The night moving into that day felt heavy from the very beginning.

There was so much anticipation around leaving Ethan’s body that day. I had been just about cleared to go home, and they were just doing a few final things to make sure everything looked good for me medically. Physically, I was ready to be discharged.

But nothing in me was ready to leave Ethan.

The plan had been for Ethan’s body to be picked up around the same time we were leaving, so that in some way, we would both leave together.

Throughout the night and into the next morning, I probably took another hundred pictures of him. I knew saying goodbye to him would be hard, but I really had no idea the kind of pain that was coming.

It was definitely a different side of me than a lot of the medical staff had seen before. This was not just a patient being discharged. This was a mom about to leave her baby. And even though I knew it was his body and that Ethan was no longer there, it was still everything I had known of him and everything that was left to me on this side of heaven.

At some point that morning, it was just me and him for a little while.

I talked to him and told him all the things I could possibly want to say. I told him how much he had changed and impacted my life and our family’s life. I brought my Bible with me because I wanted to put his handprint in it. I wanted that moment, just the two of us. Ben captured some photos and videos of me talking to him, and I have watched those back more times than I can count.

Dr. K was not there that day, so one of her partners came by to check on me and make sure I was ready to be discharged. She could see that I was having a hard time emotionally with the thought of leaving Ethan, and she gently offered to let me stay another day if I needed to.

But there was really nothing medically necessary keeping me there.

And deep down, I knew I would never actually be ready to leave him. Staying another day would not change that.

I was already starting to see small changes in Ethan’s body. Even with the cooling bassinet, time was still moving forward. And I knew in my heart that I wanted to remember him as he was in those moments not watch those changes continue.

As much as I wanted more time, I also knew this was the way I wanted to hold onto him.

My parents arrived with Austin that morning, and we spent a little bit of time together while everything was still unfolding. We were waiting on paperwork, discharge steps, and trying to understand what the rest of the day would look like.

We began packing up some of our things and sending a few items down to the car.

The day itself felt strange in the way hospitals do when a lot is happening at once, but no one really seems to know exactly when or how it is all going to come together. Different staff came in and out. There were conversations with doctors, discharge questions, a social worker, and even a lactation consultant helping me process the fact that my milk had come in and what options with what to do about that. There was also the question of making sure I was mentally and emotionally okay enough to go home and handle all of that.

The hospital offers a celebration meal, and we had not had a chance to do it yet. So we chose to have it as a lunch before leaving the hospital.

With Austin, we had done the same thing having that meal together before going home and somehow it felt meaningful to do that again.

So we ordered lunch and sat together as a family: my parents, Austin, Ethan, me, and Ben.

Even in the heaviness of everything, it felt important to pause and have that time together.

It was during that lunch that the labor and delivery charge nurse came in and really clarified things for us.

She explained that things would not happen quite the way we had originally thought. The funeral home would come to the suite, but the hospital would also need to be involved at that same time to complete the necessary paperwork and formally transfer Ethan’s care. It would not be something where we could all leave together the way we had imagined.

She told us she had already called the funeral home before coming up, and that we were likely looking at about two hours.

That felt so surreal.

Two hours.

It’s strange how time can suddenly feel so small when you realize what it holds.

No matter how much time someone gives you, it will never be enough.

After that conversation, everything shifted.

I knew there were a few last things I wanted to do with Ethan before we said goodbye.

One of those was to give him one last bath.

So we cleaned him up slowly and spent that time with him together…just Ben and me…knowing these were some of our final moments with him.

We also gave him a little haircut his first haircut. I wanted to keep some of his hair because he had such an incredible amount of it. It was harder than I expected, but it felt important to have that small remembrance of him.

There was something deeply painful about trying to care for his little body, to wrap him up and get him clean and ready, while also seeing how broken his body was.

As his mom, every instinct in me wanted to fix it. To make it better. To somehow take it all away so he could stay. You look at your baby and think there has to be something more you can do something you’re missing, something that could change the outcome.

But there wasn’t.

And in the middle of that helplessness, there was also this quiet, steady knowing in my heart that this was never the life he was meant to live here.

Not because he wasn’t wanted.

Not because he wasn’t loved.

But because God had something different for him.

And somehow, both of those things existed at the same time

the deep ache of wanting him healed and whole in my arms…

and the surrender of knowing he was already made whole in a way I could not give him.

Not long after that, everything began to move quickly.

The funeral home arrived, and Sally, the labor and delivery nurse, came in and told us they were ready whenever we were. The woman from the funeral home was very kind. I cannot remember her name now, but I remember she told us to take our time.

But we already knew there was not enough time in the world.

My dad prayed one last prayer over all of us together.

Ben and I took a few quiet moments to say goodbye to Ethan before bringing him out.

Then we walked him out, holding onto the last few moments that we had with him, knowing what was waiting just outside that room.

After I handed Ethan over and kissed him one more time, everything in me broke.

As she turned to walk out the door, my entire body screamed to go after him to take him back, to not let him go. The weight of handing my baby over was more than I could bear.

My legs felt weak beneath me, like they were going to give out at any second. My body wanted to crumble to the ground.

I grabbed onto my dad. Part of me needed something to hold me up because I physically could not stand under the weight of that moment.

And part of me needed him to hold me back.

Because everything in me wanted to run down that hallway and bring my baby back.

And in that moment, the only thing stronger than my instinct to hold onto him…

was the reality that I had to let him go.

I knew that was the last time I would ever see Ethan this side of heaven.

I couldn’t watch.

Ben watched her walk down the hallway until he couldn’t see them anymore.

Then came another kind of pain I pray no mother ever has to experience, leaving the hospital without her baby.

My heart was shattered, but it was almost too much to fully process in that moment. My dad handed me a small weighted cow he had made for me that weighed three pounds, eight ounces, so I would have something to carry out of the hospital with me. Nothing could replace Ethan, but it made just enough of a difference to get me through those first steps.

We stayed in the room a little while longer so I could gather enough of myself to make it to the car. I tried to hold it together as I was wheeled down the hallway, but once I got to the car, I broke.

I sobbed because my baby was gone.

The drive home felt quiet in a way I had never experienced before.

Walking into our house with empty arms was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced.

I went to bed holding the blanket we had used with Ethan at the hospital and clung to that small weighted cow. Nothing could calm the ache or replace him, but I held onto both and tried to steady myself enough to just make it through.

God gave Ethan to us for a season and for a purpose.

And even though my heart still feels shattered, I know this is not the end of his story….

Now the hard work begins the work of choosing gratitude, choosing thankfulness for the time we were given, even while everything in me longs for more. The work of trusting God in the middle of heartbreak. The work of living with arms that ache to hold him again.

This part of the story does not end happily.

But it is not the end.