Our family suffered a tragedy when a shocking pregnancy complication resulted in a young couple losing their healthy child in its second trimester. Nothing could be done to save the baby and her days-long torment finally and mercifully ended during delivery. The parents tenderly cradled this tiny, perfect baby, their first, with heart-searing love and soul-deep grief profound to behold, marveling at her wee hands and dear little face.

The supporting grandmothers felt their own searing pain, not only of seeing the exquisite sweetness of what could not be but also of witnessing the terrible grief of their grown children. The grandmothers lived nearby and had been part of the pregnancy journey of excitement, first trimester worries, then hope, finally a tragedy made much worse by a state’s coldly rigid law and a catholic hospital’s version of “ethics.”

The young man’s mother was so affected she wrote the story of the baby’s brief life, to capture how much the baby was hoped for and loved, how bonded the parents were during the mother’s physical and emotional trauma with the father firmly beside her for days, being strong for her while holding his own deep grief. The story is a way to focus on beautiful love rather than pain.

Losing a pregnancy, even an unwanted one, is a painful story. This baby’s story lives on in all our hearts and in a ribbon-bound booklet to treasure. Butterfly babies have stories, too.