I wanted to see my sleeping baby with open eyes

Erika Saguran created our portrait.

It has only been two months since I gave birth to my stillborn, and I have looked at our hospital photos repeatedly. 

To start my portrait journey, I went on Reddit. I searched through r/HungryArtists, a subreddit full of artists available for hire. Scrolling through, I found a style that worked for me. I asked if the artist was willing to take on this project of imagining my baby boy with open eyes. I was so happy when she said yes. 

It's magical to see my beautiful sleeping baby... awake. I will always wonder what you would have been, my baby boy. 

When I was pregnant, I had a strong intuition that his eyes would be brown like his daddy's. He would have been daddy's little twin. I was also aching for more pictures of Bastion without a hat, as I was in too disarray to notice he was wearing one almost our entire stay, hiding his gorgeous and plentiful brown hair. 

It would be a wonderful tradition to commission an artist to draw or paint Baby Bash every year for his birthday. Years from now, I can have a beautiful array of artwork and not just sad hospital photos. It's such a beautiful tribute.

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If you don't have hospital pictures or lost your precious baby at an early stage, I still encourage you to commission art. 

This beautiful family photo was a gift from my sister. The only one I will ever have of the four of us. The great thing about it is the artist didn't need a picture of my baby. I love this faceless style; you can find many like it on Etsy when searching for watercolor family portraits. 

You can go in that direction, or maybe you want to find an artist like mine and imagine what could have been. 

It could even be therapeutic even to draw it yourself. 

I love to fall in love with art. So making this choice has filled me with some form of joy. It's always attached to a bit of sadness because I wish this wasn't my life. I wish he was my little bundle of joy that I could brag about on Facebook. But I am not in control and will have to settle for these happy-sad moments. They make life without my son just a little bit more bearable. 

I am not the only bereaved mama who commissioned work from an artist. Many have done the same. Some have even received these as gifts from their family. I highly recommend gifting a bereaved loved one a painting such as these. Take a look at these most beautiful angels...