Katrina Villegas, 34, said she “knew nothing but love” in the few minutes she held baby April Rey, who died in her arms.
The tiny tot snuggled into Katrina’s chest and even held her finger – with a hand barely the size of her mother’s fingernail.
But after a traumatic labour, Katrina and her husband Joseph, 35, from Maryland, US, had to go home without their precious daughter.
Katrina, who is also mum to three-year-old Caroline, said: "April somehow filled me with calmness and joy and I held her as long as I could.
"I was so happy to meet my little girl, and she kept me so strong that I didn’t even shed a tear while she was in my arms. She was amazing and perfect."
At 19 weeks pregnant, Katrina and Joseph had made the "hardest decision of their lives" to induce labour early, after finding out their daughter had the terminal condition Trisomy 13.
The illness meant she would have suffered from severe intellectual disability and physical abnormalities and would only have a five to 10 per cent chance of making it to her first birthday.
On August 8, 2017, April was born at 11.22pm. She died at 11.33pm.
Now Katrina has revealed the physical reminders that she had to deal with, as well as the emotional pain.
In the letter, she warns other mum’s going through the same heartache, about the side effects of the pregnancy, from bleeding to the breast milk coming in.
She said: “I didn't come home with a baby, but I still gave birth.
“Gosh, it's brutal to even write that sentence.
“Every physical reminder my body gave me about the fact that I'd just given birth felt like I was running into a wall of emotional pain.”
She said she ached all over, and bled, revealing, “every pad I had to change was a brutal reminder that I didn't have a baby to hold".
She said that even resting felt wrong because she should have had sleepless nights tending a newborn.
Katrina added: “Then was the big blow.
“My milk came in. It wasn't supposed to. I'd been told it was highly unlikely to happen after taking the medicine I'd taken to stop the pregnancy. But it happened.
“My boobs were engorged and my body wanted to feed a baby – a baby I didn't have at home with me.”
Katrina, who is now expecting a baby boy called William in January, wrote a moving letter to April to mark her first birthday.
The former engineer and chemistry teacher, who runs the website Mama’s Organized Chaos, said: "I asked Caroline what she wants to do for your birthday.
"She wants to bake a cake, because that’s what you do on birthdays. We’re going to decorate it and blow out a candle. I asked Caroline how she wants the cake to be decorated.
"Her first answer was 'with rain.' I inquired as to why. 'Because April never got to see the rain. She doesn’t know what it is and I want to show her.'”
She added: "I miss you. I miss you more than words can say. The word 'miss' doesn’t even seem to do it justice.
"I don’t get to miss feeding you, because I never got to. I don’t get to miss your laughs, because I never got to hear them.
"I don’t get to miss the every day little things that I want to know so badly."
Katrina revealed that she hoped friends would congratulate her, even though April had only had a short life.
In the moving letter she said: "
"I even requested my moms group send out the famous "birth announcement email" they do for every other child.
"They send out a congratulatory email, and then everyone replies all to respond with their congratulations.
"Usually I'd cringe (yes I'm that person) when it would happen because my inbox was suddenly full of messages.
I never saw the reason to "reply all" on these emails and would send a private message of congratulations instead.
"After they sent out my birth (and death) announcement for April Rey – crickets happened.
"One person replied all, and one person sent me a message directly. And then it was silence.
"I cried. I admitted my sadness to my husband and told him I'd wanted to be congratulated.
"He gently reminded me that no one would guess that. No one would guess that I wanted congratulations in a time like this.
"No one wanted to say the wrong thing. Everyone had good intentions.
"I knew that. I knew. But it was still hard."
The mum says she still feels as if her family is "broken".
She explained: "There's an empty space at the table. It's always been vacant, but now it feels empty. Now it feels like April Rey is missing.
Who knew dinner would be so hard?"
But Katrina says she couldn't have coped without the "army of women standing by to help".
She wrote: "They are there to help with Caroline if I need a moment, they are there to offer a friendly conversation, a listening ear, a hug, a distraction and so much more.
I had no idea how badly I'd need those things and how helpful those things would really be."
To read Katrina's letter in full visit her website here.
Yesterday we revealed a mother's heartbreak as she prayed for her nine-year-old daughter's death to be "as beautiful" as her son's – as she lost two children in eight months.
We also told of the mum who went through 10 hours of labour to give birth to a baby that didn't 'officially exist'… and she wasn't even allowed to bury him.
We previously told how a "miracle" baby girl born at 24 weeks battled for 100 days in hospital to survive.
Source: Read Full Article