It all starts in May 2019. We have been married for 2 weeks and I am pregnant. A month before I turned 30, everything is going well for me, what a great year 2019 is! This is my first pregnancy and my husband's second child. Everything is going very well, our loved ones are so happy.

The two of us are enjoying a beautiful summer holiday in Corsica. However, before the holidays, a small shadow appeared with the result of the blood test, the one that tests for trisomy 21. The midwife doesn't seem to be worried, but she plans an ultrasound with a specialist on the 16th of September. The ultrasound arrives on my husband's birthday. 

Unfortunately, this was the beginning of a downward spiral... Our son was found to have deformities: a small heart, a cleft lip, small eyeballs, ... I can't believe it.  Or I don't want to admit it. When the doctor tells us that there is something wrong with the baby, I feel like he is joking with us. Unfortunately, it's not. The days that follow until our son's delivery will never leave my memory and my mother's heart. 

We are taken care of by a maternity ward. I have an amniocentesis on 24 September 2019. The final decision was made on 26 September: our son had trisomy 13.

We are told of the consequences of T13 on our son... There is a great chance that he will die in utero. His life expectancy is one year maximum. He will have many problems (heart child, vision problems, kidney problems, and a cleft lip making nutrition very complicated...)

What kind of life are we going to offer our son? Repeated hospital stays? Pain? Operations? We don't want that for him or for us. And for my part, I continue to feel him moving inside me, I will not stop holding on, knowing that the outcome would be, more or less in the long term, fatal.

Maybe some people will judge me but I don't have the courage to face that. Although extremely heartbreaking, the decision must be made quickly.

We choose to carry out an IMG, Medical Pregnancy Intervention. There followed an incalculable number of trips to the maternity hospital, a route that had become unbearable for me.

I gave birth to a stillborn baby on the 3rd of October 2019 at 19:12. He weighs 370g and is called Léandre. My son, my first baby, will not have known life. 

My husband and I are crying our eyes out. How is this possible? Why us? 1/10000 that this fucking chromosome 13 is faulty. 

On October 09, 2019 Léandre is buried in his tiny white coffin next to his grandfather. Life has to start again after this but a part of me has gone with him. 

The question of having a child again doesn't even arise and baby two is nestled deep inside me in April 2020.

Today Côme is 15 months old and thanks to him our hearts are less heavy. 

Our star is watching over us.

Marie, 32 years old, mom of an angel