32.

Why does my mind always go back to the day of that wedding I shot last July? Like why is it so apparent at frequent intervals? I just wonder why it is so significant that I think about it a few times a month, yet I can't figure out why? I keep thinking it HAS to mean something if it keeps coming back into my mind. Yet, I can't figure it out.

I always ask to dream about Emma. This is the closest I've gotten last night. I've had small glimpses. One was a nightmare and one was a glimpse and tonight was a decent length one. It was in some sort of weird hospital. I was at work too.  Lots of helicopters and aircraft coming in and out. I was torn between getting my job done and getting back to the room where I know we were keeping Emma. In the dream it seemed as if everything had just happened today. Because she wasn't alive just a peaceful looking sleeping baby like before. But everything was so raw in the dream. So I assume it was the day before. Because we kept talking about her funeral being "tomorrow". I kept getting sad in waves because I couldn't stop working and go to her and I kept trying to keep up with who was keeping her and if they were taking care of her properly. Aka the way I wanted. Toward the end of the dream someone had put some little pins in her head through her skin to make her hat stay on better for the viewing (which was never a problem in real life because she was perfect and her hats and bows fit her perfectly) and I don't know why they did it then because as I had been told, the funeral was tomorrow. I got belligerent. A mix between devastation and anger. I remember that feeling. It's an emotion so raw and a cry so hard that... It takes your breath. Damn near stops your heart. Your head pulsates and your soul is cracking. The very core of your being is leaving you. Too full of emotion one should not and does not fully understand ... I demanded the pins be taken out and no more anything be done with her unless under my supervision. I finally quit working. I grabbed her and took those pins out and cleaned the spots they were in. God I was mad. But then the lull sank in.. I was holding her, and in my dream it's like I knew it had been 7.5 months since Id seen her face. But then again i knew it was the last time and the first time just like before. It was weird.

 So I woke up feeling like it was just yesterday. With the thoughts in my mind of "I can't imagine doing this again, I can't imagine losing another child" and it made me fear for the current baby safe in my belly. It's almost like I woke with a weird fresh renewal that it had never happened to me because I try to keep her so alive in my daily life... That I couldn't imagine losing her, like at that moment the experience was so far away that it seemed foreign. 

Then the lull went away and I remembered real life. It did happen. It has happened. It could happen again as easily as it happened before.  I had to push the feeling away to go back to sleep. 

There are so many things I wish I would've been able to do with her. Beyond all of the firsts I've missed already. I've missed 30+ years of them.  A lifetime of firsts. From her first breath to her first child, my grandchild that she may have given to me.  But beyond that, I wish I could've had more time with her at the present. Changed her clothes maybe another time. Saw her in person with her little bows on not just in pics. Given her a bath. Examined her little body for longer than what I did. Fall asleep with her and wake up to her. Kept her overnight. If we'd only had the luxury of something like the cuddle cot.  Watched the sun rise through the hospital window while holding her in my arms, rocking her in a chair. Saw how the sun looked on her face.

 I regret not having that opportunity so badly. It's not my fault or anyone's fault but it is there in my mind and it's only surfaced again for the 286134th time. The day she was born was a nice day. The next day was even nicer. Sunny. For most of the day then it got stormy. She was gone from the hospital before midnight that night she was born. Maybe keeping her longer would've made handing her over that last time harder? Not sure, but all I know is that my regret for things I didn't get to do that were well within (or should've been) my reach is much stronger than my wonder of if it would've been harder to give her away after a longer time spent. 

--fast forward--

As we tried to figure out what this baby currently baking was yesterday, of course it was too stubborn and perhaps a bit too early to tell... I see it's little face. It's little arms. It's little legs and feet. Watch it reach with it's little fingers and hands toward its cute little mouth.  So hard to believe how much love I have for it already. I don't know if anyone else does but I do. I so desperately want this experience to be different. While I desperately wanted Emma's to be different too once I found out it would be as it was.. And I'm sure my whole mind and heart will be torn around this new experience I'm so hopeful and excited for, and Emmas birth on a Tuesday in September... Both probably on Tuesdays in September if things go as planned... I am trying to prepare myself for feeling torn on that day and hope I can be ecstatic too like any new mother should be. 

I keep also thinking about her first birthday. I know I'm going to take off work. I always work Tuesdays now so  I plan to take that day off. No way in hades I want to spend that day at work. I need that day with my family. I want to get a cake and balloons and celebrate the sweet life I held so briefly. I want to release balloons. Have close family near. Maybe close friends if they can come. I want to do things that day that remind me of her.. visit her grave, try my best to make that day a day of rememberance. Otherwise I'm afraid I'll get extremely depressed. And being 20 days from giving birth again on that day.. I don't think it'll be healthy.  And I know that 1 year doesn't seem like a long time. But it also seems like 7.5 months has been forever. Maybe when you're watching your living child grow those times fly by. But when you're living on beyond them and waiting to see them again, time creeps. 

Such is life. 

Although so many sad things happen throughout the days, especially on my bad days-- She continues to remind me she is never truly 100% gone. Today I was going back through her old ultrasounds, trying to find out exactly when we found out she was a girl. We got the first ultrasound of her gender at 15 weeks 2 days. Her heart rate was 151. Yesterday, at 14 weeks 1 day, peanut's was 154. We found out FOR SURE FOR SURE, which we already knew, but we got a good crotch shot straight on of the hamburger at 16 weeks 5 days.  I go back at 16 weeks 2 days to find out for sure what this one is. 
Then, I got to the last ultrasound I had of her at 37 weeks 4 days, exactly 2 weeks to the day that her heart beat for the last time. It was also the last time I saw her heart beat on a screen, saw her move on a screen, or heard the sweet chugging of her heart beating along inside me. I never noticed, but her heart rate was 143. Do you know what 143 means? It is a sign from her and I know it. I think she is sending me signs again, today and every day...just some days I don't notice. Why else would I have not noticed that number? I have analyzed and picked apart every other aspect of all her scans and all my pregnancy with her and I'm just now finding this.

It prompted me to work on her scrapbook today. I'm glad I did. I went from waking up to what could've been a very devastating setback in my journey to having a decent day and being productive. Thank you sweet girl <3

The cruel hand of time. 

32 Tuesdays later. 

I love her just as much and miss her even more.  143, baby girl <3

Xoxo