Things die. Plants, batteries, vehicles. Things die. We replace them. We understand this...this is why double A's rarely come in less than a four pack. We can fix things when they die. We can make them work again. Old people die...we get this...we understand this. We can't replace them, but they've lived their span and then we give them back...we move on, rebuild around it, and go forward.
Babies don't die. Babies haven't lived their span, and we aren't supposed to have to give them back. We don't get this...we don't understand this. It's the ultimate kink in everything we've believed. We have heard of babies that die...we've seen them on the news, we are all warned of the risks when we're pregnant, we spend months worrying that something will go wrong...but then the baby is here, and everything is okay..because babies don't die. They are ours, they are here, we worry about them and fuss over them and scream into pillows when they drive us crazy...they eat our protein powder and draw on themselves, they eat our chapstick and climb on things that they shouldn't....but they don't die. I remember hearing a million times in the doctors office, "kids are far more resilient than when give them credit for," "babies are rubbery," "you aren't going to break her don't worry." But what about everything else? What about the things that we can't control? What about people you think you can trust but you can't? What about the times when we dismiss a gut feeling for paranoia? Why doesn't anyone warn us about that? WHY?
Reality: babies die. Every day. No one wants to think about it, no one wants to talk about it. Why don't they want to talk about it? Because it's the worst possible scenario. Because it's not a loss that any human is capable of even wrapping their head around. Even in the hospital, even when I was watching the doctors' faces and the police and I SAW THEM LOSING HOPE EVERY MINUTE....babies didn't die...she wasn't going to die...she was going to wake up...between the doctors and the technology and the prayers she wasn't going to die.
But she did. She did die. She's gone and she's not coming back. It's been seven months, 9 days, 2 hours, and 56 minutes, and she's not coming back.
And I still don't believe that babies die. I know it. I feel it every day, this empty aching pain in my chest. I'm exhausted and I cry all the time. I don't go in and tuck her in at night, there are no hugs and no kisses being thrown, there are no late night cries or morning smiles, there's no baby laughter playing with her sister down the hall....it's all gone...and I still can't believe it.
My baby girl is dead. Because...appearantly sometimes babies die.
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