I like to think one of the final things Calvary heard from my womb was the sound of worship music playing as we worshipped the Lord at church.
I woke up the morning of Sunday, June 1st to a text from a dear friend of mine saying, “Happy baby month!!” and what a sweet reminder that was; “I get to have our baby this month!” I thought.
My husband and I got out of bed, dressed, and ready for church – just like our family did every Sunday. We worshipped, learned about God’s word, and connected with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. A sweet couple who had just had their first baby was at church with their beautiful five-day-old daughter. “You’re next!” they said when they saw us.
We spent the majority of the day after church playing with our kids at our neighborhood pool, enjoying being together as a family. That night we had a spontaneous dinner with two of our closest people, Michael’s younger brother and his wife. We met for pizza (which always includes ice cream), and as we were walking to our car to head home, we walked as a family in a line holding our kids’ hands. Michael snapped a quick selfie of us, and I remember thinking how much I loved the photo and loved our family. This isn’t something Michael does often (taking selfies of us, that is), so looking back now, this was clearly the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
Later that night after putting the kids to bed sometime around 9:30pm, I realized I didn’t remember feeling the baby move at all at any point throughout the day. Our other two kiddos were extremely active babies in the womb, and this baby was no different. I had Michael grab me a cold bottle of water, which I chugged, and I waited patiently to feel a kick letting me know our baby was okay. No kick came. I poked my stomach several different places and waited. Still no kick. At this point was when I started thinking I might need to go to the hospital to get checked out, but before doing that, at 9:54pm I texted our sister-in-law, a nurse, to see if she was awake and if I could come over and borrow her baby doppler. I told her I didn’t remember feeling the baby move at all that day, and her immediate response was, “Go to the ER. I don’t trust myself to test it on you.” I quickly got changed and made arrangements for Michael to meet me at the hospital once our sister-in-law came over so we weren’t leaving our kids at home alone.
As I drove to the emergency room, all alone in darkness and silence, I prayed, asking the Lord to protect my baby and to be with me. I walked in and told the woman at the check-in desk something along the lines of, “Hi, I’m 36 weeks pregnant, and I don’t remember feeling my baby move at all today, so I just want to make sure they’re okay.” She told me to wait a moment and that a nurse would be down in a moment to take me up. I remember thinking to myself, “This lady probably thinks I’m some crazy, paranoid lady” and then thinking, “I hope I’m just being some crazy, paranoid lady.”
As I waited for the nurse to come get me, I texted my husband and sister-in-law at 10:08pm: “At ER. Going to take me upstars. Still no movement.” My sister-in-law immediately responded, “Did they put a fetal monitor on or not yet?” I responded 3 minutes later, “Doing it now.”
Two minutes passed. 10:13pm. “No heartbeat yet,” I texted. Meanwhile, Michael was speeding to the hospital as he received this text.
Two minutes later my sister-in-law asked, “Doppler?” I replied at 10:18pm, “Whatever band they put around your belly”. Michael ran into the hospital and up to the room, sat next to me, and held my hand. My sister-in-law’s last text asking, “Anything???” went unanswered.
I watched the nurse – in one hand she continued trying to find the heartbeat and with her other hand she used her nurse phone to page for help. Silence. The second nurse came in, but just like the first, she couldn’t find anything. More silence. Now a doctor entered the room, rolling with her a large ultrasound screen. My heart began racing. The doctor sat down next to me and began scanning our baby. There was our precious baby, on the screen, much bigger than they were the last time I saw them on an ultrasound at 20 weeks. But this time, stillness, and more silence.
We sat. Waiting. Watching. Listening. But there was nothing to listen to. The room was deathly quiet. I looked at Michael, whose eyes were filled with tears as his eyes were locked on the ultrasound screen. He knew. I looked back at the ultrasound screen feeling my heart begin racing even more. Staring. More waiting. The movement of the doctor’s face turning away from the screen to look at me snapped my focus away from the screen to lock eyes with her. Her face said it all. As she looked me in the eye, I heard her start to say, “I’m so sorry…” and then her remaining words were silenced over the sound of my scream. All I could do in that moment was scream the words “No!” and “This isn’t real! This can’t be real!” over… and over… and over again.
Up until that moment, it had been all-quiet in the entire hospital. That silence was broken by the wailing of a mother whose world had just been torn apart.
At 10:29pm I called my mom & step-dad – and told them our baby was gone.
At 10:35pm I called my sister-in-law, who was at home with our other two kids – and told her our baby was gone.
At 10:43pm I called my dad & step-mom – and told them our baby was gone.
At 10:56pm I called a dear friend of mine in our bible study – and told her our baby was gone.
At 10:59pm I called my mother-in-law & father-in-law – and told them our baby was gone.
At 11:01pm I called one of my best friends, who was planning to be in the delivery room with us later that month to photograph our baby’s birth, just as she had done previously with our son – and told her our baby was gone.
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“What do we do?” was one of the first questions I asked the doctor, in between sobs. She told me I had the choice of going home and coming back another day to deliver our baby, or I could stay the night and get started on being induced, meaning our baby would be born sometime the next day. I couldn’t imagine having to go home and wait, so we decided to stay and be induced that night.
The number seven has always held deep meaning for me and my husband. We were married on July 7, 2017 (7.7.17). In the Bible, seven symbolizes God’s perfection, completeness, and the fulfillment of His promises. It appears over 700 times in Scripture—marking creation, the seven seals and trumpets in Revelation, and Jesus’ call to forgive “not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22). As we walked down the hall of the labor and delivery unit after having just found out we lost our baby, we passed room one—where Genesis, our first born, was born. Then we passed room two, where Malachi, our second born, entered the world. A little farther down was room seven — where our precious baby already in Heaven — would be born. It felt perfectly fitting that our baby would be born in room seven, a number symbolizing God’s perfect plan – even in heartbreak. Room seven was truly sacred ground.
That night Michael’s parents, who live in town, immediately drove over to the hospital. They arrived around 11:30pm. My dad and step-mom, who live a little over an hour outside of Indianapolis, also made the drive at midnight to come to the hospital. At some point I said to our parents something along the lines of, “This is a nightmare, but I know the Lord is going to use it for good”. Looking back, it’s hard to fathom I had the strength to utter such words. How could I say something like that in a moment of pure heartbreak? How could I could believe that the same God who allowed our baby to die at 36 weeks, the day before I would schedule our induction, would use this tragedy for His good? Well, this strength was surely not my own.
At this point in time, we had no idea what caused us to lose our baby, and we still didn’t know if we were having a boy or a girl.
Shortly after discovering we were pregnant back in October 2024, I felt the Lord challenge me to not find out the gender of this baby. As someone who is extremely type A, impatient, and likes to have everything organized and prepared (down to the baby clothes being sorted by size and neatly folded in each of the nursery drawers and our baby’s name being displayed above their crib), this was a BIG deal, but I embraced this challenge, and thankfully, Michael was on board, too. We have friends who were surprised by the gender of their babies, and I always thought their experiences of finding out sounded so fun. I was excited to experience hearing our doctor say, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” with Michael, or maybe Michael would find out first and be the one to tell me – we hadn’t quite figured that out yet. We thought we had time to decide… For both our daughter and son, we did the early bloodwork and found out their genders, so this experience was going to be entirely different.
And that it was – entirely different.
Now the circumstances had drastically changed. Finding out the gender of our baby in the delivery room no longer felt exciting when we knew our baby would be stillborn. What I had dreamt about and imagined over and over again in my mind would not be how I had hoped or intended it to look. I expressed this to the on-call doctor, and with Michael’s approval, asked that she tell us the gender of our baby before I began the labor process. She said she would look at my chart and come back with the results.
For the past 9 months, in my heart I had known we were having a girl. I knew our first daughter was a girl. I knew our son was a boy. In between them we had a miscarriage around 10 weeks, and I was very confident that baby was a boy (although I’ll find out for sure when I see them in Heaven).
At our 20-week ultrasound, I told the ultrasound tech I thought it was a girl. I told so many people I thought it was a girl. During my third trimester as I started packing my hospital bag, I even had the thought to order a personalized swaddle with “Calvary Rose” on it, just in case I was correct – typical me, wanting to be prepared and plan ahead. I had ordered personalized swaddles for our other two kiddos to wear in the hospital, so this felt fitting to want do the same for this baby. For some reason, I didn’t think about ordering a swaddle with the boy’s name we had picked out – only our girl’s name. But something stopped me from ordering the swaddle. Looking back now, I wish so badly I had placed that order.
Some time passed and the doctor walked back into the labor and delivery room. The nurse taking care of me was finishing up some bloodwork, which was to be sent off for testing to help determine what caused our baby’s heart to stop beating – something we would soon find out didn’t need to be determined after giving birth. The doctor approached the bed, stood next to me on my right, with Michael and his parents sitting to my left, and softly spoke, “It’s a girl.” I wept. A girl. Our girl. “I knew it,” I wailed – covering my eyes with my hands as my head fell back against the hospital bed. My mother-in-law later described to me that she had never heard a wail before. My heart broke even more. I couldn’t believe it. The Lord had blessed us with another baby girl. I knew her all this time. I knew all along our baby was our Calvary Rose.
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Michael and I put a lot of thought into her name, just as we did with our daughter and son. Our greatest hope and prayer for each of our kids is for them to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and to glorify Him in all they do — to truly love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, and might (Deuteronomy 6:5).
We chose the name Calvary Rose with the hope that her name would spark conversations about the gospel, especially with those who didn’t yet know Jesus. Her name was chosen with deep purpose and meaning: “Calvary,” to point others to the place where Jesus gave His life for us, and “Rose,” as a reminder that He conquered death and offers hope of eternal life. God gave us the idea for her name, and we pictured her one day sharing its meaning with friends, family, and even strangers. But God had a different plan.
How fitting that our daughter’s name proclaims the gospel — the very message of God’s pure, unconditional love — when all she’s ever known outside my womb is the embrace of that love from our Heavenly Father. Calvary’s life is sharing the gospel in a way we never imagined, and that alone shows how deeply loved, valued, and chosen she is by our Creator. We dreamed her name would impact others, but we never realized how deeply it would change the two of us.
God poured so much grace over me as we listened to the doctor tell us what the next several hours were going to look like. I chose to be induced with my two previous births, so none of what the doctor explained came as a surprise. What was really on my mind was, “What happens after she’s born? What should I expect? How should I anticipate her to look?” The doctor told us that her skin would most likely be pulling in some places and that the nurses would bring in a CuddleCot for her to stay in. Everything else, at least that I remember her saying, would be completely normal and similar to my other birth experiences. The doctor also informed us that we most likely lost Calvary sometime early Sunday morning.
“How could that be when she was so active the day before?” I thought. I remember laying by the pool that afternoon of May 31st as our kids swam with Michael. As I was poolside reading Mama Bear Apologetics, I constantly felt my baby kick – hard enough to make my arms move while resting on my belly.
In those moments, I prayed that the Lord would give me a deeper knowledge of His Word so I could answer any question our children might ask in the future. I had no idea that, just over twenty-four hours later, God would begin answering that prayer.
Around 1:30am, my dad and step-mom arrived to the hospital room and joined me, Michael, and Michael’s parents in the labor and delivery room. I shared with my parents that our baby was a girl. We all sat there for quite some time in disbelief, shock, and utter sadness.
Then sometime later it came time to “try and get some rest”, my nurse said. “How could I possibly rest when my baby was gone?” I thought to myself. The nurse offered me a sleeping pill, but I declined, worried if I took it I wouldn’t be fully present throughout the labor and birth process, which was set to begin in less than four or five hours. Michael attempted to close his eyes, and while he did that, I sat in silence and prayed. Michael awoke off and on to the sound of my sobs, and when that happened, he quickly sat up to be in that moment with me. Typically when one of us is struggling emotionally, the other has something to say to help comfort – some sort of wisom to offer. There was nothing Michael could say in these moments other than a cry to the Lord on our behalf. We were fully in this together. Sensing we needed prayer, I texted our extended family a little after 4am to inform them of our situation and ask for prayer.
At 5:24am on June 2nd, I emailed our former lead pastor of our church, Mark Vroegop, who had gone through the same nightmare with his wife over twenty-five years ago. I knew Michael and I needed prayer, and he would surely be able to relate to the unfortunate story we were finding ourselves in. I had remembered a former sermon of Mark’s where he briefly told the story of him and his wife losing their daughter at 39 weeks, which was what became the basis of his book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament.
On that particular Sunday during his sermon, Mark described the heartbreaking experience of his wife being in the hospital preparing to give birth to their stillborn daughter and how she told Mark she felt so much peace in that moment. I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, how could she feel that? That’s incredible.” I also hadn’t read Mark’s book yet, so I had no clue up until that moment that they had gone through this tragedy.
The Lord knew I needed to hear Mark share that story all those months ago, because that was exactly how I felt when I emailed Mark. What a grace from the Lord to prepare my heart in this way, knowing exactly what I would be going through a short time later.
Remembering the morning of Monday, June 2nd is a blur. After one of my dear girlfriends in our small group received the call from me late Sunday evening that we lost our baby, she immediately emailed several of our elders and pastors at our church to inform them of our tragedy and ask them for prayer. It didn’t take long for several members of our church body to begin contacting me and Michael to find out what hospital we were at and what room number we were in.
In the late morning, one of our pastors (and now dear friend), Dale Shaw came to visit us. Dale sat with us, prayed with us and over us, and genuinely communicated he wanted to walk through this with us and that the three of us were now bonded for a lifetime. There aren’t many people like Dale. His love of God’s people is unmatched – the way he looks you in the eye, unashamedly embraces you and kisses your cheek. Dale loves people like Jesus does, and what a gift it was to have him in that labor and delivery room with us prior to meeting our Callie girl.
Dale recited Psalm 23 over us, and this was the beginning of the Lord using Psalm 23 as a frequent reminder of His nearness, His goodness, and His love.
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Medically speaking, my induction process started how I had envisioned and expected – IV, Misoprostol, Pitocin, epidural. With my previous two births, my body responded extremely well to being induced, and I would often tell my friends or even strangers, “It’s like checking into a hotel!” when they would ask me how my experience was. My inductions were not scheduled for medical reasons – I strictly chose to be induced for my own personal preferences (again, very type A and impatient, remember?). However, with my two previous births, my inductions were scheduled at 39 weeks – this birth’s circumstances were much different.
At 36 weeks, my body was not ready to have my baby – physically and emotionally. Time dragged on and on. Even though the nurses kept raising the dose of pitocin, quickly reaching the max allowed, my contractions were still few and far between. Waves of tears and emotional numbness turned a handful of hours into eternity.
The epidural was just like before, and yet it felt surreal because we had done this before. At this point in my previous deliveries, we were eager and nervous – this was the home stretch. But nothing could compare to this profound emptiness. We knew the drill, but it was hollow, forced motions.
Shortly after getting my epidural, I laid down to try and close my eyes. I suddenly felt lightheaded and foggy. It felt as if I had a weight on my chest and couldn’t breathe; like I was holding my breath without trying to hold my breath. I told Michael I couldn’t think straight and didn’t feel good, when the machine I was hooked up to started blaring. My blood pressure was dropping fast – down to 70/40. Michael frantically called the nurses on the intercom and two of them rushed into the room. After stabilizing and raising my blood pressure with a dose of phenylephrine or ephedrine, the nurses checked my other vitals before leaving. Not even two minutes later, the same thing happened again. Alarms. Running feet. Michael praying and pacing. “God, am I going to lose my daughter AND my wife?” he said to the Lord. Thankfully after this second dose, my blood pressure stayed steady.
The rest of the afternoon is mostly a blur, until it became time to push. With our previous two births, I chose to have a mirror in the room. Some women can relate, but I felt like it helped me visualize the pushing that I couldn’t feel and helped protect my body from the effects of birth. At one point I thought to myself, “I wonder if I should have a mirror brought in” but the thought immediately left my mind – not because I chose not to use a mirror, but because the Holy Spirit was absolutely protecting me from the sight of our daughter being born. I completely forgot I even had that thought until after Calvary was born. The Lord was with us in that room. Worship music played. The songs that played during her birth were preparing our hearts and carrying us through that moment.
I will never forget the mental image of seeing my doctor lifting up our baby girl and handing her to me. As my doctor reached Calvary out for me to hold her, Calvary’s limp arm fell to her side, with her mouth gaped open. I wailed, “Our baby! That’s our girl! She looks just like her sister!” And she did; of course she looked just like her sister – she was her sister. She is her sister. There was our girl – the face I had been imagining all this time. I immediately recognized her. That’s my girl.
36 weeks and two days. 230 days; 230 days I spent thinking about, praying about, and imagining my baby’s face – from the time I saw the pink line on the pregnancy test to the moment I looked at her beautiful face for the first time. 230. I am reminded of Psalm 23 when I see those first two numbers. Even as Michael and I prepared to walk through the valley of the shadow of death – without even knowing it – the Lord was near. He was with us.
There is a specific number that measures how many days I thought of my daughter prior to meeting her. Now the rest of my days on this Earth will be filled thinking of my daughter – a number no one knows except for our all-knowing Father. “He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” I am clinging to the truth that losing our daughter was part of my path of righteousness the Lord is leading me in – for His name’s sake, not my own.
All I could do in my first moments with my daughter was wail. My best friend, Monica, was on the other side of the door to our hospital room, something we found out less than an hour later. She had arrived shortly before Calvary was born and stood outside the delivery room, praying over us and weeping with us. She later described hearing “not even a cry or a weep, but a guteral instinctive sound of agony”. My jaw ached from being gaped open due to all the sobbing. My daughter and I both had mouths gaped open. I was not emotionally prepared to see that, and truly, I didn’t think about the fact that she wouldn’t be able to keep her jaws closed; at times I would gently rest my finger under her chin to close her mouth – it was unbearable seeing how lifeless she really was.
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When we had our first daughter, the only words out of my mouth for the first couple of minutes, in between crying, were, “Thank you, Lord!” I was overcome with gratitude. I couldn’t believe she was ours. With our son, the same emotions came. As soon as our doctor entered the room and it was time to push, reality set in. “I’m about to meet our son.”
I was overcome with the same emotions while giving birth to Calvary, but this time, it felt much heavier. Much harder. “I’m about to see my daughter for the first time, but I know she won’t make any noise; I know she won’t make any movements; I know she won’t take her first breath.” As my doctor and nurses were preparing for Calvary’s birth, I noticed how empty the room was. With my previous two births, there was an entire team of nurses and medical staff in the room, ready to take care of our babies and make sure they were healthy – and alive. This time, the only people in the delivery room besides me and Michael was my doctor and one nurse. There was no need for anyone else to be there because there was no reason to care for our baby. There was nothing any medical professional could do to care for our daughter.
I remember thinking after Calvary was born about how people think newborns are so still. We see them laying there all swaddled up and wonder, “Are they still breathing?” We watch them carefully, making sure their chest is still rising up and down.
I don’t remember what happened next – the nurse coming in with a digital camera, tenderly taking photos of us holding our daughter so we would remember this moment, or my doctor coming over to talk with us. My doctor came by the side of my hospital bed and said, “Her umbilical cord was around her neck three times, and it was very tight. I feel confident that this was the reason she passed, and I don’t think an autopsy is necessary.” I still didn’t know, even in that moment, that Michael had witnessed exactly what my doctor was describing; he unfortunately watched Calvary be born and didn’t need to use his imagination to picture exactly what my doctor had said. That image was burned, and will forever be burned, in his memory. Looking back now, the Lord was protecting me by removing the thought of wanting a mirror in the delivery room. Michael said no mother should have to see what he saw. Hearing that makes me thankful that I didn’t see my daughter in that way, but also heartbroken, because no father should have to see what he saw, either.
I turned to Michael, looking for confirmation that we were on the same page, and he nodded. I shifted my focus back to my doctor and told her that we agreed and didn’t need to do an autopsy. Only a few hours prior we were wondering what had caused our precious baby girl’s heart to stop beating, and now we knew that answer. As traumatic and heartbreaking as it was, I see this as a grace from the Lord for us to know exactly what happened to our daughter. Many families who have walked through this kind of loss sometimes never find out what caused their baby’s heart to stop beating (Our pastor, Mark, and his wife were one of those families).
And yet, at the same time, it’s hard knowing what caused our daughter’s heart to stop beating because I have to protect my mind from playing the “What If?” game. “What if I wasn’t exercising so often throughout my pregnancy – would this have still happened? What if I had noticed sooner she wasn’t moving in my belly – would she still be gone? What if I had injured myself and needed to have an emergency C-section – would she still be here?” Although we know what happened to our daughter, we will never know understand why it happened, at least on this side of Heaven.
Around 6:30pm, Monica entered the delivery room to be with us and take photos of us with our daughter. She immediately walked up to me, with Calvary in my arms and roses from her garden in hers, and hugged me tightly as we cried together. This was not at all how I envisioned having Monica document this moment of us meeting our daughter – she was supposed to be in the delivery room in a couple of weeks.
Michael and I have had the huge privilege and blessing of having Monica document numerous moments in our family’s lives – our first pregnancy announcement and maternity session with our daughter, Michael’s younger brother’s wedding, our children’s birthday parties, vacations and trips, family photos with Michael’s parents and siblings, the birth of our son, cutting down our Christmas tree together with our families every year – the list is truly endless. I never imagined in a million years that Monica would use her gifting of photography in this way – being in the hospital room less than an hour after Calvary was born, staying for over 4 hours to capture photos and be with us, as well as documenting her entire funeral – but I will forever be thankful for Monica’s presence that day.
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One of the most memorable moments for me while we were in the hospital with Calvary came later in the evening around 10pm. Monica and Michael had gone downstairs to the lobby to meet the delivery driver with their dinner (who we later found out delivered the food to the wrong hospital) – I had no appetite – and I was alone with Callie in the delivery room. I was laying in the hospital bed with my arm stretched out, holding Callie’s hand in between my fingers while worship music played. I’ll never forget when the song “The Blessing” played. Hearing this song brought me back to when I was pregnant with our first daughter. I remember being in the shower early in my pregnancy, listening to the song and praying those words over my daughter.
I don’t know how to fully articulate the holiness of this moment. I faithfully sang along, holding Callie’s hand, with tears rolling down my face. At some point, Monica and Michael entered the room, but I didn’t open my eyes. They were talking, maybe even laughing, and then quickly fell silent when they saw and felt the moment they had just entered into. I continued to worship and be present in that moment. And then I lifted my arm in praise.
At one point in the song, the lead female singer repeats the phrase, “He is for you” several times. As I was listening to this verse in the song over and over again with my arm lifted high, I heard Monica speak confidently: “Yes He is, Chloe! He is for you!” I wept. In the darkest moment and deepest valley of my life, I knew without a doubt that was true. My God was for Calvary. He was for me. He is for me.
On Thursday, June 12th at the end of Calvary’s memorial service at our church (which took place after her graveside service), Michael was standing with one of his uncles and a few family members. Almost everyone had left at this point, and the atrium area which was previously loud with people breaking bread together in fellowship was now becoming quiet. Michael’s uncle turned to him, and said something along the lines of, “I have a feeling this is the very beginning of a journey God has started you on.”
We believe Michael’s uncle was 100% correct. This is not a journey we would have ever chosen for ourselves, but that’s how God works. What a gift He has given us that we don’t know in advance the troubles, hardships, and heartbreak we will face on this Earth. We don’t get to choose what happens to us in this life, which is both freeing and frustrating.
And yet, while this chapter of our story began in heartbreak, we trust that God is weaving something greater than we can see. Calvary’s life, though brief, has marked us forever and set our feet on a path we never would have chosen, yet one we believe God will use for His glory. We carry both sorrow and hope—sorrow because our arms and hearts forever ache for our daughter, and hope because we know she is whole and radiant in His presence. This is the journey we now walk, one step at a time, held by the same God who holds Calvary.
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There’s much more to write about from our time in the hospital with our Callie girl and what the Lord has done in our lives since then. But for now, thank you so much for reading our story, and we thank you for your ongoing prayers of love, strength, and comfort.
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