Reviewed by Rosie Malezer for Readers' Favorite

Before We Held You In Our Arms is a children's book written by Emily Feit and illustrated by INDOS Studios. The author tackles the all-too-real issue of how difficult it is sometimes to bring a new life into the world when fertility is a problem. Although the parents of the child want so badly to conceive, they often feel jealous of other parents who have expanded their family so easily. Potential parents dream of the magical day a child will someday come into their lives, yet feel like failures because they cannot make it happen through wishful thinking alone. Although the parents did everything right, visiting many doctors, taking many vitamins, eating special foods while avoiding others, and even making wishes in fountains, sometimes it just is not meant to be. But in those extraordinary times when all those sacrifices pay off and they become the blessed parents of a newborn baby, they need that child to know how, even before the child was born, they were loved so very much.

I like the message that this book conveys. With so many kids screaming at their parents (such as when I was a child) about how they wish they had never been born, or telling their parents that they probably regret having them at all, Emily Feit's beautiful book explains to children that they are wanted very much and that their parents fought hard to have them. Some children even feel so desperate in their lives, feeling unwanted and unloved, that they may run away from home just for alone time or to make their parents understand what life would be like without them. But when a parent has fought tooth and nail to conceive in the first place, their child needs to know that they were truly loved from well before the moment the child was born and was being held safely in their arms. I highly recommend Before We Held You In Our Arms to the children of all families who have had fertility issues in the past.