Blog Entry - Holding onto Hope
This month has been bittersweet having our twins who passed eight years ago and born in December.
This Wednesday, December 16th at 2:57pm we met our beautiful daughter Earth-side, and named her Noelle Alberta-Hope Schwenke. 18.5” long, 5 lbs 5 oz of precious and perfect beauty, our little peanut.
We knew that her having Full Trisomy 18 meant our miracle rainbow baby girl Noelle may have a limited time with our family. Life limiting conditions can look like time spent in womb, a moment to hours after birth, days, weeks, months... We didn’t know what to anticipate.
Later the evening of the 16th when it looked like her body was becoming weak the care team working with us moved swiftly to make arrangements for our son to come up and meet Noelle. We managed to spend a little less than one hour together as a family of four.
Sadly on the morning of December 17th our daughter Noelle passed peacefully in our arms. She was declared at 12:52am and our hearts shattered. Dreams of a longer future together dashed away in a moment. Our precious and beautiful Noelle was able to be with us for about 10 hours before crossing over.
While we want to speak with our loved ones, family and friends over the phone and answer your kind and loving messages, we have been overwhelmed with the emotions of grief.
Know your support means so much to our family and we will need that now and in the future. Our son seems to understand what happened however I’m sure he will be able to better grieve once mommy and daddy are back home.
I had shared ways to help our family prior to birth and in the past would not be one to ask for help. After experiencing the path of child loss 8 years ago with our twins, this time around we don’t want to walk this path of grief alone.
Busy bags/boxes with activities, books, fun things for our son, help with a meal train for our family, reaching out to check in and also respectfully understanding when we need our space are absolutely appreciated and we thank you for your support.
Healing will take time for our broken hearts to mend. There will never be enough photos, and keepsakes can never replace the worst loss, the loss of a child. However we treasure everything we have and hope to find peace while grieving.
May you hug your little ones tight, tell them another ‘I love you’ and take a moment to slow down to enjoy being with them. Time passes by so quickly, you never know when that last moment will be.
You’ve all been with us in spirit during Noelle’s birth day and each day since. Knowing we are not alone has meant the world, even while we’ve taken this time to mourn in silence.
Much love to you all and our genuine and heartfelt thanks to those who have helped us and supported us during this uncertain journey.
And to our daughter, Noelle, our time together was too brief, we’ve spoken to you a lot the past few days during your time with us and after your spirit left your body.
Thank you for being our daughter and for choosing us as your parents. We are so very blessed and thankful we got to know you, hold you, give you kisses, and spend the time we had with you. Your big brother got to meet you, hold you, and while less time than ourselves, he got to have time with you. Noelle, you will always be our precious, perfect, beautiful little peanut. We will never forget you. We love you Noelle!!! Forever and ever!!! 
For those who want to help with our meal train, here is the link with information : https://www.mealtrain.com/trains/lzw6ed
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