Over the past couple of days, I've had a really difficult time connecting the baby I'm carrying with the baby we heard about on Tuesday. I have cried many tears over that little girl - the one I saw on the ultrasound screen the other day. But I can not connect that baby with the one I feel moving and kicking every day. And I feel incredibly guilty about that. I love the little girl I can feel. She's mine. Forever. But the baby girl whose little body is broken doesn't feel like mine. It's like they're two different babies.
I think I need to start calling her by her name. Maybe it'll help me start connecting the 'two' babies, if that makes any sense at all. I've had a name picked for a little girl for about 6 years. When I was 2 months pregnant with our first baby, I was looking through a baby name book and found a particular name for a little girl - its meaning was perfect. I had longed to carry a child ever since I was old enough to understand that I could do that. :-) And this name means 'my God has answered me'. It was perfect for my first biological daughter. My prayers to conceive had been answered, so this name fit, if it was a girl. My God had answered me - with a big YES. I thought. But we lost that baby just 2 days later. So I tucked away the name for the baby girl I hoped to have one day.
Six years and five pregnancies later, and I am finally carrying a baby girl. And since the day those 2 pink lines appeared on the pregnancy test, I knew that, should this baby be a girl, her name had been picked. But I pictured a perfect healthy baby girl with this name. I'd bring my perfect newborn home and get lost in the sweetness of newborn love. On Tuesday, those dreams came to an abrupt halt. I'm about to be brutally honest here - how, oh how, I can call this little girl 'my God has answered me'? How can this be His answer? How can I reconcile that His answer to my prayers for a baby girl is this: a sweet girl with such a broken little body and so little hope for survival? I must confess: I don't want this to be His answer. I don't want this nightmare. I would change it all in a heartbeat.
No matter how little I like this, this is God's answer. He has given me a little Lindegren girl. Somehow, though I will probably never know or understand how, this is part of His perfect plan for my life and hers. And no matter how much is 'wrong' with her, He knit her together in my womb. She is fearfully and wonderfully made. She has been created in His image. She is even more precious to Him than she is to me. And she is very precious to me. I love her dearly and am growing fiercely protective of her. She is a gift, for as long as I have her. Even if I only get to enjoy her in the form of her sweet little kicks.
So I will call her by her name, 'my God has answered me'. My precious Elliana.
*We live here in the south where everybody pronounces everything differently. So this is how we'll pronounce her name: eh-lee-AH-nah.
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