Still Born

This is the very blog for which I am grateful that we decided to have an audio companion. If you are reading this, your mind is thinking about a stillborn.  That is not how I think about it. Nicolas Hofreuter Landini may have died, but he was still born.

He would be 21. I don’t have to calculate that in my head. I always know. He is Grace’s twin brother.

If your heart drops when I say that, please don’t feel sorry for me, for their dad or for Grace. It is hard to explain, but somehow your sympathy makes it worse. I cannot speak to the pain of losing a child, but I know the pain of losing a baby. 

I hope you never do. 

This walk is written in support of those who suffer a similar death… the parents, the siblings, the extended family… or anyone who is trying to understand the grief of losing a baby.  

Mark: I think the biggest thing is a lot of people can’t walk in your shoes.

Liz: Thank God.

For reasons I still cannot yet articulate, I only feel truly comfortable telling the story with someone else who has experienced the same loss. This is a collective story. Five other lives are inseparably woven into it.  I spoke with each person individually, yet their voices harmonized to reveal a separate but shared narrative waiting to be told. Walk with me as Amanda and Chris, Jessica and Jon, Mark and I try to pull back the layers of what we experienced —hoping our journey might light the way for someone else walking a similarly dim path. What follows is the unravelling of the threads of our shared experience, hoping that in the telling, we might offer a lifeline to someone who needs it.

Jessica: I always keep track of how old he is and what he’d be doing. In fact, he’d be out of college now. I don’t think that ever goes away. I think the pain of what I went through will always be present. It’s not like I can forget that pain.

I never felt so alone as I did then either. I remember I would try to tell Jon, and he’d listen. He was there. But even telling him, I realized how completely alone I am. You know what I mean? Even if someone’s there. I think that was the first time I really realized that no one can protect you from anything, really.

Amanda: It just made me realize that as much as I am in control of things, I’m really not. For me, I always say, Carson’s death took my faith from being pretty passive to active because this is where the rubber meets the road. And it was knowing God’s there. And how can I trust him through this really terrible thing that just happened to me? Because now I’m scared.

Liz: Scared of what?

Amanda: Just the fact that people died. I mean, my child died.

Pain, fear, anger, loneliness… These are just some of the emotions that still play in our hearts as mothers who have lost. Nathan would be 23. Nicolas would be 21. Carson would be 8.  I don’t know what a healthy pregnancy or birth is like. My only experience was the twins: my fragile preemie rushed through the doors to the NICU and then the dimming of lights for the hollow, clinical birthing of Nicolas. I’ve been told that in healthy births, oxytocin floods the brain with such fierce love that some women forget the pain of childbirth entirely. Their bodies, wise with forgetting, make room for joy. But my body remembers everything.

Liz: Everybody talks about the amnesia of childbirth, not when it’s still birth. 

Jessica: Not so for me, I honestly don’t find that true anyway because I remember. I remember what I was feeling. I remember my worries. Like with Mary, there weren’t worries. I remember I’ll be like, oh, God, I hope I don’t pee. You know me, that stuff. I wanted this little romantic setting or whatever, a playlist and stuff, where after Nathan, it was like, I could care less. I don’t care if you have to go in there and knock me out, just take the baby. You know what I mean?

Jessica: That’s one of the hardest things for me is to keep my mouth shut when people say stuff like that because people are like, “Oh, I want this and that, and then the other.” And I’m like, “You don’t even –-beep – know what you want. 

Liz: You want a healthy pregnancy and a healthy birth.

Jessica: You think that’s what you want. That is not what you want. What you want is a healthy baby. 

I mentioned anger, didn’t I? You can hear that anger that exists just underneath all of the other emotions. We don’t talk much about the anger stage except with other mothers, but it is a normal stage of grief and shows up for mothers who have lost.

Liz: I went through a pretty crazy period of you deserved this.

Jessica: Yeah.

Liz: We were driving up for one of our appointments and there was a car accident, and we arrived pretty soon after the accident before they had stopped traffic, and we didn’t stop and get out. That was reason one. And then just feeling not good enough, not whatever, all the other things that go through your mind. Did you ever have any of that?

Jessica: Oh, yeah. I thought it. I still to this day think it was my fault. I ate a lot of candy the night before, and so I thought it was the sugar.

So add self-blame, guilt, and jealousy to the list of lesser discussed emotional landmines we still tiptoe through.

Liz: I don’t think anybody talks about their twins, that there’s not this weird, wistful reaction inside of me that quickly goes through… You’re lucky. Thank God for you. I’m a little jealous.

Mark: I’m jealous of twins for sure.

Neither of us like using the word, jealous, but words are difficult to choose when you discuss such grief. Articulating the raw honesty and complexity that still echoes in our hearts keeps us silent. That is not the answer. Turns out the word “jealousy” often implies fear of losing something you have, so maybe our lingering fears choose it subconsciously.

The actress, Julia Roberts, was pregnant with twins at the same time I was. Hazel and Phinneaus. Why do I know this? Because they survived. I’m not proud to say I harbor some rare form of anguished envy, because I am also so grateful that she never 

Liz: …went in for a regular checkup, and there was only one heartbeat. 

Mark: they couldn’t find the two heartbeats.

Liz: A nurse very, very kindly said, Hadn’t you been counting kicks? And it was enough to make me question, did I cause this? 

Jessica: Well, I remember the night before that he was moving so much, like weirdly moving so much. Then, I never felt him move again. You know what I mean? But the weirdest thing was I had a dream that night … What I remember of the dream is that I was talking to God, or Jesus, I don’t know. They were pouring liquid out of a container, and I was just crying. I said, “No.” They said, “Not this time” or something like that. I woke up and I just knew he was dead, but I went into work, and I literally got all the billing done. I got the payroll done for that week. I got everything done by 10:00 then I went to the hospital. 

Liz: You knew. 

Jessica: I knew, but I wasn’t… Then you know how you second-guess yourself? Oh, yeah. Everything’s fine. You’re just ridiculous.

Amanda: Okay, so I woke up on St. Patrick’s Day, and in hindsight, when I say this, it’s not an exaggeration. The day was dim. There was just a darkness over it before I even knew he had died. I thought, This is weird. I never wake up at 7: 30 comfortably in my bed without feeling kicks in my ribs and all that stuff. I went downstairs, I drank some water. I tried to get him moving. I took a warm bath because it always got him moving. That’s when the panic set in, and that’s when I just started praying, “God, what? It can’t be happening, not to me. It happens. I know that, but not this late in pregnancy, not to me.” I mean, as silly as this sounds, I’m a good person. This is what is going on in reality. I had called my doctor and they said, Come right in.

I knew on the way there, it was raining, and I just felt it. I knew, but I didn’t want to believe. Even when they confirmed and said, his heart stopped, I wasn’t ready to believe that he had actually died. The machine was wrong, and there’s still hope, and this isn’t happening.

Once your fears are confirmed, the world rushes at you, but you are not really living in it. 

Jonathan: It’s like you’re on a ride and you can’t get off from there on. I remember asking, what was the option? I remember saying “Okay, you can just do a C section. Just knock her out.” “No, we can’t, oh, no, she has to give birth.” That’s when I thought, “This is punishment. What do you mean?”

Amanda: There’s so many decisions that you have to make, and it happens in the blink of an eye. One minute you’re waking up, and the next minute you’re like, “Am I going to go be induced, or do I want to wait till labor starts naturally? Are we going to have a funeral or memorial? Are we going to do nothing? Is this real? Are we going to cremate him or bury him?”

Mark: It was all a rush. They rushed us in there to begin with. I was worried about you. I was obviously worried about Grace because we knew we had already lost Nicolas. I didn’t want to lose it all.

The world hits fast-forward while we are floating somewhere near the ceiling, observing this as if it is somebody else’ life falling apart in real time. They rush in with protocols and procedures, but using gentle voices and hushed tones. The questions come like bullets. Do you want to be induced? Would you prefer to wait for natural labor? Will you hold the baby? Do you want photographs? Funeral or memorial service? Burial or cremation? Each question felt impossible and urgent all at once. Being carried along by a current with no power to resist. Making decisions that felt scripted by someone else while we had retreated somewhere deep and unreachable. The world rushed in with its demands and timelines and necessary cruelties. And mother and father move through it like ghosts, going through the motions of the living while feeling fundamentally separate from life itself.

Liz: If I could do one thing, based on my regrets, it would be to help a family say things like, “It doesn’t matter, you have time. Take some time. You don’t have to decide that today.” I wish somebody had just said, “Take a breath.” Really, the only decision either one of us had to make was, “Are we going to deliver today or later?” And nothing else had to be decided as quickly as we were told. 

And then there was telling our families. How do you pass on such grief? How do you find words for something that has no words? For me, hearing myself say the words out loud cut the grief even deeper…and I had to do it over and over again.

Jonathan: I remember making the calls, and I remember calling Marianna and Nanette. They must have been together somewhere. They just dropped everything. The next thing I know, I remember them coming down the hall. It was the middle of the night.

Liz: It’s interesting because I remember making those calls. And part of you feels like.

Your whole world is shattering and people are saying the most stupid shit on the other end of the phone.

Amanda: I feel when we go through these things, people don’t know what to say. The filter goes away. And it happens with people that we love very much. It happens with people that we don’t know at all. I always say when people are going through hard things, it’s easier to sit in the silence because at least I would know you’re here with me instead of saying something wrong or, no offense, but stupid. That is hurtful. That just brings so much more internal tension to me as the person who is grieving their child.

Jonathan: It’s awful. And you just don’t. And you don’t even want that. Right? I mean, you want somebody, like I said, I reached out to a couple of my sisters because you just want somebody there. 

And when they get there, the door of your room will have a card to mark that yours is a room of grief on the obstetrics floor.

Liz: I think about that placard that was outside the hospital room.

Mark: With the little drop of water on the leaf.

This subtle image of a fallen leaf posted outside a hospital room door signals that something heartbreaking has happened to the people inside. When I saw that card outside Amanda’s door so many years later, I was stopped in my tracks and somehow transported to Ruby Hospital in 2004. 

Amanda: At the end of the day, nobody really knows how to do this. Nobody really knows how to lose a child, how to grieve, how to be there for each other. I think we all just try our best. We’re going to fail. We’re going to mess up. But I feel like sending that grace and forgiveness to people.

Trying to comfort others when grief is incomprehensible to you is another level of pain. Carrying their grief was a weight none of us could bear. I wish I had been able to articulate that then.  I offered grace to those around me, but left none for myself. For me the load only became a little lighter three weeks later when I received a letter and a book in the mail. Jessica had written to me. Its raw emotion gave me comfort. Allow me to share a small excerpt.

“ I know about the pain you are going through. When Nathan died at 36 weeks it was a complete shock to me… I hope you have a great network of friends and family to lean on. At times they were very helpful to me but sometimes I didn’t want to talk to people who had no idea what I’d been through and couldn’t fully understand my pain.” 

Jessica: When Nathan died, several people reached out and… and it was totally different talking to someone who’s been through it. So I reached out to you.

I knew then it was a grace I would need to pay forward. Unfortunately, I had the chance years later when my friend Darryl Crews called to tell me his son and daughter-in-law had lost their baby.

Liz: I think when I showed up with you, that was what I really wanted, I wanted to say to Darryl, she needs space and love, and somebody make sure you’re taking care of Chris. I mean, that was something I know I said to Darryl and Judy.

Amanda: I remember when you showed up and said that. It hit me – I’m only living my experience, he’s having a whole other experience. He’s trying to make my experience of birthing a child that’s not going to cry be easier than what it was. I’m going to cry thinking about it because it was this selflessness that was coming out in him to try to comfort and console me. I’m like, “You don’t have to be strong for me.” Then we cried together. I don’t know. If you didn’t say that, I don’t know necessarily that I ever would have had that because I was so absorbed in the idea, I have to birth this child.

Liz: When I went to see Amanda Crews when their baby died, the most important thing to me was that people take care of Chris. We were in the midst of getting divorced. And I think I assumed if you didn’t take really good care of the relationship of the parents, what happened to us could happen to anybody.

Mark: I guess I understand that.

I don’t know how to articulate the pain a father feels, but I did live the effects of it on Mark, Nicolas’ dad. Chris tried to help me understand.

Liz: Talk to me about being the father and how different that is from my process of being the mother.

Chris: So if you think about it, as the mother, you felt that child, right? It was part of you. We didn’t feel that. I mean, we felt the kicks every once in a while. So I feel like it’s completely different. 

I don’t know if this is valid or not, but I felt like I had been through a lot of loss in my life already. And so I felt, Oh, I’m old hat at this. I just need to be there for Amanda, whatever she needs. You knew my dad, right? So everything gets bottled in. Oh, I’m good. There were people that came up and said, and you might have been one of them, actually. Everyone’s asking Amanda how she is, but how are you? But the line was always, oh, “I’m fine. It’s whatever Amanda needs.”

Chris worries eight years later whether his feelings were valid or not. What devastating truth lives in that statement. When others unintentionally push us to “get through it” and “move on,” do we begin to question whether our emotions have any right to exist? And what happens when no one even recognizes your grief as grief at all?

This is exactly why I worry for the fathers.

Liz: So I actually worry about the husband because at least people think about the mother. I shouldn’t say husband, I should say father. But I never heard anyone say, how’s Mark doing?

Jessica: Yeah, no. And that was hard for Jon. Jon always said he’d come home from work and all day long, every single person he knew avoided talking about it with him. That’s how men deal, right? He’d come home at night after I’ve been dealing with it all day and reading and writing in a journal and all that stuff. And then we’d go out and have a glass of wine or whatever. You know what I mean? But that was the only time he had to talk about it. It was with me. Probably one of his sisters or whatever, probably. And if there was another couple there with us at dinner, he couldn’t talk about it, but I still could. You know what I mean? And it was like, everyone just let me talk. So that was hard for him.

Liz: Those societal norms are very difficult in this state.

Jonathan: This guy said, “Oh, yeah, I heard what happened to your wife. That’s hard on the women.” Yeah, it is.

Liz: That had to kill you.

Jonathan: Well, what do you say? 

Liz: It invalidates everything you feel, you know.

Jonathan: Yeah, well, yes, it does, but I didn’t exactly take it that way. It really kind of just made me pause to think what it meant because I was going through all these emotions of loss, but I did not carry that child. So I felt guilty. I felt terrible for my wife. I still feel terrible for my wife. I’m still angry that she had to go through that. You know, as husband and protector that was one big emotion. 

What an impossible contradiction—his own heart was shattered, but the father feels compelled to be the strong one. He was grieving the loss of his child just as deeply, yet somehow he also had to become the shield between mother and the world’s demands. Feeling the need to protect his family while his own pain went largely unacknowledged. The world expected him to be the provider and protector even when he was drowning too, creating an unintentional separation within our shared grief that still feels almost unbearable.

Liz: Isn’t that the role of a husband and father?

Chris: That’s how I see it, for sure.

Liz: But was that true? Did it kick you in the butt later?

Chris: It definitely kicked me in the butt later. But I don’t know, it still kicks me in the butt, to be honest.

Even after we delivered him and got to hold him for a little bit, there were still those decisions that we had to make. Like, how long are we allowed to hold him? What are we supposed to do? 

Mark: The first thing I think about is that nobody can prepare you to hold a lifeless child. That’s the most vivid memory that I have, is when he was brought to us to hold him in that dark room. And it wasn’t for long, but it seemed like it was a long time.

Jonathan: But there’s also the fact that I never held him when he was alive, so can I feel the same loss? You know, it’s almost like you have to give yourself a break. 

Liz: That’s what I think I’m starting to understand is that you have the loss, but you still feel like an outsider.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Liz: If we got a call right now that someone else we knew was going through this. What advice would you give to the father?

Chris: So it’s funny you ask that because I work in a building with a lot of people, and I’ve had a few that have gone through the same thing or similar. And I don’t know if it’s the right advice or not, but it’s always been. And I say, You need to be there for your wife. Whatever she needs, you got to be there for her. You can worry about yourself later, which I don’t know if that’s the right advice or not. That’s what I did.

Liz: Did you worry about yourself later?

Chris: No.

Liz: But Amanda was there for you, too?

Chris: One hundred percent. For sure.

Liz: So what advice would you say to a female employee or colleague as far as taking care of the father of the baby? 

Chris: Oh. That’s a good question. I guess just talk about it, really. Might be hard at first, but the more you talk about it, the more you can heal.

Talk about it. There is no statute of limitations. Bring it up today. It does wonders for me to hear his name on someone else’s lips. Their stories matter. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so thank goodness all three of our families have pictures of our sons. We highly recommend it. 

Jessica: When Nathan died, I wanted to acknowledge him. We had a big service and everything else. You know what I mean? And I had pictures and everything else. And everyone was like, you can’t put those up. It makes people uncomfortable or whatever. And I never did. And I get it. But I was not about hiding it. 

There we are… carrying other people’s emotions. Putting their discomfort before our own grief or healing.

Amanda: After Carson died before his memorial, a friend said, “Just be prepared. This is not for you. This is for you to comfort however many people show up and to make them feel good. It’s in the moments after today that you will need it.”

We need you to understand it is in lots of moments after that day that we need your grace – and space for our grace for ourselves. 

Amanda: I mean, there’s a dream before, but it’s a dream that died. Because you make all these plans. Like, what are they going to be like? They’re going to be cute, and they’re going to smile, and they’re going to probably cry. I’m going to have sleepless nights, but then none of that comes true. We had the car seat in our back seat of our Honda CRV for weeks leading up to this. We were prepared. The nursery was done. The car seat was installed. When we drove home from the hospital, we drove home with an empty car seat in the back seat to an empty nursery. Walking home into our house for the first time was not what I had dreamed of. It was my worst nightmare.

Mark: I don’t think people recognize the grief that we had with Nicolas quite as much because we had Grace.

Liz: Agreed. Do you remember all the people who sent us a pink card and a blue card? A pink, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl, and a blue, Sorry for your loss.

Liz: When Nicholas died, the difference for me was that it was twins, and I had Grace, and all the attention had to be on this child in the NICU. And my mom tried to get me to trust the nurses. “She’s in the best place she can be. I will stay around.” And I just couldn’t leave. I had already lost one child. I wasn’t going to lose two. 

I threw myself into the joy instead of the grief, and I dealt with the grief in little pockets. It’s almost like having rooms, and you go into the grief room for 10 or 20 minutes and let yourself experience whatever that is. And then you have to come out because the baby needs to be fed. And feeding Grace was an all day job because you fed her. …You had to wake her to feed her because she was so young. And then I’d have to pump after feeding her because I had to express all the milk. So then it was double the time, even though it was just one baby.

Every feeding for 11 months was a physical reminder that my son had died. I sat alone in a beautiful yellow chair and pumped the milk that was meant for him … almost every feeding I cried or I prayed. This infant loss leaves wounds so profound that don’t come up in typical conversation.  If you want advice on how to support a friend or loved one, show up and hold space for the stories.  This infant loss doesn’t leave us.

Liz: Do you think you dealt with your grief?

Mark: I think I still grieve. I don’t think the grief is ever over. The grieving is never over losing a child. Because a piece of you is lost. You lose some of your future. 

Jonathan: I reminisce about what he would have become? Where would he be now? What would he be doing? What would our relationship be like? You think about things like that, you know, and then you go back to living your life, but you don’t. 

Liz: I think we live with a fear that some parents don’t know. I think there’s collateral beauty to the way we learn to cherish the miracle of pregnancy and life, but I think we have tasted the fear of losing a child and have fear in a different way too.

Jonathan: Oh, yeah.

This fear was palpable as it played out two years ago on a day as beautiful as I can ever remember.

Liz: We went to Italy two summers ago with Rick and his boys. He has four boys. I have two girls. We rented a boat. We were out on the Amalfi Coast, and we were stopping. And the captain said to me, “The kids want a cliff jump.” And I said, “Absolutely not.”

I was suddenly 19 years younger and feeling the pungent fear of loss… the pain was imminent and the anger followed close behind it.

Liz: Those kids swam very far from the boat to where the cliff was. And they had made a deal with me that they would do a short jump first to make sure they were okay. And I was so angry. I was so angry with everyone because I was the only one in that water that had ever… I mean, you said it. I was a mom who had lost. And you want me to sit here in this water and watch my kids? And they climbed to the highest cliff. And the boys jumped, and I could see how scared my girls were, and then they jumped. And when everybody was back in the water, Rick said to me, “See, they’re okay.” and I said, “It’s not okay.”

I wasn’t mad at anyone on the boat that day. I certainly wasn’t mad at my daughters. I was angry – just angry as a stage of grief that still jabs a left hook whenever it wants. What wasn’t ok? Me. I wasn’t ok…not in that moment all those years later. 

Amanda: Especially being a mom who’s lost. It’s really hard to let go. And that’s where I’m at right now. Where is the line of, Hey, I’m being a helicopter parent, or I’m letting them be too independent, or I know they need me still, but that’s something I’m working on. I don’t know if I’ll ever be fully able to let go. And let them just leave the nest.

Liz: I’m so glad you articulated it that way because, yes, you’re having to let go, and you don’t have a choice. But it’s different.

Amanda: Because you can protect only so much within your limits. But when they go and they jump or they do whatever they’re going to do, it’s like, I just want to keep you safe for a longer because I don’t know that I can bear the loss of another child. I don’t think I could do it.

Liz: Most people don’t think they could do what you’ve already done.

Jonathan: You just don’t know where the path leads. So it’s hard to, what, 23 years later … just the path that it throws you down. 

Mark: I would agree with that. You don’t know what your path would have been, though, if you would not have lost a child. 

Jonathan: We hit this obstacle now we’re going to pivot, and we’re going to go this direction. And then, you know, and then you have a child that has autism, and you pivot, and you go, and you just keep going. 

Liz: That’s that 30,000 foot thing.

Jonathan: Yeah, but you. Yeah, but then I was looking down and the world was spinning out of control. And now I may be looking down and be like, you know, okay, yeah, we had that and it was unfortunate when we went through it. And it changed us. I think it changed the way maybe, I hope maybe we’re more compassionate as human beings and maybe we’re just a little more like we let a little more run off the shoulder. We just don’t sweat the small stuff.

This isn’t about finding meaning in tragedy or believing everything happens for a reason. It’s about discovering that when you’ve lost completely, the smallest offerings of light become sacred. My capacity for gratitude has been forged in the fire of loss, and while I would trade it all to have my son back, I can’t deny that grief has taught me to receive joy with both hands wide open.

Liz: I think a lot about the fact that I didn’t get the opportunity to raise my son. I am almost embarrassed to say, I think to myself “Well, your grief isn’t as bad as someone whose child lived and then died.” None of it is relative. It’s still grief. It’s still pain.

Dr. Myerberg: Did you deal with it at the time?

Liz: Of course not. No. That’s part of what this sabbatical project is.

Amanda: I am working on getting Carson’s story out there on paper through a book, and the words that keep coming to me is… If only for one. And we said that at his service, If this is only for one person, in our case, it was to come to know Jesus, then it would be worth it. But it has to be worth it, right? But if it’s only for one person that you’re showing up and doing whatever it is that you’re doing, I think there’s so much beauty in that because that’s how we make a change through each other. It’s a connection.

Liz: The bottom line was the only number that matters is one. If one heart is changed. I love it. If only for one.

Amanda: I tell a lot of people who I talk to now because I talk to a lot of women who go through this. I tell them what you told me when I was in labor and you came to the hospital and you were by my bedside and you said, “This feels like an island, but you’re not on an island. You’re on this peninsula.” Jessica reached out to me after we lost Carson in a letter. It’s just like what we were talking about, if only for one, we go through these really terrible things, but then there’s beauty that comes from it because other people are going through the same thing. Maybe not the exact situation, but we have the power in our voices and in our testimonies and stories to encourage one another to keep going.

Liz: I’m sorry you lost your son. 

Mark: I’m sorry you lost your son.

Unfortunately, somewhere, someone is sitting in a darkened hospital room with a card on their door, feeling more alone than they ever thought possible. Someone is driving home with an empty car seat. Someone is pumping milk that will never be needed. If you are the one who needed to know that the anger is normal, that fathers grieve differently but just as deeply, that there is no timeline for healing, that you can speak their name out loud, that you are not broken beyond repair—then every tear we’ve shed in telling these stories has been worth it. 

If our words reach just one heart in that darkness, the brief lives of Nathan, Nicolas and Carson created ripples that reach far beyond what we would hope. They were still born and their stories matter.

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