Okay, I’m a bad contest-runner. It was probably a terrible time of the semester for me to attempt to DO A contest, BUT it has all worked out. I did have one entry, and it was a great one, so by default they are my totally awesome and deserving winner!
Here’s the entry:
Why Carol Loves Josephyne Lila
My daughter’s name is Josephyne Lila, and I am Carol, and here is our story of love.
My husband and I started to try for babies back in 2006. We got pregnant very quickly, my first positive pregnancy test was on Mother’s Day in May of 2008. In July, I had some spotting so I went to the Dr. and found out there were twins in there! How exciting, first pregnancy, and twins straight out of the gate. We had bought a trip to Aruba before we got pregnant, and we decided to make this trip a “babymoon.”
Aruba was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. Every breathtaking picture I had seen of a white beach and crystalline waters did not even rate with how amazing Aruba looks in person. We were there for two days. On the third day I woke up, planning on a shopping trip in town, when my waters broke. We rushed to the hospital and they confirmed that one of our babies was in trouble.
While my husband went back to get our things from the hotel, I lied on the gurney in labor and delivery, listening to the sounds of another baby being born in the room next to mine, wondering if I would ever get to hear my own babies being born. It was such a lonely feeling, being so far away from my family, my friends, and my home while such an awful thing was happening in my life. I thought of my grandmother, Lila, and how she would stroke my hair and tell me the sun will come up tomorrow no matter what and that everything will be fine. But the tears had to come and I lay there waiting for what would happen next, and I cried and cried. After a while, I looked up, and there was the nurse who had seen to me when I first came in. She walked silently over to the bed, took my hand in hers, and said to me “Now, now child, don’t cry. You are not alone, dear, He is with you right now and always.” Her name was Josephine and she was from Surinam. Her husband was still in Surinam waiting to immigrate to Aruba to be with her and she had been waiting for him for a year. All of her family was in Surinam. And she was there in Aruba alone. With me, and my babies. I felt calm after she told me this and hung on, waiting for the air ambulance to pass Hurricane Eduardo and come rescue me and my husband and my babies.
The plane came almost 48 hours later. Nurse Josephine and the other wonderful people at the hospital hugged me and wished us the best as we left the hospital. We boarded and took off, landing at 1 am in Cancun for fuel. As we took off to head for Dallas, and strange sensation started to wrack the plane, a whining sound began to grow louder, and I lay there in that plane listening. And then I heard it, a loud bang, and another loud bang. The plane spun out of control, full of fuel, at the end of the runway on the edge of Mexico’s rainforests, as the landing gear tires blew out on takeoff. We skidded to a stop, the only sound was me crying out for my God and the frogs croaking in the rainforest. We should have died there, sitting on all of that fuel. But we did not. We made it.
Hours later, in another plane, we landed at Dallas Love Field. I was never so glad to smell our Dallas smog or feel the potholes of Mockingbird Lane through the floor of the ambulance as I was that day. I was delivered with my babies to Baylor University Medical Center around 4 o’clock on Sunday, August 27, 2006. And that evening, I gave birth to my little son at 18 weeks. That little amazing guy who hung on that whole time so we could make it home before he came. He lived for an hour and passed away shortly before I awoke from anesthesia. He was buried next to my Grandmother Lila at the Old Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Iuka, MS.
I fought long and hard for almost 4 more months to keep my other baby where she needed to be. I cried, I prayed, I thought, I read. I lived at the hospital. My co-workers brought food for my husband to eat and he cleaned the house and did laundry and went to work and drove 2 hours round trip every day to see me. My parents, sister, and mother in law, and my best friend all kept me from being lonely and brought me whatever I was craving to eat. And they took me for wheel chair rides outside on good days. The nurses brought me cocoa and Sudoku puzzles and my doctor came by every day to make sure I was doing okay. I was famous, all of the OB residents and student nurses at the hospital knew me as “The Aruba Lady”.
On December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day of 2006, my little Josephyne Lila was born to me, her daddy, and a bunch of grandparents and friends who had spent months on the edge of their seats hoping and waiting to meet her. She was tiny but perfect. She spent 10 days in the NICU and was home by Christmas. I love this little person so much, so fiercely, even more-so than I ever could have imagined. Every day, as much as I miss her brother, my heart sings out with happiness when she says “I LOVE YOU Mommy!” And we have an AMAZING story to tell her boyfriends when she starts dating.
This little child represents everything I know about love.
– Stay tuned for their session!!
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6 Comments
With a story like that, she was a shoe-in anyway! Congrats to Carol! 🙂
What an amazing story. She definitely deserves to win.
what an incredible story!! i won’t let my wife read it though, she is terrified of flying as it is, and reading this would give her a reason to never fly again 😉 congratulations to her!
have a rad weekend brandi!
what an incredible story!! i won’t let my wife read it though, she is terrified of flying as it is, and reading this would give her a reason to never fly again 😉 congratulations to her!
have a rad weekend brandi!
what an incredible story!! i won’t let my wife read it though, she is terrified of flying as it is, and reading this would give her a reason to never fly again 😉 congratulations to her!
have a rad weekend brandi!
These are such beautiful and inspiring words. Her story sure makes her deserving of a photo session by Brandi!