posted Thursday at 9:41pm


I was looking at a picture from friday, july 24, 38 weeks, about to leave for my last shift at work. i have on pink scrubs with little baby bottles and my stomach looks like a basketball.


i was so happy in this picture. i dont think i will ever feel this happy and carefree ever in my life again. it's my last picture with my daughter alive. what a smile. "you're gonna miss this, you're gonna want this back, you're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast, these are some good times, so take a good look around, you may not know it now, but you're gonna miss this."



i got the rest of kathlyn's pictures in the mail today. there is a dvd montage with pretty music to match a pretty baby. i think i might watch the dvd every day for the rest of my life. the photographer had an easy job making the pictures so beautiful, as she was working with the most beautiful subject she'd ever had. many who are unbiased will tell me for years to come that she is the most beautiful baby they have ever seen, this much i know is true.

through her beauty though, was also a reminder of how her skin was changing and not all the photos are retouched as gently as the ones i sent out and showed at the funeral. i thought she would retouch them all, but she didnt. i dont mind seeing them as they were.. she is my baby and there is no masking the pain or reality of those moments.. she was not alive. but still beautiful in death.. my angel. i am a nurse, i have seen unhealthy, dying skin on a child before, but only one who was near death, not one who had reached it yet. dont be afraid. im not going share the ones that are harder to see. the dvd is all in black and white and in those, she looks like she is sleeping. if only.


i had a bad day today, as i expected after a good one yesterday. i stayed in bed a long time, struggling once again for a reason to get up. i am still refreshed from seeing the doctor but also armed with lots of new questions by reading about those other moms in other blogs. in time, i hope to get them answered. but today, even before the pictures, my mood was grim and i felt the first real taste of being angry along with the sadness and devastation. i dont want this life with nothing to do but be angry and sad. i want my baby. i cleared my schedule just for her and she's not here. i feel more up to going out than i did the past few weeks, but i know when i go out, i will see cute little girls everywhere. cute little summer dresses and sandals and hairbows and curls and kisses from parents. even when they arent babies, i just imagine what might have been. what might have been. what might have been, and what isnt. i will never have a healthy, carefree, blissful pregnancy filled with hopes and dreams of what is coming. my secondborn will be my oldest. i will never have a full family photograph. my full family photographs i have now, no one is smiling and really, no one is alive.