Last night I didn't sleep very well. I had vivid nightmares.
I dreamt that my sister, who was having a baby at the same time as me, had lost her baby and had to be induced. I was with her at the hospital, and as soon as her little baby was born, my body spontaneously delivered my baby, still inside the amniotic sac.
The weirdest part was that my baby was still alive when born and the sac was full of air, not water. The baby's skin looked mottled and as she cried, her veins would appear and disappear every second. (We both had girls, in my dream.) The nurse in the room called this strange appearance "turtle baby." The baby stopped moving within seconds, and there we both were, holding our lifeless babies. In a particularly gruesome moment, my baby's body started falling apart as I held her (that detail courtesy of watching "Lost" last night, I suspect).
Then I woke up.
But not really. Because half of my dream isn't a dream. My sister and I were expecting babies within days of each other this summer. But last week my sister found out that the baby she was carrying had no heartbeat. This morning she's being induced. She was far enough along (15 weeks) that they should be able to tell if the child is a boy or a girl. They plan to name the baby and have a service for him or her tomorrow or Saturday. It's very important to her that everyone watching knows that they believe this was a real person and that they loved the baby very much.
My heart aches so much for her, and even more so because we were expecting babies at the same time this summer. It's a tragedy that Scott and I have tiptoed up to the edge of, but not yet walked through.
Today will be an awful day, but no-one can walk that dark road for them, bad as we want to. All we can do is pray for them, express our unconditional love, and be good listeners as they grapple with the emotion and questions and grief. I know that they love God and are learning how they can rest each moment, find real comfort, and walk in the grace He promises to give generously and moment by moment. So they are in the best hands.
