A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer...

It’s been two months since your day 2. That Sunday morning, I woke up to find you alive. When we drew the lights down, your sweet little eyes peeked out at us. Blinking at this world so strange. We wondered at what you could hear, what you could see. As you laid on Daddy's chest, you would respond (at least) to the vibrations of his voice by opening up your eyes. Not much had changed, your breathing was still labored at times, and Daddy kept counting for so long between your breaths. The nurses gave you morphine through your tiny feeding tube when your breathing got rougher and the hospice nurse came to talk about taking you home. Using Dr. Julia’s orange baby stethoscope, we learned how to listen to your belly for a puff of air through the tube that told us it was reaching your small stomach. At home, WE would be feeding you my milk through your tube, three tiny milliliters at a time. Nurse Tracy from hospice had never had a baby on hospice go home, so this was new territory for h...

Have you ever agonized over something? If you’re like me, the word “agony” didn’t really affect me until I actually experienced it. It was agonizing to choose an induction date, along with the other decisions we were asked to make before Hallelujah’s delivery. We were asked to choose what our daughter’s life would look like. Would it be tubes and needles and tests and incubators? Would it be skin to skin and sister snuggles?  Would it be some combination of these two? There were pluses and minuses to each agonizing decision – there was no “right” answer. Even now, looking back, I’m not convinced I made the right choice…I can never know how the other way would have played out…and that, my friends, is agony. Agony is defined by Merriam-Webster as intense pain of the mind or body. Synonyms: anguish and torture.  The ancient Greeks coined the term “agonia” to describe the feeling of fear an athlete feels before a contest; the kind of struggle that emphasizes mental pressure that y...