Baby Alex - Our Angel in Heaven

To our dear friends...

This is the hardest thing I have ever had to write. And I sit here and type it with what I know is surely a broken heart, for it hurts too much not to be so.

Alex Gerard, our beautiful baby boy, was born sleeping into the world on May 11, 2005, at 11:38pm. He never took a breath, never cried, never was able to look in our eyes and see how much we loved him. But he was as much our son as if he had lived for years and years. We were able to hold him and kiss him and tell him everything we feel in our hearts before we had to say goodbye and let him return to heaven. He was beautiful to us.

Unfortunately, for many reasons, Samuel was never able to see his baby brother. That is something that will sadden us forever. We know that they share a brotherly love that defies all logic. Over the past months we have seen Sam move from a defiant refusal to accept a baby into our lives to a genuine love for “Baby Alex.” He would pat my belly and talk to Baby Alex. He would tell us all the things he wanted to do with Baby Alex. Now he just says, “I want Baby Alex to come back.” We are at a loss as to how to make him understand something that we don’t understand ourselves.

We have no answers as to why this happened to our family. We may never have any answers. We are relying on faith that we will someday find peace and see our angel again in heaven.

We love you all, and appreciate your love and support in return, but we are not equipped to do much more than cry right now. We wish we could tell you that we will make it through this. But we’re not even sure we will make it through today. We are taking it moment by moment right now and we can only ask that our friends and family understand that we not only lost our baby, but we lost a piece of our lives and our future. All those hopes and dreams we had are gone now and there is no way to ever get them back. We will simply be trying to survive for a very long time.

It may be presumptuous, but we request that no flowers be sent at this time. They are just too painful to look at. If you are so inclined to remember Alex, we would appreciate donations made to Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital so that they can continue working to help children be healthy and happy. There is an online donation form at:
https://secure.apk.net/uhhs/donations.html
or you can send donations to:
Department of Development
University Hospitals of Cleveland
11100 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44106-5062

We love you all. And we wish you peace, joy, love, and happiness with your families. Those of you with children, hug your little ones tight (no matter how old they may be) and know how incredibly blessed you are to have that little piece of heaven bless your life.

Love,
Stephen, Catherine/Kate aka samsmom527, and Samuel C