![]() In the end, though, Dad and I decided there was a better way to preserve your space at home. We struggled to find a way to keep it yours - we even hired an architect to design an extra bedroom for Baby Brother upstairs. I think, “Havi, I know you understand why your baby brother will move into your room. I rock back and forth and commune with Havi about her baby brother’s arrival. Courtesy Myra SackĪs I watch Kaia run off, my thoughts turn to her absent big sister. You’ve already shared love with big sister Havi.” Our family before Havi's passing, with Kaia as a baby. At the same time, know for sure that our love for you will also stretch as our family grows. What I want to say, though, is: “Kaia, I hope that you’ll understand why our attention will be stretched after he joins our family. Before I can reply, she’s already run off to find her doll baby to push in her stroller. “Maybe nap together?” Kaia adds, staring up at me with her irresistible big brown eyes. Kaia, who turned 2 at the end of June, has been telling us that she is going to share her stuffed doggie with him, put Band-Aids on his boo-boos and even give him milk. I’m musing about Havi and Kaia’s baby brother, who is due to arrive soon. The brown, dry grass looks flammable, more like straw really, and the pond is practically dried up. I am walking slowly around Jamaica Pond, just a quarter of a mile from our home in Jamaica Plain, Mass. Two years, four months and sixteen days after she was placed on my chest in the labor and delivery room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. We lost our firstborn daughter, Havi Lev Goldstein, on Jan. That’s why Havi’s brilliant father decided to enliven her space with bold colors and beckoning images of the natural world we hoped they’d stimulate babbling or crawling. But we were worried about her development. At her first birthday we were still hopeful and hadn’t gotten to that deepest darkest place in our minds and hearts. That was the time we started to sense Havi having developmental delays that eventually led to her fatal Tay-Sachs diagnosis. We finally removed the last of the decorative stickers that Matt had put up when Havi was just about a year old. I hadn’t realized how painful it would be to physically remove them all. A sticker collage of memories and shattered hopes and dreams. I watched Matt stretch for the ones by the ceiling, then over to the large sticker of the spreading tree that hung above Havi’s crib, and on to the engaging chipmunk stuck just above her changing table. The night before, I had stood on my tippy-toes peeling dozens of sparkly multicolored polka dots off the wall in Havi’s bedroom. Courtesy Myra SackĪs I walked downstairs, I noticed an errant polka dot sticker stuck to the side of my sock. My firstborn child, Havi, was diagnosed with a fatal disease, Tay-Sachs. Then I bent down over my 39-week pregnant belly, lifted Havi’s blankets and walked slowly out of the room. Instead, Matt gently placed them on the floor and we embraced. I turned toward my husband with arms extended to take the blankets. His voice brought me back to the couch where I sat - now filling the space where Havi’s crib once stood. “Can you bring these blankets downstairs, love?” my husband asked me after a while. Matt looked at the tag: “3T.” Wordlessly we acknowledged the obvious: Havi had never grown to size 3T. ![]()
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