My family has experienced a terrible tragedy. For months, my husband and I felt so alone. Why did this happen? Things like this don’t happen to “normal” people. What did we do wrong? What do we do now? It took time, therapy, research, support from strangers all over the world and most importantly, the love from our family and friends to realize WE ARE NOT ALONE. With that said, I feel it is necessary to share our story. Not only for others to not feel the loneliness had we gone through, but to educate others. Mainly we want to continue to bring peace to our hearts in honor of our beautiful son….Carter John Kintz.

During the summer of 2014, my husband and I found out we were pregnant. We were thrilled yet scared of the unknown. Our lifestyles changed as we began to prepare for the arrival of our first child. We did it all! We had a gender reveal party, numerous showers, diaper parties, birthing classes, read everything I could get my hands on, moved out of the city and bought a house in the ‘burbs, painted and prepared the nursery. We were “normal” and did everything parents should do to nest and prepare for our son’s arrival.

I had a perfect pregnancy. I counted down the weeks and looked forward to each doctor appointment. Hearing my son’s heartrate was so beautiful! The sound made me melt every time. I measured right-on each week as my son continued to grow and kick inside of me. He had kicking parties at 3am, my fingers swelled and couldn’t wear my wedding rings, I continued to get the “your poor thing” looks from co-workers as I hobbled every hour to the bathroom, and ankles….what were those? I loved it all. We were on cloud nine and felt blessed that we were living the “normal” American Dream!

The morning of my 39 week appointment, I start to walk out the door. My husband stopped me and said, wait- I’m coming with you. Stubborn me, I said not to worry, it just a normal weekly appointment and I can head there alone. My loving husband did not take that answer and forcefully came with me to the appointment. Hindsight, I thank God every day that he did.

I remember us sitting in the waiting room talking about the future and that we may meet our son any day now. We got called in and went through the normal procedures and was waiting for our doctor in the room. The room we have been visited what felt like thousands of times before. It was just another “normal” visit! 

The doctor came in and we continued with our regular routine. Joking and laughing as usual, she brought out the fetal heartrate monitor. She circled it on my bulging belly. Circled, circled and circled. More and more. Silence. Our doctor said to hold a second, she went to go grab another monitor claiming they had issues with this one specifically. Let’s try another one, she said. Tears and fear came across my face as I grabbed for my husband’s hand. His strong eyes and masculine tone said “Its okay, just relax. It’s just fine.”

Silence.

Silence.

Nothing.

The doctor rushed us to the ultrasound room and asked if I would be opposed to an emergency c-section. My response…”We will do whatever we need to do in order to keep our son healthy.”

Silence.

More silence.

Another doctor came in for a second opinion and said “I am so sorry.” WHAT?! What does that even mean? His heart is not beating? Is there anything we can do? Do something! Please help us! I screamed everything at these doctors. I SCREAMED. How can this happen? What did I do wrong? He was fine just last week! This does not happen to “normal” people! We are “normal” people!! I looked to my strong husband who saw me break and he asked the questions. No answers we wanted to hear. I cried for my Mom. I really did.

I saw a still heart on the ultrasound. The worst moment of our lives just happened. I will never have that image removed from my memory.

The rest of this sequential story is not worth the pain to explain. But I will just say this….I felt him leave me. I felt our son leave my body and that is something I will never forget. With my incredible husband by my side, whispering sweet words and attempting to distract my thoughts, I gave birth to our first child, Carter John Kintz.  

Silence.

Our son didn’t cry. He was born silently into our world. From this point on, we no longer had a “normal” life. Our son passed with me and was born into the hands of God. He was taken into God’s hands all too soon. It was not fair. It still isn’t fair.

We still to this day have no reason for his passing. We have a team working with us and doing many tests. We pray every day for that closure. He was perfect and beautiful.

There were many different directions we could have taken our healing and grieving process. We could go down or rise above. We struggled and its not easy, but we continue to rise and trust our faith. We work to grow every day and grieve the loss of our son. Our love for eachother has given us strength and restored faith in God. We will find our "new normal" one day.

It took much time to realize we were not alone. For months, I figured no one could understand, relate or ever know the feeling of losing your son after a perfect pregnancy. But there are people out there that may understand. Yes, this tragedy happens to less than 1% of pregnancies. But there is support is out there!

Our friends, family, co-workers and even people we don’t even know all over the world have come out for support. Support that we never even knew existed for such a horribly rare event. We are so appreciative of the love that has been received for us and our son. We are so blessed and are thrilled to give back.

I knew in my heart, I needed to do more. More outside of our family and to help others. I have decided to raise money in honor of our son’s memory and to help those who have gone through something similar. There is a local program called SHARE. They have helped us and I can think nothing better than to give back to them and their cause. 100% of the donations will go towards this program that specifically helped me and my family.

http://nationalshare.org/

I never ask for much, but please donate to contribute to the memory of our son and help those who suffer as well.

Thank you so much and sending love to everyone!

May God bless you and our beautiful son.

Carter John Kintz
March 11, 2015

"From the defeat of a silenced HEART grew a HALO of love and spiritual power." 

-Andrea Kintz

"Heartbeats & Halos"