Stillborn. Still Loved.
Lincoln's Story
When we began planning our family in 2019, we were a young couple in our first year of marriage, full of dreams and hope for the future. Like so many, we assumed the path to parenthood would be simple, that once we decided we were ready, it would just happen. But month after month, those hopes were met with disappointment. Each negative test brought a mix of heartache and longing that's hard to put into words. We had no idea how heavy the weight of waiting could feel. Still, we held onto faith and to each other. We learned patience in those months, the kind that tests your strength but also deepens your love. With every setback, our desire to become parents only grew stronger.
After eighteen long months of waiting, praying, and wondering if it would ever happen for us, the miracle we'd been hoping for finally arrived. On December 23, 2020, we received the most incredible Christmas gift. Kauri was pregnant with our baby. Our son, Lincoln. We could hardly believe it. It felt like all those months of tears and prayers had led to this one perfect moment. The joy and gratitude we felt were overwhelming. Our little family was finally growing, and our hearts were fuller than ever before.
Lincoln's due date was August 30, 2021. We filled the days preparing, dreaming about his nursery, folding tiny clothes, and doing all the hopeful things expectant parents do. With each passing week, Lincoln grew stronger, and so did our love for him. Every ultrasound brought reassurance and joy Feeling him move for the first time is a memory we will forever hold close, a quiet miracle that made it all feel real.
We celebrated his coming arrival with a baby shower surrounded by friends and family, overflowing with excitement for the day we would finally meet him. When his due date came and went, we were told everything looked perfectly normal. It wasn't uncommon to go a little past forty weeks, though we were advised not to exceed forty-two. We trusted that Lincoln would arrive on his own time, but scheduled an induction for September 9th, just in case.
The contractions never came.
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A few days before the induction date, we went in for a routine non-stress test. Covid protocols were still in place, so Nathan waited in the car, expecting another quick appointment with the same comforting news we always received. But inside the exam room, the air shifted. The nurse placed the straps across Kauri’s belly, adjusting them again and again. Something wasn’t right. She hesitated, left the room, returned with the doctor. And then came the words that shattered our world. “There’s no heartbeat.”
Kauri texted Nathan, “I need you,” and he knew instantly that something was terribly wrong. He rushed inside and found her in a small room, surrounded by people who were suddenly speaking a language of loss, a language we never imagined we’d have to learn. Shock. Confusion. Anguish. All of it washed over us in waves. Even a flicker of hope that somehow, by a miracle, Lincoln might still arrive safely. We couldn’t understand how this could happen, not after everything. Not after all the waiting. Not now, when we were so close to meeting our son.
We called Kauri’s parents, who had been staying with us in anticipation of Lincoln’s birth. They came quickly, their presence a fragile anchor in a moment that felt like the world had slipped out from beneath us. We had walked into that appointment imagining we might even take our baby home that day if an induction was suggested. Instead, we were told that Kauri would be induced to deliver our stillborn son.
Labor moved more slowly than the eighteen months we spent trying to conceive, and longer than the entire pregnancy. We prayed to wake from the nightmare, to hear someone say the doctors were wrong, to see Lincoln take just one breath. But reality arrived quietly, with no miracle, only heartbreak.
After twelve hours of labor, our sweet Lincoln was born in silence. A stillborn baby boy with hair, and the Wohosky hands and ears. Perfect in every way except for the breath he would never take. They laid him on Kauri’s chest, skin-to-skin, as any newborn would be. He was beautiful. His cheeks. His tiny nose. His peaceful expression. The way he looked exactly like he should have, just without the life we longed to watch unfold.
Instead of congratulations, we were visited by a hospital social worker and a chaplain who prayed with us. Their words, though meant to offer comfort, floated through the room without weight. We didn’t want prayers or sympathy. We wanted our son.
One small light in those bleak hours was Kauri’s labor and delivery nurse. On the whiteboard in our room we had written his name: Lincoln Brion, his middle name shared with Nathan and Nathan’s dad. The nurse noticed and shared that her own father’s name was Brian, and she had named her first daughter Brianna in his honor. Then she told us that she, too, had lost her child in a similar way.
She met us in our darkness without flinching. She spoke to us like someone who truly understood the suffocating pain of leaving the hospital with empty arms. Her gentleness, her compassion, they held us up when we could barely stand. Looking back, we believe without question that she was meant to be there with us. Our first reminder that we were not alone.
We held our boy close, memorizing every detail of his tiny body. We cherished him and those sacred moments, knowing they were all that we would have with him. Even though he was no longer with us, our arms ached with the weight of love and the heaviness of letting go, but eventually, we had to leave him there. Saying goodbye to his still, perfect body was the hardest thing we have ever done. He looked so peaceful, and though our arms were empty, we held onto the quiet assurance that God was with us and Lincoln, and we would reunite with our baby boy one day.
After a sleepless night, we began the checkout process, desperate to leave, yet broken by the thought of leaving our son behind without us. Before we left, our nurse came to check on us. She stepped out for a moment, then returned carrying a small blue teddy bear.
“I didn’t want you to leave with empty arms,” she said.
The bear didn’t replace Lincoln, not even close, but it filled a small, aching space in that moment. It was a gesture of pure compassion, one that lifted us just enough to take the next step out of the hospital doors.
We left the hospital without a birth certificate, without a death certificate, and without our beloved baby boy. It was as if his only existence was in our hearts, and now a memory. We passed couples in the hallway carrying their newborns home, others coming in for checkups. Kauri clutched that bear close to her chest, and we were glad to have had a complete stranger's care, someone to love our son as we did.
Nothing can ever replace a child. But that simple act of kindness, one person seeing our pain and meeting it with tenderness, left an imprint on our hearts. Through our grief and our faith, we found small glimmers of peace, reminders that God had not abandoned us, and that He placed the right people in our path at the exact moments we needed them.
This served as a source of inspiration for our nonprofit, Loved by Lincoln. We wanted to pay forward the comfort we received in our darkest hours. We wanted to offer other bereaved parents a small ray of hope, something to hold onto when the world feels unbearably empty. Because we know the pain deeply. We know the silence, the shock, the loneliness that follows the loss of a baby or child. And we know that even the smallest act of compassion can help someone survive the storm.
Lincoln taught us that love can continue to grow, even in the midst of heartbreak. And though our arms will always ache for him, our hearts are full, forever Loved by Lincoln. Love was all he knew.
Nothing prepares you for the grief that follows losing a baby. The outpouring of love we received in the days after Lincoln's passing was overwhelmingly kind, yet it faded far too quickly compared to the ache that took root in our hearts and never let go. Every day carried constant reminders of what was missing: the empty car seat, the untouched bassinet, the nursery that waited for a baby who would never come home.
It doesn't seem fair to carry a baby full term, to endure the pain of labor and delivery, and still go home with empty arms. Kauri’s body felt like a betrayal when the milk came in, as if it didn't yet understand that there was no baby to nurture.
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A beautiful organization called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep partnered with our hospital and offered to take photos of Lincoln. He was born just before midnight, and at first, the thought of taking photos in the morning felt unbearable. We didn't want to see his perfect little body change, or risk losing the image of him as we held him in those sacred first hours. But we were gently encouraged to have them taken, not for that moment, but for when we might feel differently.
Six months later, we opened those photos for the first time. They were more beautiful than we could have ever imagined. They captured the peace we felt holding him, even in the midst of despair, a peace that truly surpasses all understanding.
When we were faced with the heartbreaking reality of delivering our first baby, Lincoln, stillborn, one thing was certain in our hearts, we would try again. Our journey to parenthood was not ending in that hospital room. We refused to believe that God would allow our story to close there, not when our hearts were overflowing with love and longing for a child to raise. The road ahead felt dark and unknown, yet Nathan's t-shirt that day read "Better Days Ahead." That simple phrase became a lifeline we clung to as we searched for resilience.
We wanted to try again right away, but as we had already learned, timing was not ours to control. Fourteen months later, our rainbow broke through the storm, we were pregnant with another baby boy. Our hearts filled with both joy and sorrow, as the dream of holding a living child still felt fragile, almost out of reach. We celebrated our little blessing, but carried the heavy weight of anxiety and impatience through the months ahead.
Thankfully, the pregnancy itself was uncomplicated. But Lincoln's had been too. This time, we switched hospitals and worked with a new care team who, sensitive to our story, recommended seeing maternal-fetal medicine specialists for extra monitoring in the third trimester. We were grateful for every chance to hear our son's heartbeat and glimpse him on the ultrasound screen, yet each appointment began with us holding our breath, bracing for news we feared.
As the third trimester arrived, so did heightened anxiety. We obsessed over kick counts, worried endlessly about cord placement, and asked for reassurance at every scan. We knew we didn't want to go past his due date, and instead chose an induction at 39 weeks. This time, we wanted some control in a journey that had once left us powerless.
After thirty-six hours of labor, progress stalled. In the middle of the night, Kauri woke to a room full of nurses moving swiftly to stabilize baby's heart rate. Hours later, the doctors explained: labor was not advancing, and continuing could mean another twenty-four hours while baby was already showing signs of distress.
Alternatively, we could proceed with a c-section and hold our son within the hour. The choice was clear, his safety was everything. And so, on July 6, 2023, we welcomed our rainbow baby, Leo Robert. Two years later, on September 17, 2025, we welcomed another precious boy, Logan Kent. We carry him and Leo in our arms while always carrying Lincoln in our hearts, knowing he is looking down with love, smiling over his two little brothers.
Leo and Logan will grow up knowing Lincoln. We talk about him often. We celebrate him on special days and quiet ones alike. His photos hang in our home and are included in family photos, not as a reminder of loss but of love. Though they never met him, they will always know their brother, because his presence lives in our hearts, our home, and the way we hold each other a little closer.
This is why we created Loved by Lincoln: to honor his life by bringing comfort, awareness, and hope to other families walking through pregnancy loss and life after. Years later, we are still learning how to live alongside grief. With each passing season, life reveals new ways to miss Lincoln, and yet, somehow, we still find joy in the life that continues.
We carry him quietly in all that we do, in the softest moments, and the hardest ones too. Each day, we find ways to remember him, to make him proud, and to offer comfort to others who have also had to say hello and goodbye in the same breath.
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Thank you for reading Lincoln's story.
Even though he was with us only a short while during pregnancy, we felt love from our baby boy. For those experiencing the loss of a baby or child, know that they loved you. Those who have lost all have their own "Lincoln.” We all love our "Lincolns" and are Loved by Lincoln too.
