another day, another blog

Remembering January 24th, 2010


Ellie sound asleep in her bassinet on the couch. She slept so well in her bassinet, all wrapped up snug as a bug

 

My happy boy


All I have are these two pictures. I don't remember a whole lot from that day. I do know it was the first day Dave returned to work, leaving me with both kids. But not really alone. For the first two weeks, we had a postpartum doula come a couple hours a day over lunchtime. My delivery of Max left me barely able to function, which with just one newborn is ok- you just sit on the couch anyways, but a newborn and a toddler, not ok. We were anticipating another rough delivery with Ellie but fortunately I felt pretty good. We had already made arrangements for a little extra help and decided to keep her on for two weeks. Excellent decision. A little weird, especially for a control freak such as myself, but she definitely made the transition easier, and we were able to make sure Max got as much attention as he needed.
Like I mentioned, I don't really remember a whole lot of that first day by myself.

Maybe it's because today, my mind is having a hard time focusing on anything but that day three months ago. All day my mind has gone there. Every time I look at the clock- it goes there. As I dropped Max off at school this morning I thought, I was sitting on the couch with her, she had just finished her bottle. When I pulled into the cemetery I thought, I was taking a quick shower. How did I not know how sick she was? How did I not know what was waiting for me when I walked into the living room and sat down on the couch? When I pulled into the driveway I saw it. The ambulance sitting at the end of the driveway and me climbing in back with Ellie in my arms. It was exactly then, 10am three months that it happened. It really happened? As I sat Max down at the lunch table, I knew it was about the time the doctor's were letting us see her after they intubated her.
Now at about 2pm, they had already told us it wasn't good. They were asking if we wanted to see the chaplain and telling us to call our families. They were trying to get her ready to go to the other hospital. By this time, three months ago, there was nothing we could do. We were well on our way down this horrible, horrible path. It was about this time three months ago when it started to get really hard to breathe.