I have such a happy memory from the day I lost my baby.  I sat on the couch and watched my husband and two year old daughter dancing, her legs around his waist, their hands clasped together and her face lit up with smiling laughter.  I saw all this over the view of my 38 week pregnant belly, so glad that our family would be complete when we finally met our next daughter and our "baby sister", Beatrice.

How much can change in a few hours!  No heartbeat on the Doppler, a still form on the ultrasound, an unbeating heart.  My midwife grabbed my hand. 

The next few hours were a blur - my father coming to take my daughter, another ultrasound, words like "we lost our baby", "delivery soon" and "you will want to hold her and see her" floated around me and past me.  

Inside I was screaming.  I was wailing.

I asked for a cesarean because I felt I would not be able to give birth to her naturally.  It's become one more thing to add to the list in how I failed her.  I should have given her that.  In my heart, I felt I would not be able to do it, that I would break down in the middle and end up with a cesarean anyway.  So I watched the clock until 8 pm, visitors coming and going, nurses asking me things to do with losing your baby.  Did I want the delivery chronicled in video?  Did we want a charity to come take photos of her?  How could I decide these things?  I could barely comprehend why I was in the hospital on this day, when I should be home preparing dinner for my family and preparing my home for my new baby.  

Not that I had much left to do.  I was ready for her.  I felt ready since the day we knew we were going to have another baby.  Ready even before we knew she was with us.  And now.  She was just gone.

***

We held her but not enough.  We kissed her soft head of hair, her cheek.  We stroked her skin, the spot below her neck, the skin as yet untouched by death.  They told us we could keep her with us as long as we wanted.  Really?  As long as we wanted??  To me, that meant taking her home with me, nurturing her through her infancy, caring for her through childhood, guiding her through her teen years and seeing her finally as an adult.  

There would never be a time I didn't want her.

Now, it was as if I was saying she needed to be fed because she was rooting, or she needed a diaper change because she was crying... we arranged for her grandparents to say goodbye and then we held her for the last time.  Her little body was breaking down and we didn't want her to get any worse, protecting the only thing we had left.  So we decided it was time to let her go.  It was as if we noticed she was getting sleepy and it was time for a nap.  

Except it was none of those things.  It was watching her through swollen eyes leave our room and our lives.  Our last act as her parents.