Cheering Me Up

It took four days before anyone thought to inform me (and then it was only in a batch email sent out to me and my cousins), but my sister had a beautiful baby boy on Valentine's Day. Holland Vaughn Carter weighed 7 lbs 13 oz, and was 21 1/4 inches long. I'm trying to be pissed off that it took so long for anyone to let me know about my brand new nephew, but its hard to stay mad when I can't stop looking at the picture and smiling. Dang, he's cute.

Anticipation Derailed

Skinny, naked toddler here has not slept in his bedroom since I came home from the hospital (nearly a month ago now). He insists on sleeping on the green sofa, so we have moved his silly leopard-print pillow (the one he swiped from me more than a year ago) and his blanket to the living room. We have also moved the baby monitor, and we have laid down a huge body pillow on the floor against the sofa so that Ray-Ray won't bang his head on the floor when he rolls off.

Preston and I pretend to be irritated by this new sleeping arrangement, but secretly we love it. Now, we can smile over at him while he falls asleep, and we can keep an eye on him while we watch TV or read until we go to bed ourselves. If anything, Preston and I need the reassurance that he is still there as much as Ray needs the reassurance that WE are still there.

Every day is a little bit easier until now I find I go long stretches of time without crying over the loss of Bailey. I am different in ways, including being MUCH more sensitive than I used to be, and being highly irrational about being separated from Ray. It used to not bother me so much if he went somewhere with my mother or my husband for an hour or two, but I almost lost my mind yesterday when mom suggested that I let Ray go with her and the other little kids to the store for an hour. I COULD NOT HANDLE THE THOUGHT OF BEING AWAY FROM HIM FOR THAT LONG.

This Sunday, I would have marked the halfway point of my pregnancy with Bailey. And yesterday was my OB appointment for the big, important ultrasound where you can find out what the sex of the baby is, and even videotape the baby's movements, as we did more than two years ago when I was pregnant with Ray. I knew it would be tough day and I was so hung up on it the night before that I had a hard time sleeping. More than I expected though, the hurt came crashing back down during the time I would have had the doctors appointment, and I lost it emotionally in a way that actually scared me. Depression is not something I have had any real experience with, and this is the first time I have ever truly felt like a failure. I may know intellectually that I did not CAUSE the infection that threatened my life and took the life of my child, but I am still having a hard time getting past the blame that I have laid upon myself.

The date of this ultrasound, and July 9th when Bailey was due to be born, are the last two dates that I had marked in my calendar in anticipation of Bailey. I plan to be on a long vacation, far away from here on the day Bailey was due. Maybe that will make it easier.

The Valentine's Day Dinner Massacre

There are times when I get just a little bit too full of myself, and there are, of course, times when I got taken down a notch or two. Yesterday, I ate humble pie (recipe not included here).

My hospital bills are completely outrageous, and our health insurance premiums are almost doubling next month, so all frivolous spending has been nixed around here. We actually put a stop to the discretionary part of our budget two and a half years ago when we decided to get pregnant and renovate a house, but belt tightening is being taken to a new level now.

Valentine's Day isn't such a big deal to us anyhow, and Preston and I both have fun poring over greeting card selections to find the ABSOLUTE perfect card for each occasion. And so, we agreed last week that greeting cards would be the only presents we would indulge in, and I would make us a special meal for Valentine's Day dinner. Seemed easy enough. After all, I love to cook. And I'm good at it, right? Piece of cake.

On Friday, I came across a recipe for a dark chocolate creme brulee and I ran right out to get the ingredients. Creme brulee is one of my favorite desserts, and it is one that I have never before attempted at home. I skimmed the recipe and decided it would be no problem to whip it up for dessert with our Valentine's Day dinner.

By Monday I had our menu: spicy catfish fillets, steamed Idaho potato for Preston and steamed sweet potato for me and Ray, spinach and feta side salad, and dark chocolate creme brulee. I was proud. But in hindsight, I now remember that pride cometh before a fall.

On Tuesday morning, I was up at the crack of dawn. By 7 am, I had showered, fixed my hair, put on makeup, packed the diaper bag and the briefcase, and gotten the grocery list together. By 8am, Ray and I were at the grocery store. By 9am, the groceries were all put away at home, and Ray and I were at mom's house, ready for me to begin work and for Ray to begin his playtime with his Aunt Tabby and Uncle Nando. Everything was going my way.

I got in a great day of work, and even managed to enjoy about an hour of pre-nap snuggling with Ray. I skipped my afternoon workout, and Ray and I went home to get a head start on dinner. I collected all the ingredients for each of the dishes, put my recipes side by side on the counter, warmed up the oven, and planned the order in which everything would happen. I was so organized. I wrapped the potatoes in aluminum foil and put them in the oven first. Then I prepared the spice rub for the catfish, and began the prep for the creme brulee. I had the schedule all worked out. The potatoes would cook for an hour and 15 minutes, then I would increase the heat in the oven and broil the fish for the last 10 minutes of the potatoes cooking time. While the fish was in the oven, I would assemble the spinach salad. And then, while we ate dinner, I would put the creme brulees in the oven.

We sat down to dinner right on time and enjoyed our spinach salad first course. And this is where everything started to fall apart.

The spicy catfish was bland and boring. I grumbled while I choked it down. Then Preston unwrapped his potato and I watched disconsolately as he tried unsuccessfully to get a knife through it. I unwrapped mine and had the same problem. Preston smiled at me. I had clearly not cooked the potatoes long enough. We pretended to eat a few bites until I gave up and went to check on the custards. I figured I could at least redeem myself with the dessert course.

But they hadn't even begun to congeal. "Dessert will be served a little late," I said. And then I read over the rest of the recipe to make sure I was prepared for the last step of torching the sugar layer on top. "Uh oh," I groaned. Preston grinned at me from across the kitchen. "Now what?" he laughed.

Well, here's the thing. The recipe CLEARLY stated the time estimate at the top. Hands-on time was listed as 20 minutes (I had already done this part - warming the milk, melting the chocolate, stirring in the extracts, and whisking in the eggs and salt). Total time was listed as 1 hour (made total sense - 20 minutes of hands on time plus 40 minutes in the oven equals one hour total time). WHAT WAS NOT MENTIONED IN THE TIME ESTIMATE WAS THE FOUR FRIGGIN HOURS OF CHILLING TIME IN THE REFRIGERATOR.

For pity's sake. I smiled winningly at my loving husband and said "Dessert will be served tomorrow night."

Torta di Pasta

Note (March 27, 2010): The following post was written during a time of debilitating grief in our family. I only recently re-read it while linking this recipe to a Tweet about a recent meal, and for a brief moment or two, I thought about deleting all the personal information and just leaving the recipe. However, in a small attempt to honor Bailey, our second son, a very premature infant who was stillborn, I would prefer to leave these words here. Deleting them seems to come too close to an erasure of the memory. I know this is a food blog, but it is also a chronicle of life in my family, where meals are enjoyed together, mistakes are made, life is lived, and sometimes souls are laid bare.

For the first week after we lost Bailey, I wandered around my house in a daze. I didn't work, I didn't cook, I didn't clean. I mostly just existed. By the end of that week (a seven-day-long-year), I still couldn't make it through an hour without crying, but I was simultaneously going stir crazy from all the inactivity and while remaining incapable of pulling out of the depression.

The only thing that has really helped me deal with the grief was throwing myself back into a long daily to-do list. As long as I have a list of tasks to accomplish, and as long as my perfectionist tendencies are guiding my hand, I like to think I can make it through nearly any emotional trauma (though I have very little experience with this kind of thing). After all, I have to continue being a mother to Ray no matter what tragedy has befallen us. I still have clients who depend on me, no matter how much I want to lay in bed and wallow in self-pity. The bills still have to get paid, the plants have to be watered, thank you notes must be written, phone calls must be returned... Thank God for busywork.

Even after all the chores are complete, and the work has been finished and delivered to the clients, there are hobbies to indulge in and a family to dote upon. And this is where I derive the most healing and comfort.

For the first few days after the meals from friends were gone, I skulked into the kitchen and managed to pull something together for dinner, but "getting by" isn't my forte. A week ago, I sat down with the Everyday Italian cookbook that my sister-in-law gave to me for Christmas, and I started slapping sticky notes on recipes I wanted to try PRONTO.

During the 16 short weeks of my pregnancy with Bailey, I didn't try many new recipes. I just didn't have the energy nor the stomach for attempting new dishes, and I didn't even feel like reading cookbooks. This past week, I have thrown myself wholeheartedly back into cooking, catching up on my food reading and trying four new recipes in five days.

I have taken immense pleasure in living in the kitchen again, and very few things please me more than holding out a forkful of something new for Preston and Ray to taste. So far, my favorite recipe from Everyday Italian is the Torta Di Pasta, an incredibly textured, unusual-sounding, yet simple pasta pie that I made for the first time one evening last week. Even more amazing was that we ate the leftovers for Sunday brunch three or four days later, and it was still just as satisfying. This recipe will go into heavy rotation in my repertoire.

*****

TORTA DI PASTA

• Salt
• 8 oz dried spaghetti noodles (I used whole wheat spaghetti noodles, of course)
• 1/2 cup drained oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
• 4 large eggs
• 3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• 3/4 cup freshly grated fontina or mozzarella cheese
• 1 1/2 tsps kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 Tbs unsalted butter
• 1 Tbs olive oil

1. Cook the pasta to al dente in a large pot of heavily salted, boiling water. DO NOT OVERCOOK (this means you, mom).
2. Drain the cooked noodles and toss with the sun-dried tomatoes. Set aside to cool.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, Parmesan, fontina or mozzarella, 1 1/2 tsp salt, and the pepper to blend.
4. Add the egg mixture to the noodles, and toss to coat.
5. Preheat the broiler.
6. In a 9 1/2-inch ovenproof nonstick skillet, preferably cast-iron, melt the butter and oil over medium heat.
7. Transfer the spaghetti mixture to the skillet, pressing to form an even layer.
8. Cook until the bottom is golden brown, about 3 minutes.
9. Transfer the skillet to the oven and broil until the top is golden brown, about 5 minutes.
10. Cut into wedges, and serve hot or at room temperature

A New Kind of Normal

Things are returning to normal around our house, but our concept of normal has changed. Now, if I go all day without crying, feeling so angry I think I might explode, or wondering why I didn't just let the infection kill me, then I feel like we've had a normal day. Preston and I are both back to running our businesses, and Ray has started sleeping again. Dinner gets cooked every night, dirty clothes get washed and put away, the dishes get done, and I put makeup on each morning. Since these are all things that we did before I was hospitalized, I am willing to call this "normal."

The sadness over losing Bailey has lessened considerably to become only a dull ache that I carry around with me, and I have ceased trying to figure out why this happened. Guilt was the prevaling emotion for a while, as I began to come to terms with what I thought happened in the hospital. Essentially, Bailey died as a result of a medically necessary abortion. We can try to use phrases like "induced labor" or "stillborn baby," but if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck...

While I kept the guilt inside me, I focused solely on what I remember happening. In my mind, Bailey died because I made the decision to let the doctor give me the medicine that would induce labor, which was something we KNEW would kill the baby. I know that four doctors (two of whom were Catholic and one of whom is related to us), a nurse (who happens to be my sister-in-law), my husband, my mother, my mother-in-law, and two of our pastors all agreed with the decision, in fact pushed me to make the decision, but that didn't really take the burden off of me. No one could force me to take the medicine that would induce the labor. Preston even asked the doctor if he could override me and have the doctors dope me up to give me the medicine when I was threatening to just walk out of the hospital and take my chances with the infection (the legal answer was no).

I have since talked this over with my husband, my mother, and my sister-in-law, and they have all helped remind me of things I had forgotten, like that my own life was at stake and that the baby would not have lived even if I had not taken the medicine to induce labor. For the past few weeks, I have even wondered if maybe I didn't give God time to perform a miracle. My sister-in-law told me this week though, that we DID get a miracle. The miracle is that I am still alive and that my uterus is okay. She said that the only thing that would have happened if I had chosen to NOT take the medicine is that I would have died along with Bailey. I suppose that puts things into perspective.

Now I wonder if I even want to try and get pregnant again, or if I should just be grateful for the family I have and move on from here. After all, if I don't have another baby, I could get back to my pre-motherhood goals, like going to grad school, or finishing one of the novels I started writing way back when. But this probably isn't the best time to make a decision like this...

And so we keep going. We get up in the morning, we go to bed at night, and I spend every day hoping that we return to the happy people we used to be.

Bringing Bailey Home

Before I got pregnant with Bailey, I had already decided that I would not find out whether it was a boy or a girl this time around. My entire family was frustrated by this, but it just seemed like fun to me. Once I got pregnant, and we found out the date that the ultrasound would be in which we could find out what we were having (Feb 17), it became a challenge to me as well. I planned to take a videotape, like I did with Ray, but to not watch it until after Bailey was born. I could hardly wait for the moment, during childbirth, when the doctor would say either "Its a boy" or "Its a girl."

One of the many incredibly heartbreaking moments during the induced premature birth and death of Bailey was when the lifeless little body was delivered out of the birth canal, and the doctor quietly said, "Its a boy." The moment I had so looked forward to turned into the most tragic event of my life.

The induced labor took all day on Monday, January 23. It was sometime during the long wait that Preston and I decided that we would cremate Bailey's remains and keep them with us at our home. I couldn't bear the thought of the hospital "disposing of him" as they phrased it. On the following day, we met in the hospital with the funeral home director and Preston picked out an urn for Bailey.

This past Monday evening, Preston waited until after dinner and then turned to me and said, "I'm bringing Bailey home tomorrow." My heart stopped. For the briefest second, I imagined it was 10 years in the future and that Preston was talking about picking Bailey up from Little League or school or whatever. Instead, of course, Preston was talking about bringing Bailey's remains home to us. Bailey is, after all, gone. All we have left are ashes.

Preston called on Tuesday afternoon to let me know he was on his way home from work. I asked him if he would be picking up Bailey's urn on the way, but he said no, that he had picked the urn up earlier that morning. "He's been riding around with me all day," Preston said. Once more, I felt my heart crack.

The urn is marble, and so very small. Bailey's full name is inscribed on it, along with only one date,that of January 23, 2006. Since he was stillborn, there is no birth certificate and therefore no death certificate. According to the funeral home director, Bailey's death was considered a fetal demise, and so there will be no public record. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me because, after all, I held his little body. To me and Preston, Bailey did exist, if even for the briefest time. It saddens me greatly that so many people will never even consider his life. Will my parents count Bailey when people ask them how many grandchildren they have? Will Ray count him when classmates ask how many siblings he has?

We have put the urn on the mantle in the kitchen for now, next to one of our favorite candid wedding pictures, a black and white print that my was taken by my best friend from childhood. It is oddly comforting to have his remains with us, home with our family. I had to make myself leave the house the next morning. I felt I should stay home with Bailey, or even take him with us if we left the house, and I knew I was on the verge of being very irrational about the whole thing. This urn is not a baby, but the earthly remains of a life that has already left us. While I got the diaper bag together, Ray followed close on my heels with his arms up like he always does. And, like I always do, I kept saying, over and over, to reassure him, "I'm not going to forget my baby. Mama's never gonna forget her baby." This time though, there was a whole new meaning to the reassurance.

Something To Live For

Because he is so young, Ray has no concept of what has just happened in our family. Before I lost the baby, I was just beginning to show, and Ray had a great time poking at my swelling belly, but he would only look at me oddly when I tried to explain that there was a baby in there. I would point at my belly and say, "baby." He would frown, point at my belly and say, quite vehemently, "belly, mama!"

I am forever grateful that he is too young to understand what has happened. I will tell him about Bailey when he is older, but for now, Ray's obliviousness is what is getting me and Preston through this awful hopelessness. I feel guilty every time I feel a moment of happiness, scared to move on from mourning Bailey, but since Ray doesn't have to know guilt yet, he has no qualms about being silly. It is his silliness that allows me to smile without feeling guilty. And it is his life, and the hope for his future, that gives me something to live for.

Motherhood Interrupted

During the six days and five nights that I spent in the hospital, while I was being robbed of my chance to be a mother to Bailey, I was also being cheated out of a week of being a mother to Ray. The double whammy cost me a lot, and made the first few days back at home even harder than I expected, while I fought my own grief and tried to re-instill a sense of security back into Ray.

Ray is 23 months old now, and before this tragedy, we had never been apart for more than three or four hours at a time, and even that was extremely seldom. Twice, Preston and I left Ray with my mother while we went to see a movie. Once, mom kept Ray for an afternoon while I struggled with tax deadlines. And there were times he stayed at mom's or with my grandmother for an hour while I went to a doctor visit or to get a haircut. We had never spent a night apart, and even though Ray has a blast at my mother's house, I could only rarely bring myself to leave him over there to play while I came home to get something or another done.

On the Thursday that I was admitted to the hospital, I woke up in considerable pain and we knew that I would have a kidney ultrasound later in the day. At the time, we were all (including the doctor) hoping that I had kidney stones. Thursdays are my busiest workdays of the week, and mom, Preston and grandma were all jumping to give me a hand. Yolie was even offering to bring dinner over so I wouldn't have that to worry about as well.

While Preston went to town to pick up my work for me, mom came over to pick up Ray at around 8:30 in the morning. Normally, I only work during the two to three hours of Ray's afternoon nap, the better for us to never really be apart. The plan that day though was for me to try and knock out my work in the morning and then be ready for my ultrasound and be able to take the afternoon off to deal with the pain, if necessary.

Ray went with mom without hardly a backwards glance at me, and I took a shower, relieved to spend a few minutes with hot water massaging some of the pain from my back. Then, I went upstairs and tried to slam through my work as quickly as possible while the Tylenol helped to keep me upright. By around 10:00 though, a wave of pain hit me so hard I nearly fell off my chair. I stood up to go to the bathroom, and was horrified to see blood in the toilet. I burst into tears and went downstairs to lay down in bed. I had never made myself aware of the bad things that can happen in pregnancy (part of my mother's Pollyanna legacy), but I knew that if blood appeared, it was time to lay down.

I crawled into bed and called the doctor. They told me to come in as soon as I left the place where the renal ultrasound would be done. I called Preston to let him know what was going on, and then I called my mother and asked her to get on the internet and look up kidney stones. At the time, I didn't panic. The blood scared me nearly out of my mind, and the pain was close in intensity to labor pains, but I'd had a friend (another healthy vegetarian) who had been briefly hospitalized for kidney stones during her first pregnancy and I was comforted knowing that everything had gone fine for the baby.

Mom read information about kidney stones to me over the phone and I breathed a sigh of relief. ALL the symptoms fit: the blood, the pain, the cloudy urine, everything. Though I wasn't looking forward to dealing with the stones, I knew I could handle anything as long as it meant the baby would be okay.

By mid-afternoon that day, kidney stones had all but been ruled out, and my OB was admitting me to the hospital. She said I most likely had a severe kidney, bladder or uterine infection and that outpatient treatment had failed. An ultrasound was done of the baby, and since everything seemed fine there, and since the doctor didn't say ONE WORD about the baby being in danger, I went to the hospital and was laying there in a bed by dinnertime, making a list of things Preston would need to bring to me, and worrying myself sick about Ray.

For most of the hospital stay, I didn't worry about Bailey, and I hardly worried at all about my own health. I worried most about Ray and about how he would deal with my absence. There were moments, obviously, when the other worries loomed large: on Friday, when the baby was given only a 50% chance, and then on Sunday, when I was told the baby was dying; and of course on Monday, when labor had to be induced. On Saturday though, the baby's heartbeat was still fine, my fever had gone down, and the doctor was talking about sending me home on Sunday morning. The worry over Bailey went away, and I focused instead solely on Ray and on how I couldn't wait to get back to our normal schedule.

Ray spent the days of Thursday, Friday and Saturday at my mother's house. On each of those evenings, Preston picked him up at dinnertime and took him home to bathe him, feed him, play with him and put him to bed. Preston spent the nights at home, and he was the one to get Ray ready in the mornings. Ray seemed fine with the situation, though Preston told me he would come home in the evenings and walk into all the rooms calling for me. He didn't get his naps on those days, but he had fun with mom's children and so I didn't worry too much about lasting effects.

On Sunday, when everything went all to hell at the hospital, Ray's care had to change even more. He still spent the days of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday at my mother's house, but he had to do without Preston as well as me. Preston went home on Sunday evening to put Ray to bed, but it was my mother-in-law and sister-in-law who stayed at our house for the night and were the ones to get Ray out of bed in the morning. It was then that I knew not only was the baby inside me dying, but that Ray was going through an awful adjustment without his parents who had up until now ALWAYS been there with him.

My in-laws dropped Ray off at my mom's house on Monday morning and came to the hospital to be with me and Preston. Mom followed soon after, leaving Ray and all of her children with Grandma and Yolie. That night, Ray spent the night at my grandparent's house, his first night away from both his home and his parents at the same time. He was a trooper though, and let Grandpa give him a bath with Jack, and then fell asleep with Lily without putting up a fight.

It hurt me incredibly to spend so long away from my life as a mother. On Friday, Sunday and Tuesday, Ray was brought to the hospital to spend an hour or so with me, but each time he would sit on the bed next to me, hunched over and quiet, obviously confused and becoming insecure. When it was time to leave, he would kiss me and go quietly out of the room with whoever had brought him there. It broke my heart.

On Sunday, mom told me she went into the kitchen at her house to find Ray just standing there crying for no apparent reason. On Tuesday, when he woke up at Grandma's house, he sat up and began crying right away. Sunday morning, when my mother-in-law and sister-in-law got Ray ready to go to mom's house, he stood in the middle of the living room and cried, not wanting to go with them. I wonder if he didn't know where they were taking him, and if he thought that he should stay home in case his parents came back for him.

Ray is starting to act like his normal happy-go-lucky self again, but I am dealing with tantrums that are new from him, and there are times when he clings to me or to Preston like he never has before. It is possible that I am reading too much into his behavior, but after spending so many years as the only birth child in a large adoptive family, and after listening to so many discussions and interpretations of my siblings' rage and acting out, it was inevitable that I would start to associate some of what I have learned about abandonment from them to what has happened to my own child while I was gone for a week.

For years, when I have tried unsuccessfully to relate to my siblings, or when I have attempted to be a part of the discussions of their behaviors, my mother or one of the older siblings have snapped at me that I don't know anything about loss, or abandonment, or grief, etc, and I have essentially felt shut out. I only wish I could return to those days. I have an empathy now for my siblings that didn't exist before, and while I am appreciative of that on many levels, I can't help but be aware of the cost at which I have gained this empathy and understanding.

Hope in Other Babies

I wonder now if God wasn't protecting me somehow, preparing me for this to happen. When I found out I was pregnant with Bailey, I blogged once about the happy occasion, and then only once more before abandoning this blog for two months. In my head, I was blogging all along, with inane little monologues about my changing taste in food and about the weight I was gaining. In my pregnancy with Ray, I put on the pounds like there was no tomorrow. Gaining weight was new to me, and it was absurdly fun. This time, for some reason, I was gaining weight more slowly, but still slightly faster than the experts suggest. By about the thirteenth week of the pregnancy, I had put on 13 pounds and was having a blast trying to stuff myself into my largest pair of non-maternity jeans. My early pregnancy pants from the last pregnancy were capri pants, not something I can wear in January, so I knew I would have to go out and buy just one pair of small maternity jeans to get me through until I needed the larger pairs left over from last time. For three weeks, I picked up a pair at Walmart (correct size, easily affordable) and looked at them for 10 minutes or so before putting them back on the rack and walking away. Didn't make any sense at the time, especially since I was holding my jeans on with rubber bands around the snaps to buy me another inch or so.

Now when I read back on my last two posts here in November, it is painful, and I am both grateful and dismayed that I didn't record more details of the pregnancy. At the time, I thought it would last for 40 weeks, and there was plenty of time to capture the magic and the hilarity of pregnancy. Never once, in either pregnancy, did I worry that I might lose the baby. It just never occured to me. And this time I kept having the hardest time remembering what week of pregnancy I was in. With Ray, I subscribed to an online newsletter that was sent to me during each week of the pregnancy, describing exactly what was happening with the baby and with my body. I guess I felt more confident this time, because I did not re-subcribe to the newsletter, with the net result being that I often had to count on my fingers and toes to remember what week I was in.

Painfully, I am having a very easy time pinpointing the week of pregnancy that I should be in now. I was 16 weeks along when I lost Bailey, and I struggled into church yesterday, knowing that I should have been 17 weeks along then. I know two other people who are expecting babies within two days of when Bailey was due, and I have no intention of being around them for even a minute during the next five months. I do not begrudge ANYONE their healthy pregnancy or their healthy newborn. I just don't want to be around someone who will be living the exact timeline that I have been robbed of. A girl in our church was in the same hospital I was in, giving birth in the next wing while my doctor was telling me that my baby only had a 50% chance of making it. Amazingly, I was happy for this other girl and her family, and even encouraged in some odd way, knowing that this acquaintaince was down the hall, bringing new life into the world.

The morning after I lost Bailey, when I had woken up from the hour and a half of sleep that sustained me for about 48 hours, I heard a new baby squalling not far from the door of my room in the new and beautiful Family Birthing Center. I smiled and said something about that being a hungry baby to Preston and to the incredible nurse that was tending to me. The nurse asked if it bothered me, but I said no, that it was the most beautiful thing I had heard in days.

Preston and mom both mentioned that every time they went outside after I had been moved to labor and delivery, that they had to walk by the window where the newborns are displayed. Both of them said that it did not bother them. Preston was even asked once by a stranger in the hall, during the day I was delivering Bailey's lifeless little body, if he was waiting for a baby to be born or if he was visiting one. He blanked for a minute, and then replied that he was waiting.

When it was time for me to leave the hospital, the nurse asked if I wanted to go out the back way, instead of being wheeled past the baby window. As much as I wanted to see those babies, to receive some affirmation that life was continuing, I did not want any of the new moms, or their families, to see me being wheeled out without a baby in my arms. I didn't want them to wonder where my baby was. I didn't even want them to be aware that this kind of thing had happened right down the hall from where the happiest event in their lives had just taken place. It was an awful, indescribably isolating feeling.

Mourning Bailey

The infinite sadness of the past week seems to have now been replaced by a vast and frightening emptiness. I am working hard to keep my head above water, but in my mind I am running a non-stop loop of the events of the past two weeks. Looking back, seeing all that led up to the moment late Monday night when I delivered a 3-ounce baby who had already left us, it now seems like, through that week, we were all caught on a runaway freight train that was rushing us into the awful despair that followed. As it happened, of course, we had no idea of what was coming. And it all seemed to happen in slow-motion at the time, though now I see it differently. Life, after all, can turn on a dime.

I am hoping to put pen to paper (or, in this case, fingers to keyboard) so that I can record my memory of that awful week, hoping that if I write it all down, that I will cease to replay everything over and over and over again. This may not be the appropriate forum for it, but it is all I have. The easy happiness and the flippant attitude with which I wrote previously in this blog is now gone. The Before Sarah is a completely different person from the unrecognizable After Sarah that I have become, at least temporarily.

We are no longer the caricatures that I wrote about before. The Southern Foodie, The Carnivore and The Odd Toddler are now simply Sarah, Preston and Ray. Reality just doesn't allow for humor right now.

I used to say that nothing bad ever happens to me. I sincerely miss the old me, the one who believed that would always remain true. I know now that the worst can happen, and it can come out of nowhere. If I do this right, I will come through on the other side without this current abiding fear that the worst can happen again.

I am having a hard time finding God right now, and God's comfort is completely elusive. I forget to pray. I forget to eat. This morning, I realized I had forgotten to breathe for a moment. I appreciate everyone's prayers, and we continue to need them desperately.