Processing

How can I only have had my baby for 17 days? How can it be that I will never see her again? How can it be that she is cold and naked in a morgue and I never be able to make her warm again? How can my breasts be full of milk and hurt so bad and I will never be able to feed you?

How do you plan a funeral service for a baby? Or anyone? I don't even know who to call. Visions of tiny caskets are filling me with horror and make me want to scream NO NO NO NO. Not MY baby. Not my Harper bean. How do you have a memorial service for someone you never really got to know? Who never had a favorite place or a life outside the NICU?

Harper bean, I am so so very sorry that you didn't come home. That you never got to go outside and feel the fresh air. That we couldn't kiss your face without tubes and wires until after you were gone. That we were not there for you in every minute and every moment of your too short life. That we didn't get to take you on all the adventures we had planned, that we never took the family portraits we wanted to remember you by, that you never got to sleep in your crib with the new sheets I bought especially for you. I'm sorry you never got to wear the going home outfit I picked out for you. And that I never found the blanket we lost at the hospital. I am sorry for so so many things, but will never be sorry for having had the chance to be your mommy.

I hope you knew how much we loved you. I hope you could feel us holding you and were comforted. I hope you knew that for every second of that nine months you were inside of me I wanted you and loved you and dreamed for you and thought about you.

It seemed like she waited for us. As soon as we got to the hospital and held her, she began to let go. We got to sing to her and hold her and kiss her and let her know how much we loved her. And her tiny heart got slower and slower and finally stopped beating. She felt so cold and all I wanted to do was make her warm.

We almost didn't make it. The road was closed. We had to detour through Virginia. It was the only time we took that route, because it was so late, we thought there'd be no traffic. And the damn road was closed.

But we did make it. We were there when our baby needed us.

I kept expecting holding my dead child would get creepy or start to feel wrong. We sat and cried with her for a long time after her heart stopped. But holding her, finally unencumbered by tubes or wires or leads or tape felt more natural in some ways than all the times we cuddled her in the NICU, trying so hard not to displace any of her tethers, ignoring the constant beeping of the monitors. In the end, she was my beautiful baby girl in my arms, and all I wanted to do was hold her. And hold her.

We tried to tell Shea this morning. He doesn't understand, of course, and we don't really expect him, too. It' was healing to cuddle with him this morning, and hear his laughter, but amazing how much unintentional pain a three year old can cause.

"Maybe she will come home later," he says. "Maybe she will get better later." He wants to know who will use the bassinet and jumperoo. "That's for baby Harper," he tells me. I tell him again that baby Harper won't be coming home. "Maybe a new baby will come and use it," he replies. I hope so, boo. I really hope so.

I wonder if he will even have any memories of her?

"Shea, do you remember how you went to the hospital and met baby Harper, and she held your hand?"

"Yes," says Shea."She loved to hold hands."

And he's right. She really, really did.