Hope in the Mourning

My husband and I had been married five years when we decided to start trying for a baby. We got pregnant right away. At the time, we were living in a tiny 500 sq. ft. cabin on a private lake in Washington State, and life felt perfect. At 41+ weeks, my water broke. I’ll never forget my husband smelling the carpet because he didn’t believe me and wanted to be sure it wasn’t just pee. We headed to the hospital, labored for hours, and finally met our baby girl—Hazel Rose. Her Apgar scores were perfect. She was perfect. We brought her home the next day, and the only concern was a slightly elevated bilirubin level. But overnight, something changed. Hazel wasn’t feeding well, and she kept arching her back. We thought it was gas. At one point, we prayed over her and she settled. But in the morning light, she looked pale—and we both knew something was wrong. When we arrived at the hospital, the doctor took one look at her—and Hazel stopped breathing. My world froze. A nurse grabbed me, pulled me down the hall, and rushed me into a room where seven people were working on my tiny girl. That moment changed everything. For the next month, we lived day and night in the Seattle Swedish NICU. When we finally left, we had no answers. All we knew was that Hazel had global brain damage, and her future looked grim. Doctors didn’t believe she would survive, but they couldn’t tell us why. Hazel’s first year is a blur of therapy, EEGs, appointments, tears, and very little hope. We didn’t know if she would ever talk, walk, sit, or even roll over. As her first birthday approached, I desperately wanted a way to explain to other kids why Hazel