My son

NSQuintana · April 2012

Today is the two year anniversary of the day my son was born. Unfortunately it was also the day he died. He was born prematurely, and went through a difficult pregnancy, so his lungs were not developed enough to breath upon delivery. He lived just shy of a hour and died in my arms. Moving on with life in general after such an occurance seemed inconceivable. I gained weight, was always depressed and (I'm ashamed to say) dreamt of killing myself on a daily basis.

Then one day I decided that I didn't want to live that way anymore. I started dieting and exercising. The pounds started falling off and I was feeling good about my outward appearance for the first time in years.

Then my wife got pregnant again and it wasn't long before the same complications that resulted in my sons death started to re-occure with this pregnancy. The fear and dread we felt for the unknown future of this child was overwhelming. And once again I started turning to food as a cure all for feeling better. I ended up gaining around 30 pounds over a six month period and reaching an all time high for my weight. I'm extremely glad to say that although my daughter did get delivered early via c-section and had to stay in an NICU for over 7 weeks. This is her today! She and my son are the reasons I'm trying again to lose weight and live healthy.

I'm not totally sure why I'm writing this post. I guess I just wanted to honor the memory of my little boy and share it with others. Also maybe because there have been a few members of MFP have approached me recently due to the picture on my ticker, so I'm sure there are similar stories out there to mine and I know how hard it is to talk about.

Happy birthday Aidan!

God bless you and your new family! Thank you for sharing your story. It's very touching.