Take Me Back

I did something today that I haven't done in a long time~I viewed a website of someone whose triplets were born and then died. These triplets were born at 23+ weeks gestation. Two lived for a week, the third one lived for several months, and then he died.

I looked at this site because I wanted to see these small babies. I wanted to see their hands and feet, their heads with peach fuzz hair. I wanted to see them because they were the same gestational age as my Hannah, Ryan and Abby and therefore, looking at their pictures took me back, helped me remember how small my own babies were and what it felt like to hold them.

As I clicked through site, I noticed that first there were three babies, then two, then one. And even though I knew that he died, as I went through the photos, I found myself willing the third child to live. I cried when I saw his tiny hand wrapped around his Mom's finger. I cried at the pictures where his eyes opened for the first time. I cried when I saw him doing Kangeroo Care.

And then I cried when I saw the picture of him with his Dad-one look at Dad's face and I knew the child had died. I have never met this man, but I know his expression intimately because I have seen it before. For me, it was almost as devastating as Hannah, Ryan and Abby deaths, to see that look on my own husband's face.

So today, I cried. I cried for this family that I do not know. And I cried for my own family and the children that I gave birth too that I will never get to see grow.