My fiance and I found out I was pregnant on March 25th. We were so excited about the news and so were both of our families. I found great joy in looking at baby clothes, thumbing through name books, reading the mommy-to-be books, and journaling about my pregnancy.

One day, while doing laundry at my neighborhood laundromat with my fiance, I started bleeding. We quickly went to the ER to find that the amniotic sac had torn from the uterin wall a little. We were told that this could mean one of two things: Something was wrong with the baby or the baby was just growing very quickly. Since there was a strong heartbeat of 141 bpm we had a 1 in 5 chance of miscarriage. I was placed in a state of “threatened miscarriage” and put on bed rest.

We had planned on visiting family that week in Colorado so, after speaking with a doctor, we left for Denver for my spring break. While there we decided to go to the ER and check up on the baby (it had been a week since we started having problems). We found out that we were 9 weeks along. The baby still had a strong heartbeat of 141 bpm and it appeared that the bleeding was slowing down. We went home with an ultrasound picture that day and decided to name the baby Kaden (which is Irish for “fighter”).

We were so happy about the news! That day we went out with my future sister-in-law to Babies R Us and registered for things. We spent several joyous hours walking through the store aisle by aisle picking out things for Kaden. We chose to go with a jungle theme in the nursery and called him/her our “little monkey”.

Two days later we were preparing to drive out to the family’s farm when I started having severe pain in my abdomin. A trip to the bathroom produced tissue and a mad scramble to get to the ER. Within an hour of arriving at the hospital we were told that we had miscarried and passed our baby naturally. I cried for 3 days.

Kaden was born a butterfly on April 21, 2011 at 9 weeks and 2 days.