NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - It was late in the evening, and Emily Long hadn’t felt her baby move for a few hours.
She did all the tricks doctors and baby books suggest.
She lay on her side, eating a chocolate cookie. She drank a glass of orange juice. She woke up her husband, Joel, in bed, and together they placed their hands on her belly, searching for signs of life.
They found nothing.
They were admitted to St. Thomas Midtown in Nashville a couple of hours later. Just after midnight, doctors confirmed the worst - there was no heartbeat.
Emily and Joel Long lost their baby girl on June 5. Afterward, they faced the impossible task of saying goodbye.
In such heartbreaking circumstances, parents may only get a few hours with their stillborn baby.
Hardly enough time.
But, for the Longs, the medical staff at St. Thomas Midtown suggested another way. The hospital owned a Cuddle Cot, a device that when laid underneath the surface of a crib could help cool a baby’s body, preserving it for two or three days longer.
With it, they were given the gift of time with their daughter, and now they want to give other grieving parents those precious extra days, too.
Emily and Joel fell in love slowly, across a decade.
Their relationship began as casual college acquaintances with a mutual best friend; later they became long-distance companions separated by a stretch of Tennessee highway.
Not long after Emily’s 26th birthday, they began dating.
Joel proposed to Emily in New Orleans, buying her a sapphire ring on Royal Street.
They were married in 2012.
They spent their first few years as husband and wife moving between Nashville and Memphis. As many of their friends began talking babies, the Longs did not.
They attended other couples’ celebratory showers and supported some of their closest friends through infertility and miscarriage.
For a time, they thought they might remain the childless couple of their group, by choice.
Then, one day last summer, Joel looked at Emily.
“Do you really want it to be just you and me forever?” he asked. She didn’t. She wanted their two to become a trio.
“And it happened immediately,” Emily smiles.
They told Joel’s parents the weekend they learned Emily was pregnant, his mom’s glass of wine splashing in her excitement.
Emily’s family got the news in November at the family Thanksgiving dinner her grandmother and sisters host each year in Alabama.
The couple didn’t take anything for granted; they had so many friends who had struggled in pregnancy. But as months went by, they became more connected to the idea of being parents.
At 10 weeks, the results of precautionary genetic testing came back normal. Along with it, came the chance to learn the gender of their baby. Emily had the nurse write it on a piece of paper and seal it.
Later that night, the Longs stood at the kitchen counter in their high-rise condo in the Gulch and opened the note together.
“Congratulations on your upcoming baby girl,” it read.
Emily and Joel screamed and they cried, and they texted a photo of the paper to everyone they loved.
“Everybody was so invested in this baby,” Emily says. “They all felt so attached to her.
“That made us even more excited.”
The milestones kept passing.
At 18 weeks, Emily felt the baby move for the first time. From then on, the growing bundle was very active, the baby’s developing limbs pushing on the inside of Emily’s belly.
“We would watch TV and see her go crazy,” Emily says. “And especially after I ate.”
Emily walked every day on the treadmill or along the Gulch greenway through downtown. The Longs had baby showers of their own, filled with onesies and bows.
At the 37-week checkup, everything was great. The baby was probably 6 pounds, the doctor estimated. Emily was not dilated yet. They scheduled an ultrasound for the following week.
It didn’t happen as expected.
Emily was 38 weeks pregnant when they realized late their baby wasn’t moving.
The hospital nurse shook as she searched for movement.
The on-call doctor pulled the ultrasound machine right next to the bed where Emily lay, scared to death.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s no heartbeat.”
“That haunts us daily,” Emily says. “It’s so painful.”
The Longs chose to have a C-Section. Emily asked for the most minimal amount of medication, she wanted to be coherent lying next to Joel.
With the couple’s permission, the doctors turned on Christian music. It was better than the silence, Emily says, especially knowing there wouldn’t be a crying baby.
“The absence of that is so heartbreaking.”
The couple, bleary-eyed and emotionally fatigued, awaited the arrival of their daughter.
She was stillborn at 2:30 a.m.
“You have a beautiful baby girl,” the delivery nurse told them. “She’s amazing.”
Tired and in a state of shock, the Longs were taken to a room to recover.
Nurses said they would bring their daughter to them.
When they first got to their room, the idea made them apprehensive. They were unsure what to expect.
Their baby girl was brought in near dawn.
Emily and Joel put her in an outfit from Joel’s parents, one decorated with pink bunnies that gathered around her feet and came with a little hat.
They took photographs. They spent time just holding her, the three of them together.
Nurses brought in a Cuddle Cot. In the space at the bottom the baby’s crib, they placed the cooling blanket to preserve the body of the little girl.
Over the coming days, it felt natural to be there with their daughter’s body, and it was truly a blessing for all of them.
Friends rushed into town from Memphis. A pastor from church came. Emily’s sister got on a plane from Panama. Her mom came from Pennsylvania. Her dad was there, and Joel’s parents.
The room overflowed with people and flowers. There were many tears, much laughter.
“Everybody wanted to be there with us,” Emily says. “We were just sitting around being together, and it felt so natural she was in the room with us.”
On the second day, they named her.
Helen James Long.
Her first visitor on that second day was Emily’s grandmother, Helen Lowery.
Their daughter’s namesake.
When the 83-year-old matriarch walked into the room, she went right to where Helen James lay and welcomed her to the family.
“That was such a special moment,” Emily beams. “It was a gift she had the opportunity to meet Helen James.”
It could not have happened without the Cuddle Cot, she says.
“It gave all our family and friends the chance to meet her and hold her and love on her and kiss her,” Emily says.
“If they hadn’t had that chance, if she was just taken away, it would have kind of felt like it didn’t happen. It helped with the grieving.”
On the third day, the Longs parted with Helen James.
The time was right.
Family stayed until around mid-afternoon. When they left, Emily and Joel remained.
They held their daughter, looked at her tiny body. They rubbed her hands and feet.
They slow danced with her, kissed her and put her down in her crib.
Then they left, at peace because of the gift of that time.
They want to give that to other parents who suffer such loss.
In memory of their daughter, the Longs raised money. More than $22,000.
With it, they bought and donated four Cuddle Cots to St. Thomas Hospital, two to the location in Midtown where they delivered, one to St. Thomas Rutherford County and one to St. Thomas McMinnville.
The Longs were told the nurses were in tears when they heard the news.
“Without it, we maybe would only have gotten one day with her,” Joel says. “We got three.
“We knew what it meant to us already, and we saw what it meant also to the staff there. They were so gracious.”
Their gift extends across the state. The Longs have also purchased Cuddle Cots for Baptist Women’s Hospital and Germantown Methodist in Memphis.
Both Emily and Joel are from Memphis. Emily was born at Baptist East, now Baptist Women’s. Joel’s family moved there when he was 5 years old.
They grew up there. Emily went to graduate school there.
Memphis is where they began their married life together.
It seems fitting to have a part of Helen James’ memory there, too.
In September, family and friends gathered together once again at the Nashville hospital where Helen James was born.
They took part in a special blessing ceremony for the new Cuddle Cots.
Each one has a plaque that reads:
In Memory of Helen James Long, June 5, 2018. Given to those who now mourn by her loving parents Emily and Joel.
James 1:17
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, with whom there is no change or shifting shadow. ???
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Information from: The Tennessean, http://www.tennessean.com
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