Life

Losing Julian has showed me how life is such a precious balance and demonstrated how easily it can come to an end. I miss the days when I felt invincible. When I thought mothers had children, grew old and watched their children have children, and then died peacefully of old age. I knew people died before growing old everyday, but until it touched me personally, I just didn't think it could or would happen to me. But it did, and now I find myself thinking about death all the time.

I feel like I am just waiting for the next tragedy to hit our family, that something will go wrong and we will lose someone else. All it takes is a wrong swerve of a car, one single cell in the body to begin to divide abnormally, anything really - anything can happen.

I found out yesterday that a friend of the family lost her baby at 6 weeks due to SIDS. The funeral is today. I feel the mothers hurt, I feel her pain, sorrow, loss and sadness. This just shouldn't happen to any mother.

Hearing the news of another baby dieing has me on edge. I thought I was doing better, but it has made my memories of losing Julian fresh again. I'm also, once again, paranoid about SIDS. I was worried about SIDS long before I lost a baby. With my first born I was always worried when she was sleeping too peacefully or sleeping for what I felt was too long and was quiet in her crib. I can't count the times I thought the worst and ran into her room, only to find her fast asleep and just fine. After Julian died (and his death had absolutely nothing to do with SIDS) I was so nervous that I would bring Jean-Luc home and something would happen to him. I insisted on using an Angelcare monitor in his bassinet. It helped me sleep at night, just knowing that he was breathing and if he stopped for any reason I would know almost right away. I will be keeping him on that monitor at night for as long as I can.

The baby that died this past week died when his mother put him down for a nap. Jean-Luc often naps in his playpen, swing or car seat - so I have been paranoid about checking him like every 5 minutes since I heard the news. I know I can't keep him on a breathing monitor all the time, but I sometimes wish I could. This kind of news makes me crazy with worry. Like I said at the beginning of this post - life is so very precious.