus. But honestly until we got to the hospital I still believed things could be okay, and that he was still viable. They took me immediately to a birthing room and the experience was markedly different than when I'd given birth to my daughter. Nurses and doctors were clearly concerned that something was very wrong, and my regular doctor was out of town so his associate took over. They broke my water to stimulate labor, and I gave birth naturally as I had my daughter. But it was clear they wanted that baby out of my uterus, so my feeling like I had any control over what was going on was nothing like my previous birth experience. After he was born there was no cry. The nurses took charge and I could see them with him in the bassinet while they worked him over trying to get him to breathe. They were professional, but clearly panicked. Eventually he was whisked out of the room while I recovered, but I knew something was very wrong. I prayed for him, I was completely out of it and didn't know what to do or how to advocate for either him or me. My husband was with me and equally perplexed and anxious, while he did his best to calm me down and remain positive. Eventually they moved us to a room, and a neonatologist came to visit and update us on what was happening. They had performed a cat scan on Owen's brain and told us that it hadn't developed beyond 3 months. There was little to no chance he was viable, and that beautiful baby boy I'd just given birth to was going to die. We hadn't named him before then, other than agreeing that his first name would be Owen and decided that he should have the names of both his grandfathers to give him strength for what lay ahead. He was Owen John George Suggs. I asked my husband (also Owen) to call our church and ask that the priest come to the hospital to baptize him. I was dumbfounded, in shock and unable to speak without breaking into tears, and there had never been a time in my life before then that I needed the support of my faith. He made the call, and I overheard him talking to the priest, explaining to him our situation and how important it was that he be here for us. But when Owen hung up the phone, he explained that the priest said there were chaplains on call who could baptize him. I was outraged. I felt abandoned by the only institution that could provide some way for me to find my way toward acceptance about what I was experiencing. He made other calls for us both - his parents and mine - all of whom came to the hospital immediately. We were told we could visit him in the neonatal care unit, and we all did. Owen rolled me down in a wheelchair, and my parents brought our daughter who held his little hand in the incubator, clearly puzzled with what was going on. The doctors and nurses encouraged us to take photos and my parents brought a little outfit I'd purchased prior to his birth that had been washed and ready to go. I was so grateful they suggested we take photos because all of them are very precious to me. My brother brought a video camera and took some video as well. This was one of those terrible experiences where your family rises to the occasion to support you. But within hours we learned that a choice needed to be made about our son that was more painful than any I'd ever made in my life, and haven't since then. Our neonatologist, Dr. Jonathan Gitlin explained to us that continued existence on a breathing tube would only further degrade his physical condition. There was no way he was going to live, even without assistance and it was up to us to make a determination about next steps. Clearly we needed to do what was best for him, and that meant taking him off of life support. The staff set us up in a small room, and baby Owen - dressed in his little blue gingham outfit - was handed to us to hold until he died. While his brain never functioned his little heart kept up for more than an hour as we held him and cried. I was inconsolable, but my dear husband was a rock on the outside while I knew that he hurt just as much as I did. Owen gasped a number of deep 'breaths' that weren't really respirations, but his heart continued to beat while a nurse occasionally stopped in to check on him and us. It took him more than an hour to die in our arms, and it remains the most difficult thing I've ever had to experience in my life. I'm wiping tears from my eyes just writing this, but know that it was something I needed to do, even though it was 37 years ago. We went to Kriegshauser Mortuary where fortunately we had a friend who was able to help us pick out a small casket that looked remarkably like a cooler. George Kriegshauser was a friend of friends and was very compassionate with us. We buried Owen next to my maternal Grandmother who died at 37 from St. Louis encephalitis and was not next to any other family members. It gave me some peace that he was next to her, who had spent so much time there alone. My brother John and his wife Judy hosted a small gathering of our family who came for the graveside service, performed by Father Anthony Bommarito who had married us, and later baptized Will who arrived a year later. We couldn't have been better supported by family and friends as we were on that day. Then it was over. Or not. We returned home and my body expected a baby to be breastfeeding, so my milk came in. Another reminder that my baby had just died and that I was dealing with depression. My doctor prescribed some narcotics to allow me to sleep at night and a pharmacist chastised me for using such powerful drugs - inconceivable to him that I'd just experienced what I had. I haven't been back to that pharmacy since by the way... We did all we could to help our daughter Anne through her own grief. We had books we read to her about 'the baby not coming home' and she placed a bandaid over the mouth of her baby doll in imitation of the breathing tube Owen had used. We talked to her and explained what had happened in the gentlest and kindest way we knew how, and answered any questions she had about what was going on. It was hard to go through what we were going through ourselves, but we made every effort to address any feelings she was having about what had happened. She was only 3, but had clearly suffered herself and couldn't possibly understand what was happening to us. The hospital recommended a grief support group called SHARE that met at a local hospital. We went to one meeting, only to find that most of the parents there had lost babies months and years earlier, but remained connected to their grief and sadness in a way that didn't feel particularly cathartic. We decided the thing to do was to address it on our own. Fortunately we are good communicators with one another and have learned over the years that we are much more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. Lots of people sent cards, flowers, prayers our way. There was a great deal of 'why you?' responses and I came to the conclusion that really why NOT us? Experiences like ours, while not common happen every day. But the very worst response is none at all. Like our baby never existed, or that he wasn't real. That was the most hurtful of all the reactions we experienced in my own eyes. And so life goes on. We still go to the cemetery every year on April 1 and share remembrances of our baby Owen. The other kids always used to come with us, but now we go alone. Honestly it's kind of weird for that to be the way we remember him on a yearly basis, but in reality we remember him all the time in both big and little ways. We talk about how for his short little life he changed our lives forever, made us closer as a couple and as a family, and changed our perspective on everything. He was a huge blessing to us in every way, no matter how short his life was. We love your Owen John George Suggs and always will!