looking back

one year ago today. i remember not being able to sleep the night before. i remember getting Lynzie cleaned up, sending her off to school, and then waiting. i had to wait for two hours before i could call the doctor and hopefully hear my amnio results.


that was such a long two hours. my life was in limbo. would my baby live? did she have some horrible chromosomal abnormality? what were they going to tell me?


i called at 9:00 am. the nurse couldn't find my results. crap. she called back a little while later. i can still vividly remember standing in my kitchen, listening... waiting to hear what was wrong with Carli. the nurse said "do you know the sex of this baby?" i told her i was having a girl. but, really i didn't care about that. tell me the real results!! as i paced around the kitchen, she said "it is definitely a girl-100%... and her chromosomes are... (long dramatic pause- like on Maury when they're waiting for the baby-daddy news)... completely normal."


i could breathe again. nothing was wrong with my baby! she was completely normal! well... except for that damn fluid building up around her heart and lungs. i remember calling ray. we were still frustrated that we did not know what was wrong with Carli, but so very happy that the amnio came back normal.


i think up to that point, we were expecting something definite to be "wrong" with her. she must have an extra chromosome somewhere. i mean, with all that was going on with her... how could she possibly be genetically normal? but she was- as far as we could tell anyway. it seemed like such a huge blessing. we thought maybe she would be okay.


i decided that day that i wouldn't worry about anymore tests and results. i would just look forward to seeing her healthy little heart beating away on the next ultrasound. i had no idea that healthy little heart would be so crushingly still the next time i saw it.


looking back, all that amnio did was offer us false hope. she was no better off than she was before. looking back, i wish it had been able to tell us something was wrong with her. it wasn't a blessing. it was a curse. it set the stage for something that still haunts me... i don't know why she was so sick. she was so normal.


as always- i'm still missing my baby.