Abigail Lynn Loebach was born on June 5,2003 . After seven years of trying she was the beautiful blessing of proud parents Dave and Jennifer. She seemed like much more than we had hoped for.

She hardly cried that much and she was a good eater and slept through the night right away. She seemed like the perfect baby. She never really squirmed or moved her legs very much. Everyone thought she was very content, as she always seemed extremely bright and alert. At about eight weeks of age Abby was clinically diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 1. Abby put up a very hard struggle against this disease and overcame many obstacles. She could never really move that much but she was very inquisitive and took in a lot of the world around her. Abby always greeted visitors with big smiles that could light up any room even though not one word came out of her mouth she spoke volumes to many people through her big beautiful eyes. Abby loved to be in her "bouncy" chair, which is where she spent most of her time. She would sit in front of her Papa's big screen TV and watch some of her favorite shows like Elmo or Bear and the Big Blue House or read and sing songs with her Mommy. One of her favorites was "If you're happy and you know it". On October 21,2003 Abby lost her battle against this untreatable and incurable disease and got her wings in the arms of her Mommy with her Daddy by her side. Abby is now our little angel dwelling amongst the other angels and saints along with her best friend Jamie and all of the other SMA angels.

During her short life Abby provided us and the many people she met with a lifetime of beautiful memories and inspiration. We will love her forever and cherish her always.

Dave & Jennifer Loebach

It was a beautiful, hot, sunny day in September when our daughter Jamie was born. We had waited for this day for almost 4½ years.
It was a dream pregnancy, labour and delivery.

We had our perfect, gorgeous little girl at last. She was just so pretty it was hard to take your eyes off of her. I had so many people comment on how alert she was, even from the very beginning she was always looking around, taking it all in. Jamie was also a very smiley and very chatty baby, she loved to have little "talks" with her father, whether they were on the change table, floor or on the couch. We realized at around 1 month that something seemed to be wrong, she was just too floppy, we thought she was lazy. Of course we refused to believe that something may be wrong with her, but at 2 months our family doctor noticed her decreased muscle tone and sent us to a pediatrician.

Jamie was tested for SMA and DNA results confirmed the diagnosis. We had a wait for the test results but we knew what the results were going to be before the doctor even told us.

The 4 months and 25 days that Jamie was with us were both the best and the worst time of our lives. We loved our little girl so much and had waited so long for her and we knew that she would be lucky to make it to 2 years. It was so hard to live with that fact. We had noticed her going downhill for a little while before she died, but it all came so fast. One morning, after sleeping through the night, she woke up and she had problems feeding. As I watched her, her colour deteriorated and we rushed her to the hospital. They took us down to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto . After ruling out bacteria and viruses for the causes of her collapsed lungs, it was evident that SMA had weakened her to the point where she couldn't breathe on her own. We had to make the most heart-wrenching decision a parent could ever have to make. On Sunday February 1, 2004 Jamie peacefully slipped away in our arms surrounded by her grandparents.

We are so grateful to have had our little angel with us, even for such a short time. She was truly a blessing and had taught us so much about ourselves, about life and about death. We have her pictures all around our house and I can't even count the number of times that I think of her every day, even so, she was just so precious and will live forever in our hearts until we can all be together again.

SMA may have stolen our daughter, but we still have pictures, videos and especially memories, and that can't be taken from us!

Krista and Janne Haapalainen