Gabriel Isaac Snyder

Our friends Brent and Yvonne just lost a baby boy. Y was six and a half months pregnant. She ended up delivering Gabriel on March 10 at St. David's. His funeral was the following Saturday, and we were crushed to miss it (we were in Florida). We went over to their house yesterday afternoon and they told us what all had happened from the night before she was induced. We saw his tiny, tiny footprints (I've never seen anything so small or perfect or heartbreaking), the urn where they're keeping his ashes (a beautiful porcelain figure of a boy in a dressing gown holding a teddy bear, standing on a round wooden base under which is inscribed, "Our beloved son, Gabriel Isaac Snyder, March 10, 2008"), and the program from the mass they had for him. They held him for two and a half hours after he was born. He was nine inches long and weighed 1.3 pounds. Some of that weight came from the fluid he'd retained. He had dark hair--he would have looked more like Y's side of the family.

I'm so sad for our friends and especially for Yvonne. What will this do to her? They have a son who's almost four and they had a miscarriage a year ago. Right now they feel like this is it for them. Maybe they'll feel differently once some time has passed, I don't know.

Yvonne said she felt a sense of peace once she got home from the hospital . . . and then her milk came in. A whole new hell.

I held Eamon tight last night, in shock that he even exists.