In 1922, a velveteen rabbit, perched in a child’s nursery, pondered what it meant to be real. An old and worn skin-horse replied that being real is not about how you are made, but rather how you are loved.

In 1922, a velveteen rabbit, perched in a child’s nursery, pondered what it meant to be real.

An old and worn skin-horse replied that being real is not about how you are made, but rather how you are loved.

The rabbit questioned the aged horse, “I suppose you are real?”

The old horse smiled.

“Once you are real, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

As a child, I never read Margery Williams’ Velveteen Rabbit.

It was only upon the birth and death of our daughter that my wife directed me to the 93-year-old words of a stuffed rabbit and toy horse that so elegantly explained a difficultly of infant and pregnancy loss.

Our daughter was five months in utero when my wife and I received the worst news any expecting parents could possibly receive.

She was underdeveloped by four to six weeks and her brain was filling with fluid. It would only continue as time went on.

The choices before us were to continue the pregnancy and our daughter would eventually die inside of my wife or end the pregnancy and our daughter would die.

In the end, no matter what we chose, the result was the same.

With the heaviest of hearts, my wife was induced into labour on Oct. 30, and at 7:39 p.m. our daughter Gracie Anne-Marie Ruth was born and died.

It was more than just the physical loss of our daughter we experienced that day. It was the loss of every hope and dream we had for her from the moment we found out she was there.

Unless you’ve experience that loss, you cannot begin to understand how that feels and I pray to God you never have to.

With my sister-in-law about to have her baby girl anytime now and my sister ready to have her baby girl in January 2016, I had fears that were oddly put to rest by a velveteen rabbit and an old skin-horse.

If everything was OK with Gracie and she was born and lived and grew up and went to school and got married and had kids of her own, there would be no question she was real.

I felt until those closest to me saw a photo of her, they didn’t always comprehend her realness.

She was not a formless blob we swept under a rug to forget about. She was a beautiful baby girl and she was wanted.

I held her, touched her, kissed her and loved her. You cannot do any of that to abstraction.

Something happened while she was being made, but it’s not a matter of how she was made that made her real.

It’s a matter of how she was loved.

In that, she was perfect and will forever be our daughter.