Losing Jaden: a Story about Grief and Hope
There have been many times where I’ve wanted to give up. I’ve experienced numerous days of loneliness, dread, anxiety, helplessness, and hopelessness… I’ve had to learn how to love myself all over again. My faith has been tested time and time again, but then the sun shines so brightly, directly hitting my skin and I cannot help but grin knowing that my son is shining down on me. My name is Oneisha Lewis and I am a mother to an angel.
On April 8th, 2021 at 2:32pm, my beautiful son, Jaden, made his grand entrance and departure from this world. He was 17 weeks and 3 days old. I was diagnosed with “Cervical insufficiency” or an “Incompetent cervix”, which occurs when weak cervical tissue causes or contributes to premature birth or the loss of an otherwise healthy pregnancy. After booking the ultrasound for my gender reveal, I went into the CHUM hospital on April 7th, 2021, for a second opinion after noticing a large amount of blood loss and a specific pain that did not feel like your average period cramp.
My gynaecologist would not listen to me after I let him know numerous times that I was experiencing a lot of pain; He told me that the pain I was experiencing was normal but I knew it in my heart that it wasn’t. Come to find out that I was actually having contractions the entire time. My cervix had opened and Jaden was already head down and ready to come out.
The doctor at the CHUM let me know that this situation was, in fact, preventable and that my doctor should have caught that I had an incompetent cervix around 12 weeks into pregnancy with Jaden. She told me that I would have had to give birth to my baby in the morning, and that he wouldn’t have made it and if he were inside of me any longer. My own life was also at risk.
I received the news alone, as my boyfriend was not able to accompany me at first because of the COVID-19 regulations.
Shortly after being placed into a birthing room to prepare myself to give birth to my baby boy, the nurse said that my boyfriend could come only because of the situation at hand. I was placed in a room where everyone’s living baby was crying.. but I didn’t get the chance to hear my baby cry… all I heard was silence and tears. I didn’t know his gender until he was given to me, but I knew in my heart that he was a boy. While waiting to find out the gender, I would call the baby “Little Bean or Beanie”.
My boyfriend and I had chosen name a month prior and agreed that if our baby was a boy, “Jaden” was the perfect name. My baby had all his fingers and all his toes. He had a beautiful smile on his face. I’ll never forget how the sun had shined so brightly into the room as if heaven’s gates were literally welcoming him. It was such a beautiful day. When I held Jaden, I couldn’t even cry at first, I just told him how much we ALL loved him, how much I wanted him, how much I had prepared for him, how much of a good life we would have had together and how I will make him proud! I quietly said to myself, “Little Bean Foundation”. I went into the hospital thinking everything was going to be okay but instead, I left the hospital without my baby and carrying a box of his things…
To this day, I’m so confident that he had a few minutes of air before he passed. He left this world with a strong heartbeat and a smile on his face. When it happened, I felt like I was the only one in the world who had lost a child, although, I knew that wasn’t the case. Would you believe that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in a miscarriage? How did I become a part of the statistic?
I decided to do something about it by creating a foundation in honour of my son named the “Little Bean Foundation”, in order to help educate women and men on their bodies, how to advocate for themselves, how to find ways to glow through their grief, bring awareness to pregnancy and infant loss and to allocate funds to alleviate some of the burden that comes after the loss of a child. I’ve written 3 books on grief since Jaden passed and became a bereavement Doula shortly after. None of this would have been possible if I hadn’t experienced this loss.
Am I healed? Far from it. As of today, I am still trying to appreciate all that life has to offer and all that I have to offer life. I am also here taking time to be gentle to myself during the holidays as this is the second Christmas that I have spent without my son. This is not only the second Christmas without him, this is how the rest of my life will be… counting the years instead of spending the years with him. This is grief. This is life after loss. This is the agony that comes along with losing a child. But I have also acquired so much strength, so much knowledge, so much gratitude, so much appreciation, so much love, so much support and I have honoured my baby in so many ways. Therefore, this is just the beginning.
