When we were called to the hospital two weeks after my amniocentesis, the receptionist grabbed the Kleenex box on our way back to the private office. An hour later my husband and I cried on the floor in the hall, knowing our first baby wasn’t going to make it.

We named her Charlotte at 23 weeks, determined to get close to her while we had the chance. We didn’t buy any baby things. I didn’t have a baby shower.

Every day I would go still, realizing I hadn’t felt her move recently, and then she would kick. Part of me, terrified for her future and for my own, would ache.

At 40 weeks I was induced. She was still with us, and even as we listened to her heart beat on the monitors and hoped for a few moments with her — a cry, even just a breath — we knew she wasn’t going to make it.

Charlotte was born, and she took a breath, and then she cried. We were rushed back to my room to soak in every moment we could with her. She watched us all, my family and my husband’s, and then our friends who came, pass her around and hold her silently. After three hours we called the nurses back: “She’s still alive, what do we do?”

Three years later, Charlotte lay sedated in the ICU. She had caught RSV and developed pneumonia. It became clear, after all this time, she finally wasn’t going to make it.

We surrounded her again, just like on her birthday, and passed her around in silence. And then she was gone.

But our little girl, who from the moment her chromosomes revealed themselves was given no chance at life, HAD made it. She made me a mom. She made people change their minds and she made us see what mattered and what didn’t.

She was a fighter, stubborn and sweet. She was an absolute light. She changed all our plans and when we remember her now, years later, it’s with a smile.

Because Charlotte had made it. She made us a family.

Related video: