Tomorrow

Tomorrow, I will see my little girl one last time, attend a service in her honor, and bury her.  In some ways, I just want the day to be over.  But in so many other ways, I don't want tomorrow to come at all.

Through several pregnancies now, my prayer through the first 20 weeks has been that God would let me carry the baby in my womb long enough to hold him or her before I had to say goodbye.  And now I wonder if that was a mistake.  If I never should have asked for that.  Maybe Elliana would have been perfectly healthy if I'd never asked.  But I did.  And God answered me.  Now I think it's more than I can bear.

One full week of my life was just spent in a hospital bed.  It feels surreal.  It was like a different life.  I had no children (outside of the womb) to take care of.  I enjoyed visits with friends and had conversations that were completely uninterrupted by kids.   All of my meals were brought to me in bed.  I watched the entire first season of Downton Abbey.  Conversation about Elliana was common - nobody was afraid to bring her up or ask about her.  The whole week was about her.  Keeping her healthy and safe. 

In a matter hours, everything changed.  Friday afternoon, I was talking about what life might be like with a NICU baby.  Hours later, the NICU doctor was leaning around the curtain that separated Jason and I from the doctor who was closing my incision, telling us that she'd tried as much as she could, but Elliana's heart rate kept dropping. 

A week lived almost in another world.

As we drove back into Lexington yesterday, and as we got on the highway this morning to make arrangements at the cemetery, it struck me how 'normal' everything was.  People still driving to work.  People still going through the McDonald's drive-thru.  People still getting ticked off at other drivers. 

Pregnant moms still... pregnant.

I feel like I'm moving in slow motion - my entire world has changed.  Yet the world around me keeps moving as if nothing has changed.  As if everything is the same.  But it is so not the same.  Not the same at all.