Grace’s Story

We had been at our last prenatal class and I hadn’t felt Grace moving that afternoon. I realized it when we got to class, so during class I paid attention to her movement, there wasn’t any. We headed up to the maternity ward and were put on a stress test monitor. They realized Grace was in some kind of distress and I was rushed in for an emergency c-section. Grace Gabriela Manning was born on February 16th, 2016 at 4lbs 4oz. She was taken to Sick Kids hospital right away, to the NICU unit. They did test upon test and two days later we received the worst news we will ever hear, her MRI revealed she had no brain function, she would not survive. We made the decision to take her off all of the machines, it was no way for her to live, and we were transferred to Emily’s House. We had 8 incredible days with our beautiful Grace, 5 of them spent at Emily’s House. We filled them with lots of adventures, memories and so much love. We had lunch dates, went for walks, had a shopping trip, watched movies and hockey games, we had a birthday party, we brought the beach to her where she got to put her toes in the sand, and we cuddled for hours on end. The day she passed we were all together one big family, I was holding her hand and she knew she was loved, that’s all she knew in this world was love.
We will be forever thankful and indebted to Emily’s House, who we truly feel saved our lives by providing us a place to live with our daughter instead of just watching her die. We miss Grace each and every day but feel that our time at Emily’s House allowed us to better navigate our life after she was gone by giving us so much time to simply focus on living with her while she was here.