A Day for Grace

Ten years ago today I should have been sitting up in St. Mary's hospital, holding a little pink bundle, counting fingers and toes. Scott and I should have been marveling at little pink cheeks, comparing her weight to our other kids, and fitting a new car seat into our lives. We should have....but we didn't. I never got to hold her, I didn't even have the courage to go in and see her. I can still remember lying in the hospital recovery room almost six months pregnant and having a doctor I had never met running an ultra sound over my tummy and clinically informing that my baby had died.

We named her Grace June. I don't know if she had lived if that would have been her name, but when they gave us the paperwork to fill out, Scott and I hadn't decided on a name, and so we named her after Scott's Grandmother and the middle name from my aunt that died in infancy.

Today was my due date, and even though I know that babies usually don't abide by a calendar, it's the date that I hold on to. Even though I don't think a day goes by that I don't think of both babies that I lost, the respective due dates are the hardest, February 15th and April 12th. Our first baby would have been 19 this year, and our little girl would have been 10. Missed birthday parties, blessings, baptisms, first days of school, dance recitals and Christmas mornings. Instead I have a little satin box with a few mementos from the hospital and a certificate of her birth. She was too little for her footprints to go on the certificate, right at a pound.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I haven't enjoyed or that I am not grateful for the children that I have, obviously from previous posts on this blog my children are an enormous joy in my life. But I miss the rest of my family. Maybe if I had been a little stronger, I would have tried again. I couldn't do it though, the fear of losing another child made Scott and I decide that even money would have to be good enough. Days like today though are pretty tough, I hope I get the rest of my children for the eternities. I hope...

I don't obsess about our loss, but I think at ten years our little girl deserves some acknowledgment.