9 weeks - So Very Touched

I am just so incredibly touched and moved.  Without me asking, without even knowing how anyone would think of us to remember, our little Maddie's two-month birthday was featured in a wonderful blog for infertility, baby loss, and so on:

http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.com/2009/09/445th-issue-of-lfca.html

I am so just unspeakably warmed by this.  It helps me so much to know that Maddie is in others' thoughts and memories during this time.  I am so very, very grateful.

Physically - 7.5                     Mentally - 8
Emotionally - 6.5                  Spiritually - 8

8 weeks and 6 days - Two Months

Happy two-month birthday, Maddie.  I miss and love you so very much.

8 weeks and 5 days - Dreams of Her

I have only had a few dreams since Maddie was born with her physically present in them.  I feel her presence and my mind refers to her (for lack of a better description) often, but there have only been a few.  I had one last night, so I thought that I'd describe the three of them - saving the one I find most symbolic for last.

The first one was about a week and a half after I delivered Maddie.  My milk was in and painful - it was a horrible reminder that I wanted to be feeding her.  In the dream, I was breastfeeding her, and we were so happy.  It was a very simple dream, but it felt so wonderful to be taking care of her.

In last night's dream, she and I were visiting my biological father for some reason.  (He has some previous problems.)  In the dream, Maddie was about 4, and he tried to go after her to hurt her.  I was able to protect her; after I got rid of him, I just hugged and hugged and hugged my little girl.  I couldn't see much of her face, but she had blonde, curly hair, and was just so delicate and pretty.  I was so proud to be able to protect her, since I have felt since delivering her like I wasn't able to do so.

The last dream was a few weeks ago.  When my mom remarried, she, my brother, my stepfather (who has been a father to us), and I moved to a farm near a very small town.  We were only there for a short time, but we used to have to travel a gravel road to get home.  In my dream, first I was crying over Maddie.  Then, I was transported to the gravel road.  It had changed so much - it had been overgrown with grass and wildflowers.  It was so difficult to travel, but it was just beautiful all at the same time.  As I rode my bike along it, I saw a beautiful butterfly traveling with me.  I know that life is now a much bumpier, more difficult road than it was before, but it's so much more beautiful for having my little butterfly.  As silly and sentimental as that metaphor may sound, I'm just so very blessed for that girl.

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I hope that two of my friends who are in labor right now with their little boy have a sweet and wonderful experience.  It's incredibly difficult for me to know that they're getting what I wanted - exactly two months ago at this very moment, I was in labor with Maddie.  I truly hope and pray for their health and the health of their little girl, however.

Physically - 6.5                          Mentally - 7.5
Emotionally - 5.5                       Spiritually - 6.5

8 weeks and 4 days - Expected Yet Unexpected

After I delivered Maddie, my OB said that I could wait for my first cycle and then try again naturally.  I called my fertility doctor and asked him how we would go about moving towards the frozen embryo transfer - he said we'd wait for two cycles, then start be on birth control pills to start the process towards the FET.  Since he doubted that I'd get my cycles naturally, he called in a prescription for Provera to induce the process.  If I took an HPT and it was negative, I was to start the pills today.

Well, I woke up this morning around 5:50 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep.  I'd been taking my temps every morning and had never seen a spike.  Even though I know they're not that helpful for people with severe PCOS, I had taken two weeks' worth of ovulation predictor kits - which had all been negative.  I knew how the pregnancy test was going to turn out, but I just had this tiny, miniscule hope that maybe somehow the OPK's had been wrong, that I'd ovulated somehow and conceived.

Of course, the test was negative.  I was a little sad - but then I thought about it, and knew I wasn't really sad for a negative test I had wholly expected.  I'm sad because Monday will be two months since I lost my little girl, because I would be 30 weeks exactly today, because I want to still be pregnant with her. Yes, I want another baby - but I just want her so badly.  Today and forever. 

I'm not surprised that today is a bad day, with it being such a milestone of "what would have been" - but this is just a day, like every other day.  Tomorrow we start again.

I love you, Maddie.

Physically - 7.5                            Mentally - 6.5
Emotionally - 3.5                         Spiritually - 605

8 weeks and 3 days - Cautious

I am a member of a large message board community for pregnant women, mothers, etc.  Right now, unfortunately, all of the groups to which I belong are related to pregnancy loss, trying to conceive after such a loss, and so on.  I recently joined a group that is reserved for parents (mostly women) whose babies would be due in November of 2009.  I had hoped it would be cathartic - I don't want to wallow in the loss of Maddie, but I was hoping that there would be help in reading about other women preparing for the same milestones (since I've found reading blogs and talking to others who have experienced loss so helpful).

It has not been as helpful as I hoped.  I think a lot of the women in there may have experienced their losses earlier on than I lost Maddie, and are possibly further along in the grieving process.  Almost all of the posts are about trying to conceive again, pictures of home pregnancy tests and ovulation predictor kits, all about trying again.  I am also preparing for that process for us, but I find that I am just not in that place yet.  I have hope for the future, but my heart is still with Maddie.  And, honestly, the hope that I do have for the future is tempered - I can't put absolutely all of my hopes into expecting this frozen embryo transfer to work, simply because there is such a large chance that it won't work.  I don't want to be broken again if it doesn't - I want to hope cautiously and then love ferociously if it does work.

Physically - 8                          Mentally - 8.5
Emotionally - 6.5                    Spiritually - 8.5

8 weeks and 2 days - Bittersweet

Today is our anniversary.  What a wonderful day - four years ago, I stood in the 1000 degree heat and was wedded forever to the best person I know.

I wish that it was this that had entered my mind first thing this morning - but it was, of course, Maddie.  It's so hard - today shouldn't be a day with any sadness.  I should be 29w5d pregnant, JTD should be at still at his old job, things should be blissful.  Instead, I feel like there's a dark cloud over the happiness we share today.  There's something missing - I know that's normal, but I don't like it. 

I kissed my husband awake, and we shared in the moment.  I am so grateful for him, for what we share, for the fact that I truly know now how much of a gift our marriage is.  I am so grateful to Maddie for helping me realize that fully.  I'm so grateful to God for giving me that knowledge.

Physically - 7.5                     Mentally - 7
Emotionally - 5.5                  Spiritually - 8

8 weeks and 1 day - Maddie's Daddy

Four years ago today was a Friday.  I had the day off of work as I prepared to wed the love of my life the following day.  September 3, 2005 - so long ago, and yet it was like yesterday.

I don't talk about JTD much on here, because I want to respect his privacy.  I just marvel every day at how blessed I am to have the best person I know, the best mind and the best heart, as my spouse.  God has blessed me with the most generous, caring heart I know.

The day that we married, we began the long journey that gave us Maddie.  We were both scared, excited, enthralled.  It breaks his heart as much as mine that she's gone from our sight, but he has been so very loving and concerned with me.  He has held and rocked me as I've sobbed, he waited on me hand and foot as I recovered physically, he's devoted himself to getting me through this time.  Even more touching, he's done all of this while he is experiencing his own devastating grief.  Our little girl couldn't have been more loved, and I just pray that she knows what an amazing daddy she had.  My biggest prayer is that she feels the love we both share for her.

Physically - 7.5                                               Mentally - 8
Emotionally - 6                                               Spiritually - 8

8 weeks - Radical Acceptance

I went to my grief counselor this morning for the second time.  She's a very good counselor - kind, compassionate, concerned.

One of the things we've discussed before is radical acceptance - the realization that I am in this moment, and that I am okay.  I don't have control over a lot of things, but this is what it is.  This is what I've been given, and it's mine to embrace.

One of the ways this has helped me over the past couple of weeks is in regards to all of those "what if's" - the questions of if I had done this differently, changed that, if Maddie would still be with me.  The answer is - it doesn't really matter.  I can't go back and change the way things happened, I can just learn to process that they did, and accept it as a part of my life.  I have a wonderful daughter, but through a will other than my own, she is in Heaven.  God needed her, and this is how I was meant to have her.

She also recommended that I take stock of my well-being every day.  She wants me to make sure to write down (which I'll do here) how I'm doing physically, mentally (ability to focus, etc.), emotionally, and spiritually on a scale of 1 - 10 (1 being "barely functioning," 10 being "I can climb a mountain").  This can help gauge what I'm ready to do, instead of just what I want to do, or what I think is right.  The "spiritual" aspect will mean the most - it indicates my ability to accept and cope with what I've been given.

Physically  - 8                                Mentally - 7
Emotionally - 6                              Spiritually - 7

I am grateful for an emotional 6, and a spiritual 7.

7 weeks and 6 days - Temporary Insanity

About four days before I went into labor with Maddie, my watch stopped. The battery simply died. In the time following Maddie's delivery, I somehow decided that was incredibly, I don't know, symbolic and poignant since my life stopped on that day. As the next week and a half or so wore on and I was trying to find some way to make this better, I decided that it would be equally symbolic to get the battery replaced. As the second hand started moving again, I felt some sense of disappointment - I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but nothing happened. I think I had hoped that somehow I could move time backwards and change things, or could move it forward to a time when this might possibly hurt less.


As everyone who has suffered a deep loss likely knows, there are all kinds of incredibly irrational thoughts that go through your mind to try and "fix" things. One of my most recurring thoughts over the past almost-8 weeks has been that if I could somehow concentrate all of my focus and energy into one point in space and time, I could somehow travel back through time and have my baby back, have my happiness back. Part of the grief process is just learning that it's okay to have these lapses, I think.

7 weeks and 4 days - Her Strength

One thing that is so hard about losing your baby before the world gets to share in her is that others don't get to see how strong and perfect she was.  I guess today I want to blog about Maddie's strength, and how much of a little fighter she was from the beginning.

Due to severe OHSS, we had to freeze our embryos that were graded high enough to do so back in November after retrieval.  Freezing an embryo is hard on it - which is why it was so amazing that Maddie and her sibling who was thawed/transferred at the same time both made it through the thawing process perfectly.  Both embryos were graded 4AA - she was perfect right from the beginning. 

I couldn't wait the full two weeks for the blood pregnancy test after the transfer - I had to take a home pregnancy test at about 7 days.  To my sheer amazement (since it shouldn't have shown that early), it was positive - as were the other two that I took in the subsequent days.  Our blood tests at the RE's office were about triple what the hcG level should have been - there was a lot of thought that she was twins, up until we had the first ultrasound at about 6 weeks.

That first ultrasound was magical - we saw and heard her strong little heartbeat.  She was thriving.  The TV ultrasound at about 10 weeks was even more amazing - she looked so perfect, with her little arms and legs.  And she was such a little show-off - she started bouncing around and appeared to be waving at us from the moment the ultrasound turned to her.  Our baby was perfect - and loved to perform as much as her mommy and daddy do.  :)

Since my OB waits until about 24 weeks to do the ultrasound, JTD and I went and got a 3D ultrasound from a local place at 18 weeks - I couldn't wait to see if I was indeed having a little girl.  We started crying as we learned that our little miracle child was indeed the girl we'd both been sure she was.  It wasn't easy to get all of the different poses of her, however - she moved so very much, kicking Mommy's bladder and sucking her thumb, rolling over to show off that she was perfect and active.  She paused briefly enough for us to see her beautiful face - we could tell even then that she had her Mommy's nose:

I am so very glad that we went to that ultrasound - the DVD of it is so very precious to me now, as it's the only way for me to watch Maddie move around.  I haven't been able to watch it yet, but it is so important to me to be able to see how strong she was, how much she wanted to live.  I have to believe God had her fight that long and hard so that she could get to the point she did, so that she could teach us about my IC and so that we could hopefully avoid this loss with her siblings.

This hasn't come out exactly how I wanted it to, but I wanted to take advantage of a better day to honor the little life that was and always will be.

7 weeks and 3 days - "Trying Again"

We tried so very hard to have Maddie.  I stopped taking my pills before JTD and I ever got married so that I would be ready to start trying the day we got married - and that's when we started trying for our beautiful little girl.  Because of the PCOS, I didn't ovulate and we quickly had to seek the advice of my OB.  He first had me try doing BBT, which confirmed that I wasn't ovulating.  We tried Metformin and several rounds of Clomid, to no avail.  We tried an assisted IUI (artificial insemination after trying to induce ovulation with Clomid and a shot), also to no avail.  At that point, he referred me to the fertility clinic.  We first tried a laparoscopy to do ovarian drilling and remove some of my endometriosis, since insurance covered this step - I still didn't ovulate, and my fertility doctor found that my ovaries were incredibly filled with cysts.  Finally, we moved on to IVF.  We started the process last November - I overstimulated (severe OHSS), and we froze the five best embryos (all rated perfect) so as not to put me in further danger.  On February 26, we transferred Maddie and another embryo - and, to our incredible delight and amazement, we conceived our little girl.  After so many years of trying (since Sept. of 2005), we were finally going to get our miracle baby. 

Now, we have to start over after the greatest loss of our lives.  We have to answer the question when to "try again."  We had hoped to try this month naturally before going on birth control pills to start the frozen embryo process again with the next cycle, so I've been taking my temperatures and doing ovulation predictor kits - all negative.  Now we start over and have to talk to the doctor about timing for the drugs to induce a cycle, to prepare for shots and waiting and hoping that it even works.  We're back to the beginning, but it's so much behind the beginning, because we don't have the child we should.  We're supposed to be bringing home our Maddie in November, not transferring another embryo.

My question, though, is if this is a good idea.  Do I dishonor my dear, precious miracle baby by trying again?  My head says no - I feel like she was given to us to teach us about my incompetent cervix, that she gave her life so that we might be able to give her siblings.  My heart, however - it's not healing yet.  It's still raw.  I just can't have any hope that we're going to get pregnant, since it was so hard the first time.  And, if we do, this could happen again - can I handle that?  Am I going to ever be ready to hold another baby in my arms who isn't Maddie?  I want a child so desparately - but I still want THAT child.  I want my child, my Maddie. 

I love you, Madeleine Rose.  I miss you so very, very much.

7 weeks and 2 days - Hopes and Dreams

I know how much all of my hopes and dreams weighed. They weighed exactly 13.5 ounces.

7 weeks and 1 day - "A Childless Mother"

I have recently been reading the book A Broken Heart Still Beats: After Your Child Dies.  It is a collection of poetry, short passages, and fiction by or about those who have lost children.  There is a passage that I read this weekend by W.E.B. Du Bois after he lost his two-year-old son, and was looking at his wife in the room where his child was:

"Only in the chamber of death writhed the world's most piteous thing - a childless mother..."

Wow.  That hits home on so many levels.  It first speaks to how the greatest pain in the world is being a mother without her child to hold, to love, to care for.  This is the worst pain I've ever faced.  I can handle the cancer.  I can handle things done to me.  I don't know how to handle all of my hope and dreams being gone, for my baby to not have a chance.  I wish it had been me.

The word "piteous," though, strikes home.  I can see it in people's eyes.  I'm grateful for the concern and compassion, and I want to know that they care - the pity is healing and hard, all at the same time.  There's also something else there, though, that they try to hide.  There's relief.  "I'm so glad that didn't happen to me."  I can see it there.  And I absolutely cannot blame them.  I am glad it didn't happen to them, either - although I sure as heck wish it hadn't happened to me.  People tend to stop talking about her - it's too hard for them, and I understand that.  Babies aren't supposed to die - especially not when there was so much struggle to have her, four years of trying.  This is our baby, our journey.  I don't expect anyone else to walk it with us - our friends and family are so amazingly supportive, and have poured out their affection, but this isn't their pain.  The only thing that I want is to hear people say her name every once in a while, to acknowledge that she was here.  JTD can barely bear to talk about her, but I just can't think about anything else.

7 weeks - Maddie's Birth Story

Seven weeks ago today, at 11:30 a.m., I held my precious baby girl for the second and last time.  I got to hold her an hour and a half - 90 of the most precious moments of my life.  But how did we get here?

On Monday morning (7/6/09) at about 3:30 a.m., I woke up nauseous.  I'd had an incredible amount of morning sickness, and it had NOT stopped with the end of the first trimester, whatever What to Expect When You're Expecting might say.  I took a Zofran and hoped it would stay down (it didn't).  My back ached a little bit, but I was 21w3d - since I'm only 5'2", I was already getting huge, and sleeping usually made me a little sore.  I tossed around until it was time to get up and go to work - I was feeling too sick to do so, so I stayed home and lounged on the couch.

At about 11:00 a.m., I felt incredible cramping.  It would start in my back and radiate forward.  After a few times, I noticed that it was happening every five minutes or so.  Could this be contractions??  I called and left a message for the nurse at my OB's office to call me back.  By about 12:30, I hadn't heard anything, so my husband and I started the 10-minute drive to town; I had decided to go to the ER.  The nurse called on our way in and said that I was probably just cramping from the flu, or maybe had an infection, but to come in.  I knew something was wrong - horribly wrong - but at this point I still had hope that they could put me on something to stop the contractions, to save our little girl.

As we were walking into the OB's office, I felt something (for lack of a better word) gush.  We checked in, and they sat me in the waiting room.  By this time, I was in incredible pain - I was sweating and shaking, and needed to go to the bathroom.  They finally gave me a cup to go to the bathroom, and I found that the gush was not that my water had broken - it was blood.  Tons of it.  I was terrified, because I sensed what that meant.  I went back to the receptionist and told her I needed to get in immediately.  She sent me back to my husband in the chairs, and I told him what was going on.  After a few more minutes of sitting there in agony, he went up and told the receptionist that we either needed to be seen or I was going to the ER across the street. 

My favorite nurse took me into the exam room, her concern written across her face, and Dr. L came in shortly.  He examined me and then looked at JTD and I.  With sincere compassion and sadness, he broke the news that I was 5 cm dilated, that the water bag was descending, and that I would be delivering any minute.  I had an incompetent cervix, and a resulting infection that was making me so sick.  I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach, but I was still in shock.  I looked at JTD, and saw the agony on his face, as well.  I watched him ask if we could save Maddie - and heard the words that it was just too early, that we may have been able to save her if we'd had a few more weeks.  Dr. L gave me some morphine, put me in a wheelchair, and took me across the street to the hospital all by himself.

When we got to the room (around 1:30 p.m.), he popped my water bag and said that he expected me to deliver in the next 20 minutes to 2 hours.  An ultrasound showed that Maddie was breech - at this age, that wasn't something that required C-section.  We waited and waited - I was dilated less because the pressure from the water bag wasn't on my cervix anymore, so I was in less pain, but she also wasn't coming.  I was torn between wanting my baby in me as long as I could have her, and wanting to get this horrifying event over with as quickly as possible.  At 7:00 I still hadn't delivered, so they gave me an insert that was supposed to move along the process.  At around 8:30, my baby kicked me for the last time - I think it was her way of saying goodbye.  They had to give me another insert at around 10:00 because I still wasn't dilating (much to their surprise - they had expected me to deliver much sooner), and would give me one final one if I hadn't delivered at 1:00 a.m.  It was taking so long because she was breech and so very tiny that there just wasn't enough pressure to fully dilate me to the 5 or 6 cm that was required.  I was losing quite a bit of blood and my fever kept spiking, so they only had me on a very light morphine drip - no epidural or anything else.

The nurse told me that I would just feel some pressure when I delivered Maddie, and that she would pass.  (Our nurse had experienced her own stillbirth years before, at 29 weeks, and was so caring and nurturing - she cried with us several times.) That ended up not being the case at all.  After about 13 hours of labor, I finally felt that Maddie was coming.  She was still breech - I ended up having to push several times.  Then, at 12:08 a.m. on July 7, 2009, we saw our little miracle baby come into the world.  I looked down at her with the newfound love that was in my heart - I'd loved her so desparately before, when I was pregnant, but known nothing at the time of how much love I truly had for her.  At the same time, I was filled with such horror - how could this happen?  How could she be gone, without ever getting to take a breath? 

We held her close while we waited for the placenta to deliver.  She was so breathtakingly beautiful - and absolutely perfect.  She had JTD's cleft in her little chin - and he says that absolutely everything else looked like me.  He was right - she had my button nose, just as we'd seen in the 18-week ultrasound.  The difference was that she made it so achingly beautiful.  She didn't deserve this.  Dr. L commented on what beautiful long fingers she had - she had one hand over her heart from the moment she came out, as if she were telling us that she loved us.

I was still in shock, so I only cried a little as I held her that night.  I think my mind was protecting me while I had this job to do - and it wasn't done yet.  Since I had such an infection, and my fever kept spiking up over 102.5, they needed to make sure to get out all of the placenta.  The doctor had to dig out the placenta for quite a while to make sure it was all out, so I didn't hemorrhage - I was in such intense pain that I had to hand Maddie to JTD while it was happening. 

Then, it was over.  The delivery room that should have been filled with the cries of my little girl were only filled with the quiet tears of my husband and I as we held her.  My parents came in and held her for a while, and we had her blessed by the hospital chaplain.  My body started to shut down at that point - I had been awake for 24 hours.  Everyone went home (I made JTD go home to rest), and I laid in my hospital bed thinking about my baby, the baby I'd ached for for so long.  I did not sleep for another 24 hours.  However, during that long night, the enormity of what had just happened finally hit me.  I cried for hours - the nurse who had helped deliver our little Madeleine Rose came in and talked to me during that long night.

They brought her back in for me to hold at about 11:30 the next morning.  I got to rock her, to sing to her, to hold her and tell her I love her.  It wasn't enough, though.  It won't ever be enough.  This blog keeps talking about all of my pain - but it's my little Madeleine Rose who deserved better.

6 weeks and 6 days - Maddie's Story

Seven weeks ago right now, I was starting labor, and waiting to hear back from the nurse at my OB's office to see if I should go in and be checked.  By 1:30 p.m., I was in the hospital.  It's odd - that time has both passed quickly, and the days have seemed like forever.  I hate being overdramatic, but it was seven weeks ago that my heart broke.

I should provide some background.  My husband and I were married on September 3, 2005, and started trying to get pregnant that very day. I'd been diagnosed in the past with severe polycystic ovaries and a light case of endometriosis, so we knew there might be some hurdles.


We went through reading temperatures, rounds of Clomid, artificial insemination, a laparoscopy. None of them worked. Finally, about a year and a half ago, we decided to try in-vitro. We started the process last fall, and my eggs were retrieved in November - I got horribly sick from having ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, and so they had to freeze our five perfect little embryos until I was better.

We transferred two embryos on February 26, 2009. I couldn't wait for the blood test at the doctor's office - I had to take a pregnancy test. To my delight and nervous anticipation, the first one was positive. So was the second. And the third. The blood tests were so high in hcg that the doctor thought at first that we might be having twins - my little girl had burrowed that deeply into my womb that she released that many hormones.

The next five months were a whirlwind of nervousness at the thought of losing her, and such extreme joy and delight. I experienced the most amazing moment of my life when I first felt her kick, and my husband and I got to share in the joy of finding out that she was a little girl - our little girl.

Then, on July 7, 2009, at 21 weeks and 3 days of pregnancy, tragedy struck. My little angel, my perfect, beautiful girl was stillborn at 12:08 a.m. due to an incompetent cervix and an infection. We were blessed to be able to hold her for an hour and a half that night, and then an hour and a half the next morning.

Now, however, my arms are empty. My heart aches, and my womb has shrunk. My baby is cremated and is with us always, but I can never hold her again. I can never hear her first cry, I can never watch her sleep. I can't understand why something so beautiful and strong was taken, and why I'm left with this void. I just feel this aching chasm.

At the same time, I want to honor my little girl's memory. Maddie brought so much into my life. She taught me that my husband and I could be even closer than we were before. She sacrificed her life so that we could know about this condition and so that we might be able to give her siblings. Perhaps most importantly, she taught me about the capacity of love I have. I always thought people were just being cruel when they told me that you don't know what it means to love until you're a parent - I learned while looking at that perfect, beautiful face that they are right. I loved that girl when she was inside of me, but I learned through the pain of delivery and looking at her that I couldn't ever imagine what love is, or what pain is.

I just wanted to take a moment to share my beautiful, perfect angel with the world. I can't ever have her back, and all I can do is cry a thousand times, but I can make sure her story doesn't die.

6 weeks and 5 days

6 weeks and 5 days.  That's how long it's been since my precious girl was taken.  That's how time is measured now - time "before," and how long "since."

I miss my baby.  I miss her so much every single day, every single minute.  She's the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning, and her urn is the last thing I look at before I close my eyes every night. 

There are so many things I can't truly express to people.  I cannot fully express how, even surrounded by people who love me and who are caring for me, I am absolutely alone.  There is no other person who knows how I feel, who feels this loss.  Maddie wasn't anyone else's baby - she was mine, and it's my body that couldn't support her.  It was I who failed to be able to conceive her naturally, and it was I who failed at bringing her life. 

I also don't think anyone else can truly understand what a loss there is in Maddie.  So many people don't realize that she was truly a baby.  By law, we had to have her body either buried or cremated.  By law, we had to have a death certificate.  She was between 10 and 11 inches long, and was 13.5 oz. - she was the length of my arm.  Her beautiful little head nestled perfectly into my hand as I held her for the short hour and a half after I delivered her, and again the next morning when I got to hold her for another hour and a half.  It hurts that we couldn't share the beautiful girl we made with the world - JTD and I, the nurses and Dr. L, the hospital chaplain, Mom & Dad, Grandma & Grandpa... those were the only people who got to behold what a special little piece of perfection she was.  Only those few people got to see that she had JTD's clefted chin, that she had my nose, that her fingers were beautifully long and delicate.  Before anyone had the chance, she was gone - nobody else got to share in the memories of her, got to hold her. 

There are some who expect me to move on, to be "getting better" - there is no way to get better from this.  My child will forever be gone.  This sorrow isn't a puddle or a lake - it's a wide, yawning sea.