Preparing

In what has now become a ritual period of sleeplessness in the middle of the night, it occurred to me last night that today is exactly two weeks before Hudson’s second birthday on December 1. Which means it is almost, not quite, but almost, exactly 2 years since Ed and I went had some professional pregnancy photos taken. I was 36.5 weeks pregnant, and Hudson was born 9 days early, so these photos were taken just two weeks before she was born. Three days later, we went to our 37-week OB appointment and learned that I was already 2cm dilated and 70% effaced. We freaked out, given that we had not yet even bought a car seat to bring this baby home in. We spent the next several days on wild shopping sprees, buying all the essentials we did not yet have, crossing things off our list left and right. We got the car seat installed that weekend. We were as prepared as prepared could be.

I’m not sure if we have ever shared these photos beyond a very few close family members and friends—as you can see, they are very intimate and personal. And yet, I felt the need to share them today, because as you can also see, we were already so in love with our child and so obviously in love with one another. Before we ever even bought the rest of the baby gear, we were prepared. Prepared to be parents, prepared for our lives to change forever, prepared to love that baby like we’d never loved anything before, not even each other.

At this same time last year, I was in high gear preparing for Hudson’s 1st birthday party. I’ve always believed that it is so important to really celebrate birthdays. My mom made me feel so very special on every birthday, and I wanted my children to feel that same way, to have one day that is all about them. I’ll write more about Hudson’s birthday party later, but the other day, I was cleaning up some clutter and I found a notepad with my shopping list and to-do list for the party. I had so many different things in the works—a monkey smash cake for Hudson, monkey cupcakes for everyone else, a homemade personalized party hat for Hudson, CDs with Hudson’s favorite songs for everyone to take home as party favors. Two weeks before Hudson’s birthday last year, I was busy. Busy preparing to celebrate the birth of my incredible child, who had changed my life in ways I could never have imagined before she was born, who had made me want to be not just a better mom, but a better person, who had finally made me understand the value of loving myself so that I could better love others.

And now. Now it is two weeks before Hudson’s birthday again and I have no idea what to do. I am not busy preparing anything, but I feel like I should be. How do I prepare to celebrate the birthday of my dear child who has died? I most certainly want to celebrate it, or maybe commemorate is the right word, because frankly, I am in no mood to celebrate—I know many parents do continue to have parties with cake and balloons and all those kinds of things, but that is just not for me. At least not this year. I have had many ideas and thoughts about what to do, but not one of those ideas does any justice to the extraordinary spirit that Hudson was or to the profound impact that she had and continues to have on my life every single day. How could anything? When I have a party to plan, preparing is easy—party planning I know. Party planning gives me lists that I can delight in crossing through. But preparing to honor my precious child’s birthday after she has died is just something I never dreamed I’d have to do. No list will help me here.

I’ve never been so unprepared for anything in my entire life.