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 It was a beautiful, hot, sunny day in September when our daughter
Jamie was born. We had waited for this day for almost 4 ½ years. It was
a dream pregnancy, labour and delivery. We had our perfect, gorgeous
little girl at last. She was just so pretty it was hard to take your
eyes off of her. I had so many people comment on how alert she was, even
from the very beginning she was always looking around, taking it all in.
Jamie was also a very smiley and very chatty baby, she loved to have
little “talks” with her father, whether they were on the change table,
floor or on the couch.
We realized at around 1 month that something seemed to be wrong, she
was just too floppy, we thought she was lazy. Of course we refused to
believe that something may be wrong with her, but at 2 months our family
doctor noticed her decreased muscle tone and sent us to a pediatrician.
Jamie was tested for SMA and DNA results confirmed the diagnosis. We
had a wait for the test results but we knew what the results were going
to be before the doctor even told us.
The 4 months and 25 days that Jamie was with us were both the best
and the worst time of our lives. We loved our little girl so much and
had waited so long for her and we knew that she would be lucky to make
it to 2 years. It was so hard to live with that fact. We had noticed her
going downhill for a little while before she died, but it all came so
fast. One morning, after sleeping through the night, she woke up and she
had problems feeding. As I watched her, her colour deteriorated and we
rushed her to the hospital. They took us down to the Hospital for Sick
Children in Toronto. After ruling out bacteria and viruses for the
causes of her collapsed lungs, it was evident that SMA had weakened her
to the point where she couldn’t breathe on her own. We had to make the
most heart-wrenching decision a parent could ever have to make. On
Sunday February 1, 2004 Jamie peacefully slipped away in our arms
surrounded by her grandparents.
We are so grateful to have had our little angel with us, even for
such a short time. She was truly a blessing and had taught us so much
about ourselves, about life and about death. We have her pictures all
around our house and I can’t even count the number of times that I think
of her every day, even so, she was just so precious and will live
forever in our hearts until we can all be together again.
SMA may have stolen our daughter, but we still have pictures, videos
and especially memories, and that can’t be taken from us!
Krista and Janne Haapalainen |
