Just another tough day

Today is a tough day. I get an email this morning from a friend who is battling bone cancer and just started chemo. She has a fever and infection and needs to go back to the hospital for at least 24 hours of antibiotics. It was her son's birthday too-I think he is 12. She said she will let me know when they let her out. She lives on the other side of the country practically, so visiting her is not an option. I am worried about her and praying for her.

I get another email this morning. My friend who is due in mid September with baby number one will be having a stress test Friday and Monday and an amnio on Wed to check for lung maturity. Assuming the baby's lungs are developed, they will induce her Thursday the 24th. We were due 5 days apart. I was planning my c section for 8/25. Our baby girls (she knows it's a girl) would have been one day apart-nursery buddies! I just hope everything is OK. The baby's estimated weight is 4 pounds as of now.

My husband and I watched some old videos (OK not that old) of just before our daugther was born. When her room was painted and ready to go (just two days before the c-section). Me before going into the hospital-looking HUGE! Then Jacqueline from the day she was born up until she was 1 1/2. We did not play the rest of the tapes-it was getting late. I watched her grown up all over again. First bath, sitting up, first steps, first birthday etc. I forgot how little she was.

I started to cry and still in that melancholy mood. I said to my husband I should have been 8 1/2 months pregnant now with our next baby girl. Will I ever get to experience all the firsts again? Would my angel have looked like Jacqueline at all? A thousand feelings started rushing through me. It's so hard. I was doing OK for a few months, but really am starting to feel a sense of loss all over again. I think my husband was thinking some of the same things I was as he watched the tape. The next few weeks will be hard, but I am strong and I will survive.

I wish it could have all turned out differently. Ironicially, I had such a good happy dream last night. My husband and I went to adopt a baby from Russia and came back with like a 10 month old cutie. Both our parents and his parents flew with us too. Another American couple was at the orphanage and they got a baby girl too, but ours was cuter. We had no idea what to name her at all-but were happy as anything! Strange-is this a sign?