My daughter needs teeth, Internet. MAYBE EVEN DENTURES.

Now I know, I probably told you when I was very heavily ninety-billion months pregnant confidently that I just KNEW that my fetus was teething. I’m sure I was cocky and confident and annoying about it because I’ve HAD babies before and therefore I am an EXPERT on my babies and I just KNEW my fetus was teething my her kicking patterns in the womb.

Then, at 4 months of age, which is when the baby books say that some babies begin popping some out, I was just certain she was teething. The rivers of drool coursed down her adorable pink onesies, drenching us and her, and causing some really disgusting looking rashes if left unchanged. Also, she was kind of a jerk sometimes.

It HAD to be teething. I KNEW it.

After all, BEN popped out a set of chompers at that age. And yet, nope. Not a tooth in sight.

You’d think that I would have learned from Alex’s example. Alex, he of the Asshole Baby phenomenon. Now, before you tie me up at the stake and burn me to a crisp, let me assure you that Alex and I are thick as THIEVES. Honestly, the child is my clone* and there’s not a damn thing I wouldn’t do for him. As a baby, though, I’m pretty sure that he was part Asshole, but he’s grown out of it.

I blamed his *ahem* temperament, though, on teething. For 9 long months, I claimed he was teething (the first 3 were a write off) and still, nothing emerged from his mouth besides the occasional regurgitation of breast milk and the near constant scream. Unless, of course, I was holding him. I alone could soothe the salvage beast within**.

Flattering, until it’s suffocating.

Shortly after his first birthday, he popped a whole mouth of teeth out, going from looking like an old man to JAWS from James Bond overnight. It was weird as hell.

I’m imagining that’s the way Mimi is going too, although with all of her weird bone issues, maybe I will have to invest in some baby dentures, which, you have to admit would be kind of freaking adorable. I can just see them floating in her nightstand in a wee glass. Perfect ickle baby teeth, suspended in water. Maybe I’ll buy her gold and diamond teeth as a consolation. You know, like a baby grill.

She can release a hardcore rap album about life in the suburbs. And drive around in her pimped out Escalade Power Wheels with tinted windows.

Until then, we’ll subsist on weird creepy Gerber purees and I’ll pretend that one of these days I’m going to start making baby foods because I’m going to pretend that I’m one of Those Parents (I can barely be bothered to order take-out or eat anything myself these days). And I’ll just TELL her about the cool stuff she can eat when she gets teeth.

Like…uh all the stuff her brothers (or her mother) won’t eat. Damn toddler food battles.

———————-

How are YOU today, Internet? Come gather ’round Aunt Becky’s dining room table and please, just wipe away the dust. She’s found that there’s no diet like the Topamax/flu diet and man, oh, man if she had a scale, she might notice that she’s lost upwards of 0.5 pounds! (or not)

*I was an Asshole Baby and many people would swear that I’m STILL an Asshole, so, you know, like mother, like son. Except Alex is NOT an asshole now. He’s a love.

**He’s still a Momma’s boy, and I swear that I turn into a gooey pile of mush when he demands that I “cuddle him” and then says, “I WUV my Mommy.” Somehow, it’s all worth it.

I realized yesterday, as I was responding to comments, (which is what makes me look like I get a zillion comments, FYI, every response I give adds a comment) that I probably didn’t explain properly to a good chunk of my readers who came into the story pretty late in the game.

I showed you a picture of the back of my daughter Amelia’s head after a post about my lame, clumsy ass and made a joke about a baby bar fight over my integrity. This would probably lead you to believe that her scar was the result of some sort of accident, as the post implies, because I don’t assume that most of you have read back into the depths of my pathetic archives.

Mimi was born with a previously undiagnosed birth defect called a neural tube defect.

What this means is that sometime during the first month of pregnancy, the spinal cord (called during this stage of life the neural tube) didn’t fuse together properly . It can happen anywhere up and down the spinal cord, causing a condition like spina bifidia, where the delicate spinal nerves poke out.

Or, an encephalocele, where the skull is malformed, and the brain develops outside of the skull.

Like this MRI slide of my daughter’s brain, taken 2 days after she was born.

The full story here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

(what, ME long winded?)

On February 26th, 2009, 2 days before our daughter celebrated her 1 month birthday, we checked into the hospital to have part of her brain removed and her skull repaired. The surgery was a complete success and while the scar takes up most of the back of her head, it’s part of who she is, just like the plate in her skull.

We’ll never know why it happened to us because that’s not given to us to know, but I do know this: somehow what I was given was a platform and a voice and I intend to use it as best as I can. Because I can’t believe this all was in vain. I just can’t.

So, this spring, I’m going to Walk For Mimi in the March of Dimes March For Babies, bug the ever-loving SHIT out of my family to donate (don’t worry, you guys are safe from me here), and beg YOU to help me with this:

“They look like white elephants,” she said.

“I’ve never seen one,” the man drank his beer.

“No you wouldn’t have.”

Ernest Hemingway, “Hills Like White Elephants”

———————

In the Lifetime Movie of The Aunt Becky Story which would probably be called something like Stairway to DANGER or A Girl and Her Sausages I would take this post and explain that the reason that I take the opportunity to shed light on pregnancy and infant loss is because I myself lost a baby. Or I’m missing a brother. Or a sister. Or a cousin. Or a uncle. Or something.

But my life isn’t a Lifetime Movie, and even if it were, I wouldn’t be cast as Janeane Garofalo anyway because my hooters are too big, and really, I haven’t lost a baby. No one particularly close to me has.

I’ve known a lot of people through the years that have: neighbors, friends of my parents. One of my first funerals was for a baby and I was probably 8 or 9 and the coffin was so tiny and I remember feeling such sorrow.

Sure, astute readers will note that I had a couple of miscarriages, but they were so early that I don’t need sympathy and now that the time has marched on, I barely acknowledge them at all. I certainly didn’t mourn them when I lit my candle last night.

But when I started blogging, I fell in with the baby loss mommas and I’ve always stayed in touch with them. Maybe I feel a kindred spirit with them, not for the loss of their son or daughter but because I know how it feels to be on The Other Side looking in, I don’t know.

What I do know is this, I know how it feels to sit in a room with a gigantic white elephant sitting in the corner taking up most of the room, trampling your prized orchids and taking a shit on your favorite Swarovski figurines while people blatantly ignored it. It could hoot and holler and clang-clang-clang and people would STILL sit there and pretend that every-fucking-thing was okay.

Most people don’t know how to handle grief and they don’t know that it’s okay to not have a solution to offer. Dave’s like this and it’s one of the rare things we fight about because he cannot seem to comprehend that there are things out there that aren’t, well, solvable. AND THAT IS OKAY.

Sometimes the best thing that you can do for someone who is hurting is to say, “I’m sorry.” Because you ARE sorry.

Treating people who have lost a child or who struggle to conceive or people who have cancer or people who are hurting as though they are contagious and are better to be avoided lest you “bring up bad memories” or to “let things die down” well, that’s cowardly.

Sure, it’s easier to imagine that you’re doing your friend a favor by not calling or emailing or sending a card and pretty much leaving them hanging in the breeze because emotions are hard and they’re ugly and shit, no one wants to see the raw grief that comes with such things.

Trust me. The only favor you’re doing is for yourself.

If you want to be a friend, call. Keep calling. Send an email every time it pops in your head to do so. Talk about light stuff. Let them know you care and that you’re around when they’re ready. Be their friend.

Some day, you’re going to be one of The Others too, because that is life.

Thank you to anyone who left a kind comment or lit a candle to remember all of the lost babies and children. I know it means a lot to everyone involved. I was moved to tears each time I added another name. The list gets longer every time I do this and it breaks me up.

I’ll be back with my regularly scheduled snark soon, so don’t worry, this hasn’t turned into a blog about sad stuff or water safety or how to cross the street or how to start dating after divorce (all things I’ve been emailed by people to talk to you about)(I know)(what.the.fuck?)

Until then, I leave you with this:

How the hell did she manage to bust out of her cage? AGAIN?

I’m a purger.

I can hardly go a week without finding something to pass along to someone else, give to the Salvation Army, throw away or recycle or otherwise dispose of. This is probably a good thing because once, while we were moving from our condo in Oak Park to our current house, I found a receipt that Dave had saved from Target.

Curious as to what he had bought that he had so steadfastly guarded for so long, I saw that it was 3 years old and had 4 things on it: a plastic garbage can, beef jerky, Fritos and…wait for it, wait for it….

…..

…..

…..

kitty litter.

Oh yes. You read that right, Internet.

Thank sweet merciful sweet baby Jesus in heaven hallowed be thy Halloween name that he had carefully thought to store that receipt so lovingly on the floor of his office and move it with him not once, not twice, but three times since then.

Before you call “Hoarders” on me, a show that I cannot watch because I think that I would physically hurt myself either clawing at my skin or eyeballs (and because I don’t find people with obvious mental illness really gosh darn hilarious television), it’s not that he was saving it because he had any attachment to it, it just never dawned on him to throw it away.

Just like it never occurred to him to get rid of his box of cassette tapes that I personally lugged from apartment to apartment and I finally lugged DOWN to the dumpster after I realized that we didn’t own anything to play Milli Vanilli’s greatest hits, (an oxymoron of a tape if I ever saw one) any longer.

(Although in the interest of full disclosure here, I still sing “Blame it on the Rain” in the shower)(what? Like you don’t.)

Lately, I’ve been itching to purge my house of stuff, and while I have managed to go through several of the cabinets in the kitchen, ridding myself of such awesome condiments as a mysterious can of “Kraut” I have an entire genre of stuff that I cannot seem to go near:

Baby Stuff.

You see, my uterus, it’s vacant.

With the exception of an IUD, should Daver continue to be “too busy” to get his vasectomy, I’m done having children. 3, like that wily School House Rock says, has always been the magic number for us. Although I’d always imagined having an assload of children, Dave assures me that 3 kind of IS an assload of kids.

If anything, skating so closely by with Amelia’s neural tube defect reminds me of just how fragile life is and how fucking lucky any of us are to be walking around upright, presumably not dragging our knuckles, slack-jawed and drooling (unless, of course, you’re me, in which case this IS the norm).

I’d read somewhere in my scant research about NTD’s that they are more common in siblings, which reminds me that I must do more research for something I’m writing for the March of Dimes, and since I’ve been on folic acid since dinosaurs were my classmates, well, I don’t know. Would you want to risk that one?

(that really wasn’t up for debate)

Dave’s done, and I’m pretty sure that no matter how many crotch parasites I popped from my delicate bits, I’d always be sort of wistful for one more. Just one more.

Chicago has 2 seasons: Balls Hot and Balls Cold and last week it went from being Balls Hot to Balls Cold and I noticed that my daughter had nothing to protect her rolling rolls from the searing wind.

I also noticed that denial is a pretty powerful thing: she’d been pretty quickly outgrowing her 6 month onesies (she’s 8 months old now) to the point where she was regularly popping open the snaps of the crotch as she scooted along the floor.

I hadn’t wanted to see that.

Just like I hadn’t wanted to go through her clothing bins to sort out the teeny tiny clothes and hats because unlike the last time, this really was The Last, Last Time.

Never again will one of my children wear that frilly dress or that spotted onesie with the frog that Alex used to wear or the hat that was Ben’s or the pink sweatshirt that I bought with my friend Steph when I found out I was pregnant with Ben who I just KNEW was a girl that I’ve carefully saved for my daughter for 8.5 years.

Those wee hats and tiny mittens won’t go on my gnome-like babies, and the bassinet that we so carefully picked out for Alex will have gone completely unused by any of our kids.

I know in my heart that I prefer my children to be children rather than garden slugs, but there’s just something so…sweet about a new baby that you just can’t get back again. I look at pictures of all of my babies as ickle babies and I can’t believe they were ever so small.

I’m not going to let their things go, though, like I normally would, chomping at the bit to get it out of here. For now, all of those memories sit in bags in Alex’s room along with the broken swing where Alex slept for the first 7 months of his life and the bouncy seat where Amelia spent several of hers.

I hope that the smell of their babyness will stay there, in the fabric, so when they’re big and gruff and smell like the woods and grass and dirt and rocks, I can go and grab a bag and open it, and inhale that sweet baby smell, the essence of their babyhood and where they began.

And remember when they were so small and good and when I could fix everything with some warm milk and a cuddle and a blankie. When I could stick my face in their neck while they slept to breathe in their smell so that I could carry that with me as I went about my day.

When we could curl up together like peapods, just the two of us against the world.

I hope that will always be enough for me.

Why Aunt Becky, I can hear you exclaim, you look positively AMAZING for having pushed what appears to be a 30 pound 4.5 year old out of your cootch!

And I will tell you, there, there, Internet, this is what happens when you have children when you are a broke 21 year old: you don’t have any digital pictures handy.

PLUS, you look WAY better in postpartum pictures this way.

Notice how much BETTER I looked in the picture with Ben than I do in this one taken after giving birth to Alex?

Juuuust kidding. Wear a condom, kids. Not kidding. No glove, no love, okay?

If you look closely, you’ll see why Ben is The Person of The Year. This is Ben meeting Alex. Look at Ben. Now look at Alex. Ben still adores Alex. I do not know why.

Ben deserves a medal or something.

And lastly, my Cinnamon Girl. My sweet baby Amelia. My last, last one.

In a rare moment of altruism and because he happened to come across a set of *ahem* incriminating photos of *ahem* me that he *ahem* threatened to share with you if I didn’t, I sweetly offered the use of my blog to my friend Kevin, even though I am a control freak of the highest order.

Normally, I don’t give it up for PSA’s and what-not, although you’d be surprised that I do get people emailing me to remind you, My Gentle Reader’s about about important water safety tips and stuff. Those go immediately in the trash, because, obviously, but, you know, pictures and blackmail, and shit, if I were Kevin, I’d want as much help as I could get too. I know that you’d help me out if the roles were reversed. EVEN WITHOUT THE PICTURES OF ME AND THE HORSE.

It’s the right thing to do.

Kevin of Always Home and Uncool has asked me, The Coolest Person he knows, the only one who would return his emails, to post this as part of his effort to raise awareness in the blog-o-sphere of juvenile myositis, a rare autoimmune disease his daughter was diagnosed with on this day seven years ago.

The day also happens to be his wife’s birthday.

*

Our pediatrician admitted it early on.

The rash on our 2-year-old daughter’s cheeks, joints and legs was something he’d never seen before.

The next doctor wouldn’t admit to not knowing.

He rattled off the names of several skins conditions — none of them seemingly worth his time or bedside manner — then quickly prescribed antibiotics and showed us the door.

The third doctor admitted she didn’t know much.

The biopsy of the chunk of skin she had removed from our daughter’s knee showed signs of an “allergic reaction” even though we had ruled out every allergy source — obvious and otherwise — that we could.

The fourth doctor had barely closed the door behind her when, looking at the limp blonde cherub in my lap, she admitted she had seen this before. At least one too many times before.

She brought in a gaggle of med students. She pointed out each of the physical symptoms in our daughter:

The rash across her face and temples resembling the silhouette of a butterfly.

The purple-brown spots and smears, called heliotrope, on her eyelids.

The reddish alligator-like skin, known as Gottron papules, covering the knuckles of her hands.

The onset of crippling muscle weakness in her legs and upper body.

She then had an assistant bring in a handful of pages photocopied from an old medical textbook. She handed them to my wife, whose birthday it happened to be that day.

This was her gift — a diagnosis for her little girl.

That was seven years ago — Oct. 2, 2002 — the day our daughter was found to have juvenile dermatomyositis, one of a family of rare autoimmune diseases that can have debilitating and even fatal consequences when not treated quickly and effectively.

Our daughter’s first year with the disease consisted of surgical procedures, intravenous infusions, staph infections, pulmonary treatments and worry. Her muscles were too weak for her to walk or swallow solid food for several months. When not in the hospital, she sat on our living room couch, propped up by pillows so she wouldn’t tip over, as medicine or nourishment dripped from a bag into her body.

Our daughter, Thing 1, Megan, now age 9, remembers little of that today when she dances or sings or plays soccer. All that remain with her are scars, six to be exact, and the array of pills she takes twice a day to help keep the disease at bay.

What would have happened if it took us more than two months and four doctors before we lucked into someone who could piece all the symptoms together? I don’t know.

I do know that the fourth doctor, the one who brought in others to see our daughter’s condition so they could easily recognize it if they ever had the misfortune to be presented with it again, was a step toward making sure other parents also never have to find out.

That, too, is my purpose today.

It is also my birthday gift to my wife, My Love, Rhonda, for all you have done these past seven years to make others aware of juvenile myositis diseases and help find a cure for them once and for all.

To read more about children and families affected by juvenile myositis diseases, visit Cure JM Foundation at www.curejm.org.

To make a tax-deductible donation toward JM research, go to www.firstgiving.com/rhondaandkevinmckeever or www.curejm.com/team/donations.htm.

Ben, fiddling with a straw, leftover from a *gasp!* sugary soda, as we walk around Target.

Horrible, Awful Mother, “Hey Ben, here’s a garbage can. Please throw that away.”

Ben scowls in her direction and makes no move toward the garbage can.

Aunt Becky: “Ben, now. I don’t need any more weird garbage-y crap to clean up around the house.”

Ben, if looks could kill, she’d be dead and buried.

Dave, “Benjamin MAXWELL, NOW.”

Becky snickers into her palm at the usage of the Middle Name Treatment.

Ben flounces dramatically to the garbage can and makes a huge production of throwing out the straw. Then, he pivots to face his parents.

“FINE, I’ll throw it AWAY” he stamps his feet. “Since you HATE MOTHER EARTH.”

Apparently, our son was brainwashed.

——————–

“Dat a Pumpkin, Mama?”

“Right, Alex, that’s a pumpkin.”

“Dat’s notta pumpkin. Dat’s a GOURD.”

“Okay, it’s a gourd.”

“It’s not a gourd. It’s a pumpkin.”

*headdesk*

For the record: it was a jack-o-lantern.

——————–

(Cacophony of dogs barking after someone knocks on the door)

“Who was at the door?” I barely looked up from my computer to ask Dave. My ass was tired from a strenuous day of sitting on it.

“Some high school kid selling magazines.”

Knowing my husband is a sucker for anyone selling anything, I sighed, wondering if he’d renewed our (never read) subscription to Golf Digest.

“What did you get us?”

“Nothing.”

Shocked, I was silent for a second.

“Wait, did the kid offer a subscription Playboy? Because I TOTALLY would have subscribed to that.”

“BECKY.”

————————

And then incongruently there is this:

Which leaves me alternately so full of joy and so full of survivor’s guilt that I can barely talk about it. I know it doesn’t make sense, survivors guilt makes no sense, but I don’t understand any of this.

How did we dodge this bullet? I don’t understand any of it. I just don’t understand.

21% with her type of encephalocele are born alive.

55% of those born alive are expected to survive.

75% of those who survive have some degree of mental defect.

She is a miracle. My sweet daughter, a miracle.

I sit here with tears streaming down my face, crying because she made it and crying because I know so many didn’t and crying because I am so grateful that she is so, so blessed to have so many people who have prayed for her and love her.

Thank you. Every day, I am grateful for you. All of you.

—————–

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have something in my eye that requires my immediate attention.

My daughter is teething, I think, but I’m not quite sure. I mean, I THINK she is, but I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that Alex was, too. Turns out that, no, Alex was merely unpleasant, and popped his teeth after his first birthday without pomp or circumstance. He went from zero to Jaws-like in the matter of a couple of days.

Ben, like Alex, was so full of The Screaming that it was impossible to ascertain if he was teething, or just displeased by being born (the NERVE!). He too, just popped out a set of chompers in a few days, looking not only like he was wearing a toupee, but also had a set of dentures.

For the last couple of weeks, though, my daughter has been damn near impossible to handle. I find myself on edge almost constantly, because the slightest rustling of the wind through my orchids, or the air conditioner clicking on will catapult her from sleep to wake. Once she’s awake, there’s almost no getting her back down until her next scheduled nap time.

With two other children, two dogs, two cats, and a husband who is not home, I’m sort of at my wit’s end (one may argue that I never had wits about me anyway, an accusation that is neither here nor there.).

The phone dares to ring and I verbally rip the face off whomever is unfortunate enough to call.

The neighbor comes by to see if I need my lawn mowed, and I cry, because the commotion woke Amelia up, and I cannot fathom another swaddle, bounce, pat, binkie, bottle, binkie, thrashing, sweaty, restraining I-love-you-baby-but-fucking-go-to-sleep session.

Alex operates on top volume whenever he is awake and my dogs like nothing more than to bark at innocent caterpillars that crawl in our front yard, and I. am. spent. Exhausted.

Sometimes, I cry into Amelia’s head, her tears mingling with mine, as we’re both incredibly frustrated by the situation: she cannot settle and there is nothing either of us can do about it. Other times, I just grind my teeth, giving me such migraines that if I had the luxury, I’d be incapacitated, in bed with my eyes closed.

We’re stuck here in this holding pattern.

This, I think, this is the real ass-kicker about having had a child whose life was, at one time, in flux: how can you possibly be upset with someone who you worried so very much about losing? I imagine this happens to many parents-of-children-who-survive-a-massive-trauma.

Life isn’t fair, you know this as you weep over your child in the NICU, the monitors alarming, the staff flitting from one emergency to another, because if it were, no children would be sick. Ever.

And somehow, after all that anxious uncertainty, all that worrying, teeth-gnashing and terror, your child was the one who made it out alive. His neighbor in the hospital may not have been so lucky and you know it. You’re blessed to even have this child. It’s like chewing on a piece of aluminum wrapped candy: sweet and shockingly painful at times.

Because you’re human, too.

I know how lucky I am that Amelia made it and is normal. I know that most children with her diagnosis don’t come home alive and breathing. I’ve watched my friends mourn their lost children and cried with them. Because the world–it is most certainly not fair.

But she–my daughter–she is a child, a human child. And if I know anything about children, it’s that they can make you so crazy that you’re nearly sane again. I’ve been through two of the toughest children already, the sort who screamed, and cried, and nearly (in the case of Alex) drove me to the brink, and I know that this is what kids do.

She’s not like other kids, and yet she is, and it’s this that is making my head spin.

I feel guilt, such massive crushing guilt, whenever I am at the end of my rope, like today. Today she slept for maybe an hour total, which is far, far less than she needs. And yet there was nothing, not one single ever-loving thing that I could do about it.

There’s that niggling part of me in there, too, the part that wonders if maybe her head is hurting her. I mean, she was born with a malformed skull, she has an implant in her head to correct it, and her head is growing. I know this because her scar is stretching, nearly taking up most of the back of her head now.

Or maybe it’s a new symptom of something more sinister. No one was able to tell us much of anything about her diagnosis besides it’s name (encephalocele) and what it was (neural tube defect). We’re not-so-casually waiting to see what happens next because no one knows precisely how this will affect her.

She could be normal, she could be profoundly retarded, or somewhere in the middle. Her issues with sleeping deeply may resolve themselves in a couple of years, like Alex’s did, or maybe she’ll be a Lifetime Member of The Unisom Club like I am.

On days like today, when I worry that the nape of her neck is becoming disproportionally large by comparison, and that the top of her head has begun to point in a cone, I can’t seem to talk myself out of it. Telling someone who is genuinely afraid of something–logical or no–to not worry is like asking them to hold their breath for a year. Or a week.

Im-freaking-possible.

I don’t sit around all day, every day crippled by grief and worry, and I try to live in the moment and not the might-be’s or the may-have-been’s because I know that they go nowhere.

And yet, this is who I am now, someone who hyperventilates in hospital parking lots and worries that every little stupid thing is the mark of something more sinister.

So I wait, and I watch, and I worry and I hope that some day we will all look back on these days and laugh.

And I hope.

I hope.

What follows is not a birth story. What follows is what came after that.

And my warning to you, o! Internet, my Internet is this: what follows will probably be kind of boring. It may be self-indulgent and whiny. At times it may make no sense to you why I felt a certain way or why I still feel this way. What follows is probably never going to win me any blog awards or any new friends and I am okay with this.

Like anything else I’ve ever written–even the most banal of blog posts–I am writing it because I can’t not.

It must be told.

————–

My pregnancy with Amelia was not exactly a planned one. It wasn’t unplanned though, it just was. I hadn’t been back on birth control since Alex was born in March of 2007 and by May of 2008 I was pregnant for the third month in a row. The previous months had been marked by the hormonal roller coaster of back-to-back miscarriages, so when that pink line popped up for the third month in a row, it was almost by rote that I called Dave at work, told him the news and warned him not to get too excited.

Instead of immediately miscarrying, the pregnancy seemed to stick. Until about Week 6, when I began to spot. Having never seen a drop of blood with either of the boys, I immediately assumed the worst and prepared for the next miscarriage by calling the OB for another shot of Rho-gam.

(let me whine pointlessly for a moment and say this: I am pretty certain that they inject Rho-gam with a straw from McDonald’s. I have had 3 babies–one sans working epidural–and I swear, that stupid shot is always the worst part)

My heart was pretty heavy as we made our way to the OB’s the following morning and to add insult to injury, I was still nauseous as hell and bawling like an annoying small child. I’m sure the entire waiting room appreciated my sniffling and hiccuping. Alas, it was my turn to go back, and after giving about 4 gallons of blood (rough estimate) and determining that the bleeding had stopped and my cervix was tightly shut, I was sent for an ultrasound at another office.

The minute the tech inserted the camera up my pooter–after insisting The Daver stay in the waiting room, which, hello awkward–I saw it. She cast her pixilated, gummy bear heart on me and I was in love. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, went home and gorged on some Flavor-Ice. The following morning, the OB grimly called to inform me that my progesterone was somewhere in the single digits. This is, apparently, very bad.

So for the next twelve weeks, I was instructed to unceremoniously shove bullet shaped suppositories up the old lady bits twice a day, which trust me, as they melt, is like sitting in a pile of waxy spooge all day long. What I’m trying to say is that it was very, very pleasant.

But whatever, a little leaky vagina I could handle. The spotting continued on and off until I realized that perhaps I didn’t need to scratch the surface of my poor cervix with the suppository, and then it stopped for good. Everything was calm. Well, as calm as living with a monkey wearing a toddler suit can be, while your spouse is off fighting financial battles all day (and night) long during a huge crash in the markets.

(Lengthy boring aside #1: did I mention that The Daver is in finance? And that he had just accepted a position to become a manager when I fell knocked-up? Because yeah. The timing was awesome.)

(Lengthy boring aside #2: I feel I also must add here to give some additional information to those who haven’t been anxiously reading and rereading my (boring) archives and committing every one of my trite posts to memory. I don’t do pregnancy well. I get awful, crippling anxiety and mind-numbing depression while I cook my babies. It’s called prepartum depression. It’s very serious and it’s very real.)

But life trucked on for us all, the markets slowly sinking and Nat (my eldest’s biological father) coming by to predict the end of days every week or two. He’d take some time off in between to chastise my choice of, well, anything: car, house, lawnmower, you name it, he’d judge it loudly. Is it any wonder my trolls don’t bug me much?)

Anyhow. Moving along.

My 18 week ultrasound revealed not much at all. Baby looked like it might maybe kind of have a vagina of her own, but I was chastised by pretty much the entire office staff for “coming in too early.” I had a repeat US at 22 weeks which revealed that my daughter indeed had a vagina, a perfect heart and a perfect brain.

Obviously. She is my daughter after all.

Internet, I am telling you that when the tech told me that I was having a daughter of my own, I shed real tears. Despite my rocky relationship with my mother, I’d wanted a daughter so badly that I could taste it, but I just knew I was destined to be a mother of boys. Forever The Queen of the Sausages. I never thought I could possibly be lucky enough to have a daughter.

And yet, there she was, a blobby mess that I could ascertain very little from, although I was quickly pointed out the 3 lines (a.k.a. “the cheeseburger”) which signified that she was without penis. I couldn’t have been happier.

My very own daughter.

I was lucky enough to have a daughter.

Amelia.

My daughter.

Words cannot possibly describe the joy I still feel when I say that.

I have a daughter.

Part I.

The rest of my pregnancy went as smoothly as a pregnancy can for me. I reveled in my daughter rolling this way and that, I shopped for any number of teeny frilly dresses–while trying desperately to avoid the hootchie momma stuff–and began to stimulate the economy one pink thing at a time. I was as happy as I can be during pregnancy, my appointments showed me gaining my standard metric fuck-ton of weight.

Somewhere around week 37, I noticed after we’d come home from a lovely day of shopping–sans small children (this is what made it extra special)–that my entire lower half had ballooned into Michelin Man territory. My upper-half remained as fat as it was beforehand, but my lower half was bordering on ridiculous. It was Sunday and I was marginally alarmed by the sudden gain of at least 20 lbs, so I called my OB. They were shockingly unconcerned.

I looked like I was wearing exactly one half of a fat suit.

The following day, I noticed that the swelling was now bordering on Stay-Puft marshmallow status (replete with pasty whiteness. This was January in the Midwest), and the OB was now concerned. Off to the hospital, we trudged, for a NST and unnamed other tests.

What followed was a brilliant comedy of errors which involved busy doctors, dropping platelets, consults with specialists, living in a broom closet for three days and eventually an amniocentesis. I’m saving you from the most tedious story ever, but let me tell you that this was fucking Providence if I’ve seen it.

After our awful experience there we vowed to have our daughter at the OTHER local hospital. Where we’d had Alex, but not where we’d planned to expel Amelia. An excellent move we never could have expected.

Providence, Serendipity (wait, wasn’t that some shit-balls movie?), Fate, whatever you call it had a hand in things right there.

A week or so after I ripped the IV tubing from my arm and waddled indignantly through the L & D lobby on my way home, I had to go back to the doctor. The swelling–even in January–was so bad that I could only fit into this absurdly large pair of Daver’s slippers I’d been meaning to toss. I’d been meaning to toss them, you see Internet, because they reeked. They were also crusty and awful, but it’s all I could stuff my poor feet into, so off we went.

Two days later, on Wednesday January 28, my daughter was scheduled to make her debut with the aide of some a long hook and an IV drip of Pitocin. All of my babies have been induced, and while I’d been sort of looking forward to going into labor naturally, with the other two kids at home and the fact that I now felt like death AND was spilling some proteins, I figured safety for both of us was paramount. I could always watch a romantic comedy if I wanted to relive what “going into labor” was like.

You know they never lie in the movies, right? Or on The Internet? EVERYTHING on The Internet is true.

We had one full day to prepare all that we needed to bring another baby home, because somehow when you’ve reached number three and have run out of bedrooms with which to put said child, nursery preparation is pretty minimal. Besides, Alex had just grown out of most of what I really needed and so it wasn’t a stretch to pull it all back out.

My daughter would sleep in our bedroom with us until the boys could move in together, so there was no shopping for coordinated basket covers for the nursery, nor were we trying to match the knobs from the dresser we didn’t have to the light switch cover. It was sort of anti-climactic, but after having done it twice before, I was pretty pleased to just wash the scads of tiny pink clothes.

(Pointless aside #1: I keep mixing up my underwear with Amelia’s clothes in the wash. That feels kind of wrong, although not because I dress her in leather, lace crotchless panties, but because my own undies are–for the moment–large, pink and could probably double as a sail for a boat in a pinch)

Wednesday January 28th, we awoke at some ungodly hour (like 5:00 AM! Which is a time I should never, ever be awake because I am 100% allergic to mornings) and it was still dark out. Inky dark. And snowing. I remember waddling to the car after blowing kisses sadly to Alex’s door–he was still asleep–and finding the thick flakes of snow swirling about to be a Good Omen. I’d heard somewhere that rain on the day of something important was supposedly a good thing, and it being nearly February in Chicago, rain was more apt to be snow.

We drove to the hospital in silence just as we had before. While having #3 isn’t nearly as scary as having #1 or even #2, I’m not sure what pleasant conversation is when you’re both acutely aware that once you leave the hospital, nothing is ever going to be the same again. In the face of this, what is there to say?

Really.

Each of us were lost in our thoughts as we stopped for gas–and breakfast for Daver as I was too afraid I’d never eat at Dunkin’ Donuts should I see it coming back out a little later in a slightly *ahem* different form–the snow and the blackness and the wind seemed to make it a magical, magical morning. I can’t describe it well enough to do it justice. The radio was, for once, playing perfect music, the big fat flakes would make a satisfying splat against the windows, and in the dark then, it looked as though we were flying through that old screen saver.

Certainly if I know what that screen saver is, you must too. (no, not the flying toaster one).

After managing to hit not one but two trains, my stomach clenching and unclenching in knots as I tried to remember just what labor feels like and how scared I should be about the pain. I’m not hugely averse to pain (don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t turn me on or anything) (unless maybe it’s to someone I hate) (and that’s just a maybe) but even within 20 months, I had completely forgotten how it felt.

I barely remember pulling up the valet and handing off the keys as I was too busy peeling myself off the car seat and waddling into the hospital. We were checked into a room immediately and met one of the most cheerful nurses on the planet, which was a huge bonus as Dave and I were both terrified. And when we are both nervous or scared, our initial reaction is to open our mouths and talk. We flappity-flap-flap-jaw about nothing, anything, everything.

I guess it’s better than crapping your pants or explosively farting. That would make other people MUCH more uncomfortable, because how can you ignore THAT white elephant?

Soon I was instructed to change into a gown and nothing else as the nurse clucked over my poor legs which burned and ached from the addition of all those extra pounds of water. The tissues within screamed and cried as I tried to pull off my socks in vain. Dave eventually had to pull them off for me.

I settled into the bed, ate a couple crackers and then we were off. The IV ran slowly, dripping saline into that chamber, the line patent and waiting for the doctor to order the bags of Pitocin from the pharmacy. I considered Twittering, maybe I actually did, just to do something that felt normal and took my mind off of what was about to happen.

Dave flitted about the room, nervous as a bird, putting away this or that, arranging and rearranging the various things we’d brought while I lay there in bed, nervously watching the minutes tick past one after an ever-loving other. The doctor ambled in, broke my bag of waters–which, I have to say, is a REALLY discomfiting feeling–and pronounced it beautiful and clear. No meconium. The baby wasn’t in distress. The pit was added to the IV and we were off!

I had hoped to actually move about the room before the contractions got too terrible so that I could urge the baby out and use gravity on my side, rather than lay flat on one side of my back. But Amelia wasn’t really ready to be hatched, her head still pretty high in my body and not engaged into my pelvis. The risk of cord prolapse was great enough (broken bag of waters + floating baby) that I opted to lay there, willing my daughter out with my will of steel.

Labor? Hurts. It hurts a lot. I lasted a couple of hours, breathing through them, tears coursing down my face, although I wasn’t actually crying them. They were just plopping out of my eyes, and I only noticed because Dave occasionally wiped them away. I’d planned to Twitter, if for no other reason than I wanted to feel like I was connected to something outside of that room, but I was petrified. Even through the pain, I was so, so scared.

Maybe 4 hours into my labor, I got my epidural. It’s just like any other one I’ve gotten (I got a bonus 3! different! ones! with Ben, so I can handle it.), feels weird, not entirely pleasant, like your body knows something is going where it’s not supposed to, and then, WHOMP! Your legs are gone. Lifeless and tingly at the same time. It’s not a pleasant feeling by any means.

For an hour or so, I laid there, trying to watch TV but completely unable to focus on what was playing, so afraid. Just overcome with fear. I’m not one to talk about “my feelings” very often, and I don’t even know that Dave knew that I was so full of fear and dread that I could barely breathe.

And wait, what was THAT? It was…a contraction? Okay, yeah, the monitor says I’m having one OUCH! *pant, pant, pant* WEIRD. And wait, ANOTHER ONE? *pant, pant, pant* okay, wait, I thought I had an epidural.

I did have an epidural, I knew, because my legs were like two life-sized facsimiles of legs, as dead as tree-stumps, and yet still there, warm and heavy. I couldn’t shift easily from side to side as my hips were similarly numb, but that was it. It hadn’t taken past my hips.

I know I always like to use the “make God laugh; tell him your plans” quote when I talk about kids, especially when talking to parents-to-be, not because I’m being unkind in any way (I know. A shock), but because for all the planning, all the carefully executed plans, things just never go that way. I don’t mean to sound pessimistic or unnecessarily cruel, just honest.

I’d planned for as many narcotics as possible as soon as possible and here I was, 5 cm dilated and 100% effaced, half numb, a sort of centaur of pain. So be it. I could have had them replace the epidural, but I just didn’t care. I could handle it. I’d done it before.

(Pointless rambly aside: when laboring with Ben, the doctor turned off the epidural completely when I had to push. It was like going from 0 to 11 in a couple minutes. He was a nice man, eh?)

The transition from 5 cm to 10 took about 15 minutes, and after demonstrating my excellent ability to push for the nurse, she turned white and called the doctor immediately. Oh yeah, I’m a rock-tastic pusher.

I staved off the urge to push, and the fear I’d been feeling before amplified just like I was an ant in the sun who had wandered into the path of a large magnifying glass. I was petrified to the core, my cells screaming in fear. I cried and I cried and I cried like a little bitch to poor The Daver, “I’m so scared. I’m so scared. What if there’s something wrong with the baby? I’m so scared.”

Over and over and over, like an awful broken record. I couldn’t stop myself. Couldn’t be rational. I’d say it was the effects of being in transitional labor (the last time, I’d tried to order Dave to go home as he’d spent my labor on the couch in the room, sleeping off a migraine and I.was.pissed.) and maybe that’s all it was, but I was a wreck going into this phase of labor.

The doctor came scurrying in, gowned up quickly, and raised the bed up so far off the ground I felt like a circus performer with my crotch as the main attraction in the spotlight. Normally, I’d have cracked a joke, but I was shaking with fear, cowering and weeping openly.

On the doctor’s orders, I began to push. I knew the baby was positioned badly–for the life of me I cannot recall how–and as I pushed, the doctor wrangled my poor crotch everywhichway. I was thankful the epidural was on as I saw my hips shimmying and shaking with each push. Ben had been a forceps baby, Alex slid out with a couple pushes, and it looked like my last was as stuck as my first.

I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it, as they had me pushing every time I caught a breath. I always hear those ladies on A Baby Story screaming as they give birth, and I don’t get it. I’ve never screamed. And trust me, I’m a loud-ass bitch, so I’d imagine that if anyone would scream, it’d be me.

I opened my eyes from squinching them tightly shut through my pushing and what I saw alarmed me, my normally pasty husband was ashen, the doctor looked concerned and the nurse looked alarmed. Not exactly encouraging.

“Becky,” my doctor said, her voice squeaking with either effort or emotion, “there’s something wrong with your baby’s head.”

I was already hysterical by the time the doctor told me that my daughter had something wrong with her head, and as she instructed the nurse to call neonatology stat, just like that, my daughter flopped her way into the world at 4:28 PM on Wednesday January 28, 2009.

Furiously.

“Is she okay, is she alive, is she okay, please tell me she’s okay, oh my god, oh my god, is she okay, oh my god, oh my god, my poor baby, is she okay?, is she dead, make her breathe, is she dead, oh my god!” I couldn’t stop the hysterical babble, my voice rising until it was as shrill as a harpy.

“I don’t know, Rebecca, neonatology is coming to check her out” my OB said over my wails. Then she held up my squirming daughter.

My first thought was that I’d somehow given birth to a statue–I can still see her in my mind’s eye–bathed in the glow of the spotlight, dark hair matted down–as she was covered head to cheesy toe in vernix caseosa, and once they’d rubbed that off of her, she was pink and pissed the hell off.

I couldn’t tell you who cried louder–me or her–but I know that mine was the more mournful of the two. I figured that I’d used up all my good luck netting a wonderful The Daver and having two healthy boys. How could I possibly be lucky enough to have another whole healthy baby? I’d spent my whole pregnancy thinking just that: I couldn’t dodge the bullet again.

Apparently, when they hit the emergency button and order neonatology up to visit a patient, it means that the medical equivalent of a marching band swarms your room. So, there I was, suspended in midair (my doctor liked to deliver babies standing up) (her standing, not me) (because that would be very awkward) (especially if I pooed on her head) stuck being stitched up, spotlight still trained onto my vagina when a parade of people entered my room. Like extras from a movie set.

Even more upset, I moaned and cried and delivered my placenta, crying more violently than I thought possible, my ugly grey gown now dripping with the tears I’d been weeping steadily. I could barely breathe, the snot poured liberally out of my nose, and without the Daver to wipe it, it just pooled there on my face.

Dave was obviously where he should be–with his daughter–and had my OB not been eye to eye with my crotch I’d have wobbled my still-numb legs over to join him. I’d have clawed my still-working upper body toward her if I had to, but I could sort of see her over the OB’s head. Pink, pissed off, and hugely fat. Over the din, I could hear Dave trying to reassure me, “Oh Becky, you have got to see her thighs! She has THUNDER thighs!”

It was the most normal part of this whole fucked up situation.

The neonatology team swarmed where my daughter was furiously screaming her ever-loving head off, oblivious to the cacophony of cries in the room. They assessed her and after a couple of minutes, decided that it was probably just a fatty cyst on her head. But, to err on the side of caution, they would order a CT scan of her head the following day, so that the pediatric radiologist could take a gander at her noggin.

And just like that *BAM* the room emptied.

Like the water drained from the bathtub in one loud glut.

All of a sudden it was so quiet, so still. I was stitched back into one piece and lowered to a respectable height, my doctor bid us farewell, and neonatology nodded their capped heads at us as they left. Seemingly unconcerned. It was just The Daver, my nurse, and my daughter left. She begged off too, so that she could give us a chance to bond, and Dave gingerly brought me over my daughter.

I was still shaking head to tow, be it from the precipitous drop in hormones or the trauma that had been Amelia’s birth, and I begged him to stay close. Just in case I dropped her. As I managed to wrangle to gown down, I nursed her and as I did, I examined my new child. My sweet cinnamon girl.

She was the spitting image of Alexander, whom I missed so painfully that I actually ached, although her fingers were longer and more elegant, and her hair was dark black and matted to her head. Her eyes were open and she regarded me with these luminous green eyes which seemed to say, “hey, so you’re my mother, okay.” I was enchanted with her pureness, her loveliness. The daughter I’d always wanted was finally here.

And still The Fear. I tentatively pulled up the hat which had been pulled down over her ears, terrified of what I might see. Sure enough, right along the posterior fontanelle, there was a mass, a solid, pliable mass maybe an inch in diameter that I palpated gently with my fingers. I was reassured that this did not seem to cause her any distress as she still stared at me while I began to quietly weep into her blanket.

It was either a fatty tumor or it was something Very, Very Bad.

I’d read about neural tube defects in nursing school–always the annoying overachiever–so I knew that they could occur anywhere along the former neural tube. Typically, they’d occur lower, on the spinal cord, where they’d cause spina bifida, and while I knew that they could happen anywhere along the spinal column, I had no name for what it was called if it were to occur on the skull. But I remembered it technically be a neural tube defect on her brain and the pit of fear in my stomach grew.

The obligatory phone calls were made in short clipped bursts–by Daver as I couldn’t handle trying to talk to anyone yet–and we were prepped to go up to the Mother/Baby unit. As we rolled past the rooms with happy, seemingly carefree families, I was green with envy. I’d wanted shiny pink balloons and huge bouquets of overflowing roses and cala lilies and flowers and visitors and Vicodin, and an epidural that worked, and I wanted to play “Eye of the Tiger” when I delivered, and I wanted to enjoy my time as a new mother one last fucking time.

But my daughter; something was wrong with her. I couldn’t celebrate when there was something wrong with my daughter.

I steeled myself for our visitors as best as I could, wiping the snot from my nose and trying to ice my nearly-swollen-shut eyeballs so that I looked presentable for my dad, my eldest, my sister-in-law and my friend Ashley. They poured in and I tried to make small talk with them all, choking down the dinner they’d thoughtfully brought me which tasted like sand, and tried not to cry. I showed off my daughter and they ooh’d and ahh’d appropriately and I felt like a fraud.

They each knew that she had something wrong with her head, but I’m not sure whether they were trying to put on a happy face or they were just clueless as to how bad this could be. Above their chatter, all I could hear was a constant buzzing. I later identified this as panic.

Even with the aid of an Ambien and a Vicodin, the mix of which should have knocked me on my ass after the labor and delivery I’d had, I couldn’t sleep. I struggle with insomnia on my best days, and on my worst, well, I am a wreck. I tried to toss and turn and nothing, I couldn’t sleep. Or I could sleep lightly, only to wake up when a squirrel farted in Siberia or a raccoon somewhere in the mountains of Egypt broke a branch (are there raccoons in Egypt?)(or mountains, for that matter?).

Dave, seemingly oblivious, and always the one to assume the best in any situation, snored away, not even stirring when I lobbed condiments at him to get him to stop fucking snoring.

(condiments inexplicably included peanut butter)

(as an insomniac, there is very little as awful as having to sit there and listen to other people loudly sleep when you cannot)

I was almost happy when the breakfast cart rolled in because then I could stop pretending to be asleep. The morning passed as sort of a blur to me, although I can distinctly recall removing my own IV port and not letting a soul touch my daughter. I was like a momma lion protecting my baby and if push had come to shove, I probably would have bitten someone had they gotten too close.

Somewhere around 1PM, radiology came by to escort my daughter to her CT Scan. Dave, always the wonderful father, went with, leaving me alone in a room. Shitting my pants scared and all alone. I felt like a shaking bird with a broken wing, stranded and alone. I think I pounded out a bare bones blog post and read and reread my comments just so I felt a little less alone. Bet you didn’t think how much it mattered to hear from you, but it did.

It was my lifeline.

After something like 38 hours, Dave and Amelia were back, Dave beaming ear to ear. He’d gotten the impression that whomever was looking at the stills of my daughter’s head hadn’t seen anything terribly noteworthy.

For the first time in over 24 hours, I relaxed. My jaw unclenched, my fingers uncurled and my shoulders loosened. I began to think of things like “when we go home” and “I wonder how many Vicodin I can score from the doc” rather than, “is my baby going to die?” or the ever popular “is this REALLY how it all ends?”

I nursed and nursed my daughter, stroking her pimply cheek and murmuring to her that we’d get hats and wigs and we’d make bumps awesome, and that it didn’t matter if she had a little lump, she was so beautiful, and hey, there were always ponytails.

The phone rang, and somehow I disconnected this event with the one before it–the CT scan–and I watched Dave go ashen as he listened. He sputtered out that the NICU was coming and the pediatric neurologist was coming to see her and there was something wrong with our daughter. Something really wrong. We didn’t know what–no one, apparently, tells you shit in the hospital–but it was bad.

In another flurry of activity, the NICU came up to take my daughter from me.

They peeled her out of my arms one white knuckle at a time, and as the left the room I was scared to hear this howl, this wolf-like guttural howl. It sounded like a lion who’d been backed into the corner to die. Or a coyote mournfully begging someone, anyone in the still night to respond. I’d never heard anything so eerie in my life, and my entire body broke out into goosebumps. It was so feral.

It took me several minutes of listening to it before I realized that the noise was coming from inside of me. I was howling as they rolled my tiny daughter away from me. I was making a noise I didn’t even know humans could make. My head buzzed as though a hive of bees had taken over where my brain had formerly been and I shook.

And I howled. I screamed and I howled.

Dave was sitting there, a shell at the foot of my bed, wracked with sobs. I’ve never seen him cry like that before or since and I hope like hell I never have to see that again. We held each other and we sobbed and we howled and we wailed, like two wolves, crying for their dead cub.

I hope I never have to make that noise again. Hell, I hope that I never hear that noise again.

We were clinging to each other like two drowning souls.

My postpartum nurse marched into the room after our daughter had departed. An old battle ax of a lady, obviously well seasoned and not interested in the moaning and carrying on that was taking place.

But this was our daughter and no one had told us anything whatsoever and we were scared shitless. The bump could have contained the meaning of life or Jimmy Hoffa’s body–we simply didn’t know. We wouldn’t know what it was for over a month.

We watched her being wheeled away and a small part of us died right there.

My nurse very obviously didn’t care for my hysteria as she began scold. “I needed to get myself together for my daughter.” Because I “had to be strong for her now.” The sentiment is fine, sure, but you have to understand–because you know the outcome now and you know that she is fine and babbling in her saucer into a set of measuring spoons and it’s so easy to look back onto someone else’s story and say, Jesus wept, she overreacted, and probably I did, but we didn’t know anything.

We thought that she was going to die.

I didn’t appreciate this attitude–I banned her from the room after this interaction–from my nurse in the slightest.

We could have used compassion and reassurance, maybe a hug, not being snapped at that I needed to shut my stupid whore mouth. She insisted that we wait 20 minutes before we went down to be with our child, an arbitrary number; a cruel imposition. The NICU wouldn’t have cared what state we were in. But it is was it was.

Another nurse, a kinder one, who must have heard the verbal slapping we were being handed wheeled in a wheelchair for me so that we could go visit our daughter. I’d just given birth, and although I could have given a shit about the number of stitches or the horrible pain I was in, I was still very, very weak. My eyes were nearly slits in my face, obscured by my swollen orbits, and my face was shiny and raw from being furiously scrubbed with hospital issue tissues.

I hyperventilated and wept on our way down, through some secret set of hidden elevators to what I thought was the basement of the hospital, keeping my face down and away from the other patients, who stared, gaping openly and thanking GOD that it wasn’t them. Rightly so.

I gripped the teeny sock–a lone sock that had fallen off Amelia’s foot earlier and I’d randomly stuck into my gown–like it were a life vest, the last thing I had that connected me to my daughter.

We were buzzed in from an unseen source as we approached the innocent looking white door that would bring us to our daughter, now a patient of the secret place, the land of tears.

I’m not a stranger to NICU’s and I happen to find the tiny babies, the preemies absolutely adorable rather than frightening, and the wall of constant sound–the vents humming, the monitors alarming and beeping intermittently and the quiet swish of the staff, moving purposefully from patient to nursing station and back again–doesn’t bother me like it does some. But this was our daughter and, well, no one expects that their child will end up there.

After scrubbing in, we went to see our daughter, who lay now completely naked under what I always called “The French Fry Warmer” hooked up to a zillion monitors, in the area directly next to the nurses station.

This was The Bad Room to be in, as anyone who has spent any time in an ICU knows, because it is RIGHT next to the nurses station. Which means they are keeping an extra close eye on whomever is there. Comforting if the patient is very ill, frightening if you still don’t know which way is up.

I cried into my gown as the other parents looked up at us, nodding in kind of a ‘hey, you too? Fucking sucks’ sort of way. Because your kid is in the NICU and that’s completely fucked up. What else can you say? It’s not like any of us expected to be there. I tried to be quiet with my sobs, and I got a couple of ghosts of half smiles from other parents who sat vigil next to their own babies.

I saw when I gingerly moved from the wheelchair into the rocking chair crammed into that tiny room with a curtain instead of a door, that someone, some kind soul had made several signs for Amelia, to add some cheer to her room. One said “Amelia” next to a red block letter ‘A’ and the other had some sort of Minnie Mouse also with an “Amelia” right there.

For some reason, this unexpected act of gentle kindness made me cry harder.

Just like all of the amazing emails and comments that you guys sent me. I know full-well all the nasty shit the Internet can do to people, but I will never, ever, ever be able to put into words how much it helped to know that people who didn’t even know us were praying for us. I cannot thank you enough for every single comment, email, anything you did for us. Every time I talk about this, every single thing you say to me, every time someone pops up to say something supportive about this, I am so grateful for each and every one of you.

Sitting here, reliving this and having so many of you reliving it with me, there are no words for how much it helps. I am showing you my secret heart, warts and all, and you are here.

Thank you. I am humbled by you.