The eighth month

On a bitter cold day, I was swept up in a fit of nesting.

I unpacked baby clothes. Again. I found some tiny pink girls things given as gifts to Harper. I paused, I set them aside. I ignored the sense of deja vu.

Then, I began a baby book for the spawn.

I was doing OK until I got to the page asking about brothers and sisters. I stopped, and thought a lot about how to answer. "I should definitely put down Harper, right?", I brought Lou into the decision. He paused, too, for a moment, before answering, "Yes, of course." How to answer the question about a sibling's age? Ultimately, I decided to stick with birthdates and, in Harper's case, her date of death.

But I almost wrote down her birthday wrong.

Forgetting is sometimes my greatest fear.

Last night, another baby unexpectedly born with SLO died. Not surprisingly, I've been thinking a lot about it, trying to remember what it was like to be in that place, that point in time.

Ridiculous as it sounds, in some ways everything was easier when the emotions were intense and raw. It was so much easier to express exactly how I felt, even as it changed from moment to moment, heartbeat to heartbeat.

Sometimes not being sad is harder than being sad.

So, I go back and read. And try to remember, I look for clues on how I survived. What I was thinking. What I was feeling. I hope the pain will keep me from forgetting.

But this other baby, this son of a stranger, has brought up an additional wave of complex thoughts and emotions, His parents fought so hard for him. They refused to accept he might die, they wanted to explore every avenue to save him. You could tell every ounce of their energy and prayers was dedicated towards willing their beautiful baby boy to live.

That was never me. And it's making me feel like a terrible, monstrous person.

I loved Harper. I miss her and think about her almost every day. But I didn't fight for her to live. I didn't refuse to believe there was nothing I could do to make her better. I fought for her to be loved, to not suffer. I accepted she had no chance to survive, and I found peace in that acceptance. But was it the right thing to do? Should I have fought harder, or at least wanted to fight harder, for my baby girl?

At the time, we struggled mightily with the question about whether the decisions we were making were right for Harper or right for us. This other baby's story has raised the specter of those questions for me. Reading and remembering, I still come to all the same answers, all the same decisions. I don't think we could have changed Harper's fate. I'm glad our time with her was spent loving her, holding her, that we minimized invasive procedures that clearly hurt her. But it is hard not to compare her story with others. And measure ourselves accordingly.

Parenthood, in my experience, is a never ending oscillation between taking everything one moment at a time and questioning whether you're doing the best, feeling like there's more to be done. Always overlaid and underlaid with the pure joy of the children you've created. There's a lifetime of guilt to deal with related to my living children. I probably need to let go of the doubts related to Harper, since there's absolutely nothing I can do to change the past. Easy to say, complicated to tease out the intricate threads of feelings and snip them one by one.

Exactly eight months ago tomorrow, we held our baby girl for her final heartbeat. In that moment, I would gladly have done anything in my power to save her. Maybe that's enough.