A father's story of love, loss and hope...

Our path to creating a family began with loss. My wife and I lost two pregnancies before our daughter made it to term in the Turks and Caicos. The day of her arrival was January 1st 2016, New Year’s Day. Excited and anxious, upon arriving at the hospital we were told the OBGYN was on call that day. Everything seemed normal at first, but about two hours in my wife began feeling sharp pains separate from the contractions. We relayed it to the nurse and asked if the doctor was going to come in. She decided it was not necessary. Two more hours went by with more sharp pains and the doctor still wouldn’t come. Finally my wife Lucy shot up out of bed, screamed and then was barely conscious. Our daughter Mary’s stats on the doppler started dropping quickly. The doctor finally came and promptly ordered the surgery team to come in. After another hour went by they finally wheeled Lucy in for surgery. For what seemed like hours I waited in a dark hallway to hear my daughter’s cries. They never came. The anaesthetist finally came out to tell me our daughter, Mary, had passed and my wife was clinging to life. The sharp pains had been a uterine rupture. Lucy did recover physically but it took a great toll on us emotionally. We decided to move back to where I was born and raised in western Canada. 

Our next try at having a child was twins, but unfortunately during the first scan they couldn’t find a heartbeat on either child. More pain and heartbreak, losing 2 more of our children.

We decided to try one last time. Our son Otto was born premature at only 26 weeks and fit in the palm of my hand. We were air transferred to Vancouver’s Children’s Hospital where we spent 121 days in the NICU. He had two major surgeries and needed to be revived twice. It was an emotional roller coaster, filled with ups and downs, but eventually we made it home with our baby in our arms, and we now have a healthy and happy toddler.

It took a long time to be able to relive everything mentally that happened to us over the course of a decade, trying to make our family whole, but I finally put pen to paper hoping our journey might help others. I published my book "We Did It" documenting our journey, a tribute to our story of love, loss and hope, in honour of all my children. 

Nathan, a grieving and loving father.