Stillborn Labor- Continued

After my sister arrived moments after birth, I asked for the midwives to bring the baby to me. Trembling on the floor, propped up on pillows in the low light, they passed my still child to me. She was a girl and we named her Arianna Lillian Bellinger Goodale. Arianna was loosely wrapped in a homemade quilt decorated with happy bright suns. It was in that one timeless moment when my hands held her tiny body that my heart literally went soaring into hers; we collided into mother-and-daughterhood. I fell more in love with Ari at that time than I could have ever imagined. I was shocked by her beauty- she was perfect and appeared only to be sleeping. She wore a small white cap and her eyes were closed. Her pudgy cheeks pushed down the corners of her mouth, which had turned deep purple. My shaky hand reached slowly up to touch her nose- so little and round. My vision blurred with tears, as I asked her to wake up- maybe it was just a dream? Just wiggle, or cry, or open your eyes, I thought. Despite my sadness then, I saw such pure beauty that only a mother can understand. I was proud of myself and Brian to have made such a precious being. I scramble to hold onto the picture in my mind's eye as it fades. I wish now in retrospect that I had held her longer- but in reality no amount of time would have satisfied my yearnings.

I laid in bed now, as friends and family came in and out. I was splattered in blood from the waist down. My sister started to clean my body with a warm sponge, but I asked her to leave the blood on my feet. I loved this blood. I felt like a warrior. It made me feel close to Ari. It was some sign of reality. This is real- see? It was all I had left- some mixture of hers and mine. I clung to it and cried as the shower water eventually washed me clean.


The next time I saw Ari, the moment had passed; she had passed. Her body faded and she looked scarily dead. Brian and I knelt next to her in the nursery to say good-bye before a man from the funeral home came to take her body away. The next day my mom, Brian, and I followed her to the funeral home, where we were able to see her body for the last time before cremation. She looked so small, as she lay on a adult sized bed in a huge empty room dressed in a knitted outfit from her great-great grandmother. I walked slowly to her and stopped suddenly when I got close enough to see the death on her face. Brian proceeded to the bed, as I sunk to my knees, weighed down by my grief. It was a physical cry that bent my forehead to the ground, made me gasp for air- it felt like puking or purging out from the deepest part of my body. I did eventually make it to her bedside. We looked at the details of her little hands and feet with purplish nails. I told her over and over how much I loved her and missed her. Her skin was paper thin and powdery from the preparations. We wrote her a little note to be tucked in her shirt for the cremation. I stayed for a long time there, not wanting to go. I just starred and cried. And cried and cried.