Becky has spent her entire life adapting to a world that was not built for her.
As a woman with dwarfism who stands four feet tall, she has learned to problem solve, improvise, and push forward in spaces that were never designed with her in mind. She has built the confidence and strength to ignore the stares and the laughs. She has figured out children’s recliners and gaming chairs and car beds and oxygen tanks and every other logistical puzzle that life has thrown at her.
And then she lost Jackson. And something unexpected happened.
The fear went away.
Jackson Robert was born on August 9th, 2021, a perfect baby who arrived after 39 weeks, a NICU stay, 20 days of sleep studies, a car bed, oxygen for sleeping, and a yellow sheet of paper with 20 specialist appointments waiting on the other side of discharge day. He also had dwarfism, just like his mama, and Becky will tell you that getting that news was the best news she had ever received. He was her boy. He was going to be like her.
He was six months and twenty-one days old when he died, following a catastrophic loss of oxygen during a routine sleep study at the hospital. He had not been breathing for thirty minutes before anyone noticed. The code team took four minutes to arrive. Becky was thrown out of the room. His father came back from the hotel not even having had enough time to remove his shoes.
Twelve days in the ICU followed. Twelve days of fighting to understand what had happened while simultaneously fighting to give Jackson the best possible care. Twelve days of MRIs and heart rate changes and a physical therapist who came once, lifted his leg, watched it fall, and never came back. Twelve days of Becky going to the hotel every night to sleep, so she could be fully present for him every morning. And at 8:09 PM on March 2nd, 2022, Jackson passed away in her arms. 8:09. August 9th. His birthday.
In this conversation, Becky speaks with remarkable honesty about everything that has come since. The IVF journey that stretched across two years and three states before falling apart. The massive spinal surgery that left her hospitalized for 72 days and still requiring care today. The layers of grief she has carried all at once, the loss of her son, the loss of her mobility, the loss of her marriage, and the grief that began even before Jackson was born, in every diagnosis and every appointment and every moment of bracing for what might come next.
And through all of it, she has kept going. She has written. She has sought therapy. She has found her people, slowly and imperfectly, in support groups and retreats and monthly meetings with parents who lost children around Jackson’s age. She has put his photo on her hospital room walls and his picture with Santa in the family Christmas photos and his image on her phone so that every new nurse who walks into her room asks about him.
She says she used to wake up in the middle of the night consumed by a fear of death. The moment Jackson died in her arms, that fear disappeared.
She is in no rush. She has a lot to do here on Earth. But she knows she will get to see him again.
And part of what she has to do is make sure Jackson is never just a blip. She is working on a book. She is doing inclusivity advocacy so that the world he never got to grow up in becomes the world she would have wanted for him. She is telling anyone who will listen about her boy and his giggles and his determination during tummy time and the way he was, as she puts it simply and perfectly, the brightest light.
Jackson made Becky a mama. And in the end, he made her fearless, too.
For more on Becky, visit beckymotivates.com
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