Our Story

Ryan and I have what my family likes to call a "movie-like" love story.  We started off as best friends who didn't want to admit how much we liked each other, but eventually love won, and we admitted to ourselves that we didn't want to be "just friends".  After a year and a half or so of courting and dating, Ryan proposed to me a few days before Christmas.  We were married a year and a half later, in July 2012, in Detroit, Michigan.  It was the happiest day of my life (also probably the most chaotic, as anyone who has planned a wedding will understand).  We lived in Monroe for two years, then Ryan had a shift in his job that led us to Jackson, Michigan, where we currently reside with our cat, Mike.  

In July 2014, we discovered we were pregnant with our first child.  I was so nervous and excited, I didn't even know what to think!  We had a wonderful pregnancy, and were overjoyed to find out our little baby was a boy.  We quickly decided to name him Emmett Austin, because as I kept saying to Ryan, "I just feel like that is supposed to be his name!" Strength and magnificent.

On Tuesday, February 24, 2015, at a routine prenatal appointment with our midwife, we were horrified to discover our baby's heartbeat had stopped sometime late Monday evening or early Tuesday morning.  There was no explanation, no answers.  We experienced a perfect pregnancy…felt baby moving everyday, these giant kicks and wiggles, and occasionally the hiccups that seemed to annoy him (yeah, yeah, everyone tells me they don't bother him, but they did).  We went to the hospital, all the while praying for a miracle, that if it be in God's will to raise our baby, that He would do it swiftly, and if it not, that the process would be as quick as possible.  As we began the process of induction, I found myself holding onto a final thread of hope, that maybe somehow I would feel my sweet boy turning inside of me, pounding his tiny fist against my body, kicking his tiny feet into my bruised ribs (he had run out of room in there by the end of my pregnancy, and gave me a decently bruised rib).  Instead, at 6:41 AM, my water broke, and by 6:45 AM, my body was taking over.  Throughout my pregnancy I had really looked forward to a natural birth without medicine, but under these circumstances, my midwife encouraged me to get an epidural.  By the time things started happening, my baby was on his way out, and I was unable to receive anything.  At 7:23 AM, my perfect baby boy, Emmett Austin Langford, silently entered this world.  I remember the pain fading away as soon as I saw his full head of dark wavy hair, and I remember forgetting for a few moments that my baby wasn't actually alive.  The pain of labor and delivery faded away, and I exclaimed, "My baby!"  I started to smile, then I felt my heart break all over again as I remembered that he was gone.

We didn't get the miracle we hoped for, but we've somehow found a way to trust God.  I still remember getting to the hospital and Ryan praying, "God, if this doesn't turn out the way we hope for, we know you are still good, you are still faithful, and we will still praise you."  Everyday is a constant battle, a constant re-choosing to love Him and trust Him.  The morning of Emmett's funeral, I woke up and told Ryan, "I don't understand why this is happening to us.  I am so heartbroken, so angry…but somehow, I still trust God."

This blog is a place where I come to share this journey.  I don't want to live swallowed up in pain, and I know my child counts, he has a purpose, and his life can still touch the world, even though it didn't continue outside of my womb.