Her Stillbirth Story is Making

Moms Everywhere Beg for the

Crying 3AM Wake-up Call. 

Her pain has inspired moms around the world to cherish moments they never would’ve expected…

Natalie Morgan went to sleep one evening to the

rhythmic kick of her unborn baby inside of her.

But the next morning, she jolted up to the

realization that something was dead wrong.

Her daughter, Eleanor Josephine, was showing no

signs of life within her womb. With no heartbeat on 

the home doppler, her heart sank to the depths of 

her stomach."

I knew it. I just knew. I didn't want to know.....I wanted to be mistaken, but I knew".

 

said.

She prayed relentlessly with her husband Brian the 

whole way to the hospital, but once they arrived, 

their worst nightmare was realized—Eleanor was 

dead. #NO#!!!. 

After Natalie delivered her stillborn daughter, she

took to her keyboard to lay out the most painful,

yet purposeful, story she would ever write. The raw 

emotion weaved through every word in her Facebook 

post has tugged at the heartstrings of mothers 

everywhere.

But it’s not the emphasis on the stillborn birth that 

has spawned the viral post. It’s the message of 

encouragement to mothers to cherish every single 

moment with their newborns that she never got to 

have.

And she’s not talking about just the fun ones—but

the screaming tantrums and the sleepless nights.

She charges moms to relish in the fussy colic, the

dirty diapers, and the drool dripping down your

chest.

“There will be times your child will scream and cry 

any time you try to put him or her down. Or they’ll 

cry even as they’re in your arms and you’ve done 

everything you can possibly think of to get them to 

stop. There will be sleepless nights, multiple diaper

changes in a matter of minutes, spit up in your 

hair, pee on your shirt, and poop in your hands, 

and again — so much screaming from the baby, 

and probably from you as well. Every time that 

happens, every time you feel frustrated and want 

to run away, please remember my story,” she wrote. 

Natalie continued by delving into the events of that haunting night at the hospital:

“I keep having flashbacks to that moment. It’s a crippling, all-consuming feeling of utter

suffocation, and a memory that will haunt me for the rest of my life. In that moment, I felt trapped as if the ceiling was literally crashing down on top of me. I couldn’t breathe, I lashed out, I screamed, I threw things, I threw up…and then a piece of me died with her. I was helpless to change anything. My body was supposed to keep her safe, and instead it killed her.”

She didn’t even want the pain numbed, as she knew it would be the last memory she would share with her daughter. And she needed to feel it. Every ounce:

“They offered me an epidural, but I couldn’t do it. I needed to own it. I needed the pain, the agony, and misery to mirror what I felt in my heart. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Ever. Dealing with the unbearable contractions, the ring of fire,

the tearing…knowing that all of it was for nothing. I was delivering a lifeless child. There would be no happiness at the end of it to help me forget the pain. The pain, unlike my baby girl, would live on forever.”

After the agonizing hours of labor, Natalie got to

hold Eleanor for the first time. But six hours later,

she could hardly bear to watch her beautiful baby

girl deteriorate in her arms.

She was forced to say her final goodbyes #thishurts#. 

“As I stood over her and spent those last few

minutes with her, blood was cascading down my legs and onto the floor. I didn’t care – my womb was crying. Everything about me was crying. Watching them wheel her away broke me. My life ended then and there. They wheeled me out of the hospital and

I screamed the entire way.”

But fully immersed in the most potent form of

misery she’d ever experienced, Natalie was able to

bring forth the most powerful perspective on the

beauty of child-rearing. Her raw advice has given

mothers across the globe a reason to be thankful

rather than bitter about those middle-of-the-

night tantrums.

She pleads “But please just remember, while you’re awake at 3am because you have a baby in your arms keeping you up that late, I’m up at 3am because I don’t. And I would give anything in this world to have a baby spitting up on me, being colicky for all hours of the day and night, screaming, not letting me put her down, cracking my nipples from breastfeeding, keeping me up all night.” “…All I ask of you is when you have your dark

moments with your baby – when you’re at your wits’ end and feel like you can’t go on anymore when you’re only getting an hour or two of sleep a night – instead of begging your child to go to sleep and being swallowed up in your frustration and exhaustion, find the tiniest bit of strength within you to keep going, and say a prayer of gratitude for your child, as difficult as it may be in that moment". 

Natalie says that what started as a small written

expression of her struggle has exploded into a tidal wave of support from all around the world. Moms fed up with their crying babies have contacted her to thank her for shifting their perspective, and parents of stillborns have reached out with a shoulder to cry on.

"I'm the first woman to have a stillborn, so my story is not unique - but they're so rarely talked about and I had no iddea how utterly traumatic and devastating of an experience it is," she said “And, because stillbirths are so rarely talked about, I think there exists this vague notion — even if it’s only subconscious — that those

babies never existed or never really mattered.”

Well, Natalie’s story has certainly proved that

notion wrong.