A letter for your birthday!

To my dear KYRA JEAN

YOU WERE BORN SILENT BUT YOUR LITTLE LIFE SPEAKS VOLUMES!

Oh baby girl, how I long to hold you and sing lullabies to you while you fall asleep in my arms. I long to smell your sweet baby smell and feel your soft hands in mine. I long to tickle you and hear your little giggles, I even long to hear your urgent cries! I long to give you kisses on your cheeks and cuddle you tight. I long to gaze upon you while you are sleeping and hear your gentle breathing! I long to know what you would look like, would you you have blue eyes like your brothers, would you have soft hair like your daddy, would you have my smile? Oh the endless longings!

jo-anne as baby

We are about to celebrate your first birthday and I wish I could dress you in a beautiful little princess dress and make you a velvety smash cake for you to stick your little fingers in! Blow up pink and purple balloons for you to gaze on and to wrap perfectly picked gifts for you to unwrap.

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I know you are in a better place, and I know that you will be celebrating in a far more fantastic way than I can ever imagine, but I do so wish that you were here with us! We should be celebrating your first birthday together, the 5 of us! We should all be helping you blow out your one candle! Getting spit all over the cake but eating it anyways.

We all miss you so much! Your brothers for sure talk about you and are excited that they get presents for your birthday. (We decided to give them a gift on your birthday in a way to celebrate you!)

Some people have said to me that I am strong but I am far from it. Kyra I hurt so much that at times it is hard to even get up! Dear girl you left an emptiness in me that can’t be explained, no one will ever feel this way over you! No one will know this pain I feel for you, no one feels this very powerful ache I have…its crippling! I know God heals and fills the missing pieces but even so, I still feel as though my heart will forever be broken.

I heard a quote “ Watching your heart outside of you body is what it is like for a mum to watch her children!” And so as I watch Elijah and Isaac play, I ache because you are that part of my heart that is missing. You are supposed to be learning to walk and trying to keep up with your brothers.

A year has gone by since I held you, a year since I felt you kick and squirm in my belly! How did all this time go by without you here? It doesn’t seem possible! I have cried so hard at times that I felt as though the world was ending. Sometimes my heart has ached so much so that it has felt as though it was going to explode! Then at times it hasn’t felt real at all, sometimes days go by in a daze….

The time I had with you Kyra, was so short, too short!! A mother is not supposed to out live her children!

And then Kyra at times I am filled with anger! Why was I robbed of being your mother? Why did you have to have that condition that took you away from me? I hate Anencephaly! I hate that it ripped you away from me…. I hate that I couldn’t do anything to save you! I hate the pain it has caused, I hate that it has left its bitter sting on all our lives!

I am RAW! Broken, angry, aching, empty…… with out you! Even a year on the pain is still so RAW!!!

But in the midst of this rawness I look back and I cherish the very short moment we had together! I remember the kicks, the squirming, the jabs to my bladder….. I remember how sick I felt, the pain my body was in…. but all of that meant that you were so very alive in me, alive while I carried you! I am honoured that I held you for your whole earthly life!! Kyra I am honoured that God chose me to carry you!

I feel comfort in knowing you are with Jesus, this would be my only comfort! Jesus has you! I ask the boys what you are doing and they say so matter of factly that you are dancing with Jesus! I can’t help but smile when they talk about you!

I smile knowing you are WHOLE now! I smile thinking of what you may look like! I smile knowing that you get to be in His presence!! I love that He gets to show you all His beauty!

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Kyra Jean, you were only here for a moment, but that moment changed me and so many lives. That moment set me a part! In that moment God showed me that this life is short and that eternity is where we are striving to be! I will cherish the moment we had together! I will cherish the impact your life made on me!

My darling Kyra I miss you so hard!! And I love you more than words could ever express!!

Happy 1st Birthday my sweet baby girl!!!

Dance for Jesus, dance for Jesus and live!!!!

Till I see you again my sweet!

Love mummy xoxox

~Kyra Jean Janzen born still 26 August 2015~

 
Thank you Lord for Kyra and the moment we had with her!
Thank you Lord for choosing me and my family!!
Thank you Lord that Kyra is with you now!

Lord I pray for all those grieving hearts,
that You will be with them right in their rawness!! Hold them tight!
Bring them comfort Lord and give them enough strength for everyday!
In Your precious name, Jesus!
Amen

Here is a song I have loved listening to in the midst of this:

 

Thank you to you all for journeying with us!
You are so welcome to help us celebrate Kyra Jean’s life! We will be celebrating her day with taking our boys to the zoo! Showing the boys the beauty in God’s creation!
We also originally wanted to do a chinese lantern and light it and send it up in her memory, but they are actually prohibited here, so we have decided to light some sparklers for the boys to enjoy in the evening instead! We will also have a cake with a candle to blow out! It would be awesome if you wanted to have a candle to blow out for her, a chinese lantern to send up or even some cake to enjoy…Share a picture with us with how you celebrated.

Not only did we want to honour Kyra’s birthday but we also want to honour and remember all the babies gone too soon, the families affected by infant/baby loss, for parents that have outlived their children, and many others!

We will be sending up a prayer for you all!!

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Moments in time

On so many occasions I found myself saying “Where has the time gone?” or “Time is just going too fast!” I feel at times that TIME in general needs to slow down a bit especially because of my kids growing up…

I look at my 2 boys and just think that “Wow it was just yesterday that I held you in my arms for the first time and now look how big you are”…..So many memories in such a little time!! Bittersweet memories!!

The hard part lately is that when I look at my boys I can’t help but wonder, I am constantly haunted by the wonders…..I wonder if she would be rolling around by now, I wonder what she would of sounded like, I wonder whether her giggle would sound like her brothers, I wonder how long or soft her hair would be, I wonder would she be a cuddler, I wonder if she would stare at me with big blue eyes and the list goes on!

Kyra Jean would be 6 months this week and yet it feels like just yesterday that I held her in my arms for that brief moment. The pain still feels so close and yet it has been 6 months that have just “flown” by.

I look at the boys and ask God to slow down the time, but then I think of my baby girl and find myself asking God to speed the time up so that I can race to the healing part. The problem is I don’t think there will be healing, well healing in the way I want it to be that is. There are still moments to come that will make me feel so sad inside… the would of first birthday is still yet to come, all the missing family moments that she was supposed to be a part of will be for the rest of my life! I will forever be thinking of what age she should be and all the wonders associated with who my little princess should of been, etc!

Yes of course we have started our new normal and our lives are changing, big things are happening but in the midst of it all I still get caught in the sadness and it takes my breath away. I try and busy my days, filling my mind with endless to do’s and things to keep my mind racing with other thoughts so that I don’t have to think and feel the pain of losing my little girl.

But then I have moments where I feel God telling me that this is ALL necessary! Necessary to feel the pain and that sometimes necessary sadness comes with unspeakable joy! Levi Lusko used the term “I got 1 in the target” from his book “Through the eyes of a lion”. The target being where we are aiming to be, with Him in Eternity! Knowing that I got 2 in the target actually brings me comfort…. Lael and Kyra Jean are there, they don’t ever have to face this hard journey of getting to where they are!

I believe everything happens for a reason and works towards what God is doing with our lives, the things we experience be it hardship or joy, it is only temporary and we need to focus on the bigger picture. I guess this has also helped us with the decision of going to Australia, knowing that we can make a difference while on earth, make a difference in other peoples lives.

I hurt from missing Kyra but I will use it for good, I will use it to make a difference and I will use it to bring glory to God. Time maybe short or it may feel long but we only have one life and I hope you all have a great way of doing yours no matter the circumstances!

Thank you for journeying with me and helping me through this hardship with your prayer!

Blessings to you all!

Our new normal, transitioning and the beginnings of a new path!

As a family we have created a new normal, even though it is still rough at times and we will never be the same after saying good-bye to our Kyra Jean, our family is starting to move forward.

We have decided that we are going to move to Australia, pick up our family and go…

“As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord” Joshua 24:15b NLT

Joel and I met in 2008, during a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in a town called Byron Bay, Australia. After that we always felt that God would lead us back to Byron Bay and shortly after we got married, we returned. However our stay there was cut short as we were pregnant with our eldest son Elijah and we thought that at the time, it was best to come back to Canada to start our parenthood journey. So for the past few years we have wanted to yet again return to Byron Bay but kept feeling like the timing wasn’t right! We felt as though God was telling us to wait.

Through our grief we have really tried to press into God and seek Him and figure out His will on our lives. We knew that God was burning a fire within us and having gone through the toughest year of our lives with Kyra, we feel that it is only the beginning of a new path of the journey we are on! Having Kyra taught us that our lives can be used for so much more if we allow God to show us what that entails…. We are not letting the circumstances on a rainy day change our lives in His sunshine!….. and so for our family it means that we need to return to Australia.

We believe God had put it on our hearts for all these years and it has just been niggling away at both Joel and I, so we feel that now is the time. This has truly not been an easy decision but we really believe that this is where God is leading our family.

We feel that even in our brokenness we can be used!

What does this entail for us? Well we will be returning to join YWAM Byron Bay and are aiming to be there in the first week of July.

-YWAM is an inter-denominational, non-profit Christian, missionary organization. Their main mission statement is “To know God and to make Him known”
Check out the video to know more about YWAM.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NFiDpFT7yc

-Byron Bay has been long known as the spiritual gateway to the nations and with a beautiful lighthouse that is an icon in the town, it is symbolic to one of Jesus’ teaching in the bible.

“You are the light of the world-like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden” Matthew 5:14 NLT

We believe there is a platform in Byron Bay with being situated right at the door step of the middle east and to the rest of the nations.

“Declare His glory among the nations, His marvellous deeds among ALL peoples” 1 Chronicles 16:24

We feel as though this verse is our family’s mission statement. We feel that with YWAM Byron Bay we can answer our calling and share God’s love among the nations by sending teams into the unreached areas.

I know that this news may be hard to grasp for some, some may think that this is a huge leap, some may be excited for us, some scared for us and all sorts of feelings may come in to play with this decision. We feel that life is just too short, there is too many what ifs, regrets, dreams, etc…. We have one focus in mind and that is ETERNITY! What we do on earth matters and we can’t ignore God’s calling on our lives.
God has different callings for ALL of us, no matter what it is…. we pray that you will be able to answer it no matter how big or small it may be!!!

We will be updating this blog regularly with the details of our calling and what it involves. We are also working on a project that God has been giving us details on that we wanted to start in Kyra Jean’s legacy and it will be an active part of this new journey too!

We would love for YOU to be apart of this journey with us, 1 Corinthians 12:27-31 talks about how we are all different parts of the body of Christ and so there are many ways YOU can be a part of this calling:

~Prayer is a huge one!! You can pray for our family, YWAM Byron Bay, the people we will be sharing to, the young students that we hope to guide into their callings, our finances, the “project’ thats underway, etc..
~Partnering with us. Even though this is what we feel called to, it is an unpaid process for us and so if you feel lead to help us financially in this way then there are a few ways you can do this. We will have more details about this on our blog soon.
~Connecting with us! We still want to stay connected with you, we want to pray for you, we want hear about your journeys and be in community with you! We are all God’s children and it takes a village to be a family! And journeying with us means you are our family!

Please share this with those that journeyed with us with Kyra Jean, as we don’t know everyone’s email addresses. Also please feel free to ask us any questions you may have!

We want to thank you again for following our journey and pray blessings upon you ALL!

Reflecting

Here is today, the first day of the new year 2016 and I’m taking a moment to reflect…. Wow, I can’t believe its another year passed! What a year 2015 was!

Just a year ago today, Joel and I were praying into having another baby and so 2015 was our year with Kyra Jean! It has seriously been the most difficult year of my life but a very necessary year! Yes we welcome this new year but a part of me is sad because 2015 was Kyra’s year and I want to hold on to it.

I would say I have learned so much within this year….about myself, my family and friends but most of all about LOVE! To love so much that it hurts! I feel like I got a small teeny tiny glimpse of what God feels over us! I fell so deeply in love with Kyra Jean from the moment we prayed for her a year ago and every moment with her, I just fell more…. Her little life showed me love in a big way, love that was selfless, love that was enduring, love that was long suffering and love that needed to be given to God first!

It is hard for me to look back through this year without tearing up, because I miss Kyra Jean so much! But in the midst of the pain I smile….. I smile because Kyra’s life will live on in me! When I look at Joel being a father to our boys, when I look at Elijah and Isaac with all their amazing quirks, when I see a butterfly in the air….I see Kyra with us! We were blessed to have this little girl chosen by God to be with Him straight away! What an honour for her, she wont have to stand trial on judgement day…. She is pure! To know that, right now, she is where we are striving to be, helps me through the rough days!

A certain pastor said this over losing his own daughter “that we are holding their hands if you really think about it, if we hold onto Jesus then we are holding onto our loved ones that are with Him, they are right there with Him right now”

So reflecting on my 2015 I see that I was blessed and honoured this year to be a mother to my daughter that was chosen to be with Jesus! Of course I hurt and will forever hurt but it has only made me more determined in my life to love more, to seek God more, to be a better version and to do His will. I have found hope in the fact that even one person’s life can make a huge difference…Kyra Jean didn’t breath a breathe here on earth but her little life speaks volumes everyday and has for sure made such a huge difference! I love that she will leave a legacy and hopefully my family and I can do something amazing with it!

For now though it is just one day at a time for us as we are still learning the new normal that we live…

So here is to you, may God touch your life in an extraordinary way this 2016 year! Whatever may come this year, I pray you seek Him in all things! Let Jesus be your first response!

Again I want to thank you all for journeying with us through our difficult year! You are a blessing!

Our journey is not over, it has only taken a different route than what we had originally planned….

Kyra Jean Janzen

We want to share with you, our beautiful baby girl’s story….how God chose us to be parents of a baby that would not survive birth because of a condition called Anencephaly.
Instead of new years resolutions, Joel and I prayed and asked God for one word that we can concentrate on for the year. So for 2015 my word was “TRUST” and Joel’s word was “FOCUS”.
This year we had also started praying about having another child and that this next pregnancy would be an easier one, as my 2 boys pregnancies were very tough on me, with things like terrible morning sickness and pubic bone displacement which is just to name a few! We were also praying for a girl, especially as we were talking about this being my last pregnancy and that 2 boys and a girl would be our “ideal” family!

For some reason we just knew that this pregnancy would be different as it was our first planned pregnancy and so this time around we could pray for our little one from the start, as well as I could begin prenatal vitamins etc earlier! We seemed to know that we were going to have a girl, we felt strongly that God was saying that we would have a daughter and that we just needed to TRUST in God and keep our FOCUS on Him!

And so in our excitement once we had found out we were pregnant, we shared our amazing news… #3 was on the way to join our crazy clan!!

We were starting a new journey to becoming a family of 5!

Shortly after sharing our news, the dreaded morning sickness set in and set in hard! Nothing but sleep would help me get through, our house had to be scent free just so I could get through the day a little easier! We were hopeful that as soon as the 2nd trimester set in this would be behind us just the way it was when I was pregnant with the boys. Yea right! 12 weeks came and went and I was still sick, same with weeks 13, 14, 15 and so on! However the sickness did somewhat ease a little due to the fact that I had to do a complete overhaul with my diet, this was the healthiest I had ever been! This all seemed to just confirm to Joel and I that this would be our last pregnancy, we both felt that we were done and it seemed my body was giving pregnancy a good send off! Any other children from here would be adopted we would say and chuckle to ourselves!

One of things we were looking forward to was our 20 week scan, more so because we were so excited to find out the gender. However we were pretty impatient and so at 17 weeks we went to get a 3D ultrasound done. We just needed confirmation that we were having our baby girl! The ultrasound tech was so lovely about it all and told us “a girl for sure”, the only thing our baby girl wanted to show us! She was so squirmy through the scan and wouldn’t let us get a good look at her, she hid most of herself behind my pelvic bone! Joel and I were just in our bliss and didn’t even think twice about not seeing all of her body. We looked at each other and knew that we were both saying a silent thank you prayer, our dream had come true… 2 boys and now a girl! Perfect!!

The same then happened with my 20 week scan, our baby girl squirmed so much but yet hid herself as much as possible behind my pelvis, the only thing they could confirm was that she indeed was a girl! From all of what they could see, she was perfect and the only thing was that in order to get a clearer view we would then need to come back in to get rescanned. We didn’t think much of it and felt just so blessed that our boys, Elijah and Isaac, were going to have a baby sister!

Joel and I prayed about her name and just loved KYRA JEAN! The name meant “enthroned” and “from the Lord”! At first we wanted to keep her name a secret but we were just so excited and felt that we needed to share it immediately, so we started introducing our baby girl to our loved ones!

With all this happiness and excitement, I had told Joel at one point that it all seemed a little too good to be true.

We had decided to go back at around 24 weeks and get another scan, just to make sure everything was alright and to also get a better picture of our baby, as we didn’t get great profile pictures with the previous scans. The appointment was on a friday afternoon and for some reason that day I was feeling very uneasy. During the 10min appointment the tech said she needed to step out for a moment and then my mind began to race. I came home and told Joel that something was going on and that if it was bad news then the midwives would call straight away.
We were getting the boys ready to have a sleepover for the night, as Joel and I had already planned a “date night” for the evening, when my phone rang…it was the midwives! My heart seemed to stop beating when I answered, of course they wouldn’t say anything over the phone and so we dropped the boys off and raced home to meet the midwives at our house.

I kept hearing the word “TRUST” in my mind and felt like that this moment, right here, right now was going to change our lives forever…but I needed to “TRUST” God!

When someone is about to tell you bad news, you just want them to spit it out, it felt like we were all of a sudden in slow motion! I kept thinking that my baby girl maybe had a disability but we would be okay and we would deal with it, we could take care of her and we would just readjust.
“Anencephaly”, Kyra Jean has Anencephaly! What on earth is that? I’ve never heard of that so how bad can that be? Then the words hit like a knife to my heart! “Your daughter, your baby girl…the top of her head is missing, her skull isn’t fully formed and she has no brain! She will not be able to have life and that she may not even survive to term!”
I don’t even know at that point of what was going through my mind!
“TRUST” kept coming back to me, I knew God was doing something here…I thought that maybe He was creating confusion here and that this diagnoses could be the one that was wrong and that Kyra would be that “miracle baby”. I knew from this moment on our story was no longer our own, we needed to share Kyra with everyone.
That night was such a long night, Joel and I didn’t go on our date but we didn’t want to be at home either as the silence was too loud. So we just got in the car and drove around for a few hours not knowing what to say or do! When we came home, we just went to bed however I couldn’t sleep and so at 3am I posted on facebook a plea for prayer! Sharing with you all the hurt we had just encountered! Asking for help and knowing that through prayer anything was possible!
I just knew in that moment that Kyra’s life was meant for more and that this next part of the journey would be very painful but also very necessary!

When we chose Kyra Jean’s name, we loved it from the moment we came across it and now it seemed so appropriate. We were reminded of the same when we chose the name “Lael” meaning “for the Lord”, the baby we had lost 2 years ago through miscarriage.

A week later we were sent to a children’s hospital where they confirmed the diagnoses, they had struggled for 2 hours to get a clear view of our dear Kyra but they felt they had enough pictures to provide confirmation! With every ultrasound scan they were unable to give us any pictures, so we were thinking that maybe they had got it wrong and that God was hiding her on purpose!
We were then sent to meet up with the genetics team and couldn’t believe how we were treated, you’d think that because they deal with cases like this on a regular basis that they would know how to be compassionate! They were encouraging us to abort, telling us that there was no point in carrying to term and it would be a waste as there was nothing they would be able to do for us. We left the hospital in such anger! How could we ever even ponder the thought of aborting, we knew that God was at work here and that we were indeed going to carry our baby girl as long as we could!

The following week we were blessed to get transferred to a local doctor and also had the added benefit of still having the midwives for support!

Pregnancy was starting to get tough, I was still dealing with nausea and now I had Polyhydramnios (a condition of excessive amniotic fluid which is pretty common in these type of cases), so my belly was growing at a rapid pace. I also started struggling to breathe because of the pressure from my belly, my ribs were bruised and painful…and now I had the added risk from the placenta as it could rupture! I had to be on bed rest due to having false labour at 29 weeks and then again at 31 weeks. I looked like I was full term but yet had at least 9 weeks to go!

Not only was it hard physically, emotionally we were drowning! Joel and I didn’t know what to pray for anymore! We know God can heal and so we were praying hard for healing for Kyra! Asking God for a miracle!

Kyra moved constantly and she seemed to respond to us. We would talk to her and she would squirm and kick, Elijah and Isaac seemed to make her move the most! They would talk and shout at my belly, Elijah even layed his hand on my belly while we prayed for her and she kicked for him so much. They are such amazing little men and I just knew that they would be amazing big brothers, we could picture them protecting her like big brothers should! We would play music for her and lay our hands on my belly and she would respond every time. I loved feeling her move even when her jabs would sometimes hurt a little, Kyra just seemed to know how to make me smile when I was feeling sad! Its amazing how you can love someone so much even though you haven’t met them yet!!

At 32 weeks Joel and I decided to get a 3D ultrasound, we needed to see our baby girl and if she for sure had anencephaly, as well as I needed to have a keepsake! I don’t think it was denial as I was just trying to hold on to what God was telling me…”TRUST”, and so I didn’t know if that meant to trust that He would heal her or if it meant that through all this trust that He has a plan for her condition. So we went back to the place where we got the gender reveal as they were so lovely and compassionate with our situation! As the scan started my heart was beating so fast and it seemed that Kyra was moving to the same beat. This was it, I was terrified but wanted a glimpse into my little girl’s world regardless of what she looked like! Joel and I were praying so hard “God please let us see a full head”, and then there she was our beautiful little girl, we could see what the medical people saw! I tried so hard not to cry as I didn’t want to miss a moment of watching Kyra move and in that moment I felt comforted by Kyra! She moved so graciously all the while showing us her feisty side, I couldn’t help but smile at her!

For the next few days Joel and I wrestled with what we should be praying for now. At this point I was in a lot of pain, couldn’t sleep and struggled even more now to breathe. My high risk pregnancy was getting riskier and so we talked about what it would mean if we induced the pregnancy. We were scared of what it would mean for our family and knew that regardless of when the birth happened, Kyra would not be able to survive. The hardest decision we have ever had to make and so at 33 weeks we induced.

That Wednesday we went to the hospital and I was emotionally broken. The hours seemed to all stream together as we waited for the contractions to get closer. By the afternoon there was not much progress so the doctor had to try a different method and for the first time I got an epidural. The next stage would be intense by ways of pain and because we didn’t know how long it would be, as well as I didn’t want to spend my last moments with Kyra focused on the pain!

Kyra kicked hard through every contraction but she was in breech position. So Joel thought that he would try and talk to her, he layed his hands on my belly and asked her to change position. She then gave him a big thud as if in response and in minutes did a compete 180 and turned head down! We played some music to her, talked to her and prayed for her. I like to think that our spirits were intertwined and hoped she knew what I was thinking as well as all the love I had for her!

By evening the doctor decided to reassess me in the morning as there was no progress and told us to get some rest. Just before midnight we had finally fallen asleep only to be woken moments later by a loud bang, as if a balloon popped….my water broke! I was in such a state of panic as there was so much fluid, literally like a waterfall, and I watched my belly shrink to ¼ of the size it had been! I could now see Kyra’s frame as my belly shrank around her! The nurses rushed to clean me up as the fluid was toxic to me and then I started having panic attacks. I couldn’t breathe so they hooked me up to oxygen and gave me something to help me relax.

Shortly after 2am a weird feeling came across me, a feeling I had only known because I had felt it once before when I had lost Lael, a feeling of emptiness! I knew then that Kyra had passed away and I turned to Joel and told him that she was gone! My heart was so broken as I was so hoping that I would be able to hold her in my arms before she left this world, that I would get to comfort her in those moments and whisper in her ears that I loved her! My little girl was gone and now I still had to push her out! Things started to pick up now and so we called my midwife to come.

This was my first epidural, so I wasn’t in agony as like in my previous pregnancies…and so this time the room seemed so quiet, too quiet! 3 pushes and she was out…. 3:35am Kyra was born! I saw her as soon as she came out and was so in love. They laid her on my chest and I again found myself struggling not to cry as I wanted to be able to look at her and study her! She was so tiny, only weighing 3lbs 8oz, but she was beautiful! Kyra, my little girl was only missing the top of her head but everything else was there, she was perfect to me! As I held her hand and rubbed her soft skin, I just wished for this time with her to never end! She looked like her big brothers, Elijah and Isaac with one exception….. she had these very voluptuous lips!

We got to spend some time with her alone before the photographer came, we then took moulds and prints of her hands and feet. A couple hours passed and then the boys were on their way to come and meet their baby sister! Children don’t see the imperfections or differences that we as adults can see and so we knew they wouldn’t really notice her colour and Kyra had a bonnet on so they wouldn’t be able to see that part either. They had instant love for her and I loved how they looked at her! Elijah just smiled at Kyra, he wanted to hold and touch her. Isaac just wanted to play with her and kept saying in an excited voice “baby, baby”. We had explained to Elijah before she was born that she could only be with us for a short while and that she was going to go live with Jesus. He seemed to understand but still asked “mommy can she come home with us?” I just wished that we could of brought her home! Elijah and Isaac would of been just amazing brothers to their sister!!

A few family members then got to meet her and we did a small dedication for her. Shortly after a couple close friends got to meet her and then we were left on our own to say our final goodbyes to her! All that time with her just went too fast! I couldn’t believe that this was it, all I wanted to do was hold her forever! How could I say goodbye? How could I leave the hospital without my baby girl?

The funeral place was coming to pick her up and so I had to place her down in a basket that they had for her! My heart was wrenching, this was the hardest thing I have ever had to do….to kiss her one more time and to leave my precious baby girl there! She was inside of me for 8 months, I housed her in my womb and now to forever be apart from her was just not fair! I have never cried so much in my life before, coming home was a nightmare!

All that I dreamed of, all that we had dreamed of was just gone! The ideas we had of how it would be going from the 4 of us to 5, what it would be like to change a girls diaper instead of a boys, to shop for girls dresses, to brush her hair, paint our nails together….all of it gone! Our daughter was gone and now what? Now we needed to focus on Elijah and Isaac, to try and be strong for them! To create a “new normal” for us and for the boys!

And so for now its just one day at a time..

I know through all of this that Kyra’s story needed to be shared, that even though she was born quiet into this world, her life story would speak volumes. I know that God wants us to create a legacy for her, that we now need to do something that will make an impact and also bring glory to Him! We are not quite sure what that entails right now but in the meantime here is Kyra’s birth story and here are some pictures of her! We are sharing her beauty with you!

We don’t always understand why certain things happen, they may not seem fair at the time but one thing I have come to know is that God has a plan! Kyra’s life was not in vain and neither was Lael’s! Through our brokeness we feel honoured that God has chosen 2 of our children to join him immediately, they were born into purity. We will for sure be haunted with wonder but the comfort we lean on now is that they are with Jesus! I am a mother of 4, my 2 boys here on earth with me and my 2 girls dancing in heaven!

We want to say a huge THANK YOU to you all for journeying with us and for all of your prayers! Prayer is very powerful and we are so blessed that Kyra got so much prayer! We pray blessings upon you all!

We also want to say a special thanks to:
Niagara Midwifery for being with us through all the births of our babies!

“Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep” for the precious photos of our baby girl!

“Anencephalie-info.org” for providing information that help parents in these circumstances!

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