A woman who suffered a miscarriage at birth in New York City is sharing an empowering, inspiring video to show how she is recovering from the experience.
In a video posted on Instagram by the mother of the infant, the girl, who was six weeks premature, can be seen in her hospital bed with a baby bump on her face.
“She had a miscarriage when she was a newborn,” said the mother, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal.
“She was just a baby, she didn’t have a body.
I was just hoping for a miracle, hoping that my baby would survive.”
The mother, whose name was not given, said her miscarriage took place during a time when she wasn’t in a position to provide for her baby.
“It was a miscarriage because I was not a woman at the time, I was a baby.
I didn’t know what a miscarriage was,” she said.
The baby, named Maddy, is now eight months old and was named after the mother.
She said she was “a little shaken” when she heard about the miscarriage, but was thankful to her mother for sharing her story.
“When I found out she had been raped, I felt terrible,” she told The Associated Press.
“I didn’t want to be a part of this.”
The video, posted to the Instagram account of the mother’s sister, has garnered more than 1.6 million views and has been shared more than 200,000 times.
“I wanted to give something back, to help the mother to get through her own experience and the way she was raped,” the mother said.
“To be able to share something that helped others and I thought it would be wonderful.”
The family is planning to take the baby home to a hospital in New Jersey to be with its mother.
“We want to hold the baby and we are going to hold it in her arms, and we will give her a lot of love,” the woman said.
A New York Times report in September 2016 detailed the rape and murder of the woman by her uncle.
In the video, she also shared her story of surviving her miscarriage.
“A lot of times in our culture, when we are raped or a woman is raped, it doesn’t have to be the woman,” the girl said.
“We can go out and give back.”