Charlie’s Story: Mother’s Day 2025

It was a crisp autumn weekend in late October. Northeast Ohio is purely splendid on days like these. I was hiking the Ledges Trail in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park with my two sons, William and Alexander and my husband, David.  I was 37 weeks and 6 days pregnant with our third son.

 Videos we captured from that weekend showed the boys cutting dinosaurs out of pink construction paper, dancing with me in our kitchen, scrambling the rock faces in the national park, and shuffling our feet through the leaf-filled trails. 

The video not captured is the one that is etched in our minds forever. 

The boys asked me to feel the baby. I lied on the living room floor, William and Alexander snuggled close, and rubbed my belly.  David was in the garage working on his next carpentry project.  The next thing I know, I was standing at the door to the house.  I told David we’re not feeling the baby.  “If this little guy doesn’t move in the next hour, I’m going to the hospital.”

Our stomachs drop. After no further movement from the baby, we scrambled to get our boys in the car and drop them off at a close family member’s house. We then drove the 25 minutes, of what felt like an eternity, to our hospital. I knew something was very wrong, and I thought he might have died, but hoped …