Real Answers

Noah is our first child. No parents could have been more excited than us to find out that he was on the way. We thanked God every night for blessing us with this precious life now growing inside me. Here was the child we had always dreamed of and planned for!

When kidney problems arose and I had to be hospitalized we were relieved to hear the doctor's assurances that our baby was safe and well. Once again we thanked God for His care. Nothing could have prepared us for the words that came just 2 days later, "I am sorry. We couldn't find a heartbeat. He is gone."

Has anyone ever felt pain like this before? How can I go on? Those first few weeks we were carried by the prayers of loved ones. I swear that God had to breathe for me - and He did. In the midst of a sadness more intense than I thought possible He put His arms around us and gave us peace.

On June 3rd, 1999 our beautiful baby boy was stillborn. We named him Noah William Hoos. I have never loved anyone so instantly and so completely.

Our lives have been profoundly changed by our Noah. We will never forget him nor will we ever stop missing him. We thank God every night for blessing us with such a precious life - if only for a short time.

I was in my sixth month when we realized that there was a problem with my kidney. I was admitted to hospital on May 24th. The doctors could not figure out exactly what was wrong with me, but it did not seem that serious and they were not concerned about the baby. He was doing great = a strong, healthy little man!

What they had no way of knowing was that my left kidney (which had a congenital deformity) was bleeding profusely (I ended up needing 7 units of blood). Since all the blood pooled in the kidney I didn't seem to be losing that much. The kidney was also expanding rapidly, putting pressure on all the other organs and on my uterus.

On May 26th we listened to Noah's heartbeat at 9:30am; by the 10:00am ultrasound he was gone.

Either the loss of blood or the pressure killed him and it very nearly killed me. It took 2 more days to figure out exactly what was wrong; by then I had to be on oxygen constantly as my lungs were slowly being squeezed. They finally removed the kidney which by then was 8 times normal size. There is no way of knowing what started the bleeding, but it was probably inevitable - bound to happen at some point in time.