“Mom, can we paint my room pink? For when sissy is born?” By pink, she means bright pink. Vibrant, saturated, in-your-face petunia pink. I draw the line, seeing if she’ll step across. “Maybe a soft pink, honey. Like a light pink. The color of Clara’s roses. It might be hard to sleep if your room […]
David is so little and so big. He is now so many, many things. I am joyful and sorrowful at the thought. It’s not just that David is getting older, which, like all moms, I want and cannot bear to think about at alternating times in the middle of the same night. It’s that we are also coming up on Clara’s two year–her birthday, or anniversary or angelversary. I honestly still don’t know how to phrase July 13 through July 15, 2016, except to say that they were her days. Her beautiful, powerful days.
I was sitting at a red light on my way to pick up my kids from daycare when a little blue flicker pulled my eyes to the left. A balloon. Its round form bobbed in the air next to a large light post, glimmering as it touched pockets of air illuminated by the sun. […]
“Is this your first baby?”
It’s a question I’m asked often on days when I’m alone. If my oldest daughter, Emmarie, is bobbing alongside of me with her bouncy towhead pigtails and sticky little fingers, I’m asked if it’s my second child.
It’s a natural question. I’m 33 weeks pregnant and look every bit of it. My body knows what to do. It’s on track to give birth to three full-term babies in two years and ten months.
“But, her heartbeat is so strong,” said our nurse, asking a question without asking it.
“I know. It always is.” I answered her question in kind. I was approaching 38 weeks. Our nurse wanted to know what we all wanted to know. How could a three-pound girl with one of the most complicated combinations of critical congenital heart defects (CHDs) and a genetic condition documented in less than 200 people worldwide be so active, so normal, so seemingly healthy? How could Clara make it this far and still be born into a world where she might never make it past a day or even an hour?
I sat in the nursery rocking Emmarie, her 17-month old legs spilling out over my belly as her head nestled against her sister sleeping in my womb. I thought back to our 33-week appointment. No one actually said the words “Clara is going to die.” I wish they had. I would rather hear those words than know them. They had never proven true; they had always cracked open, leaving a glimmer of hope.
The Wonderfully Made Life 