My top three list

Today I'm thinking about all the joy that Samantha brought to our lives. She was the perfect fourth baby in many ways (with the notable exception of a pesky heart defect). So happy just to watch her siblings play around her. So happy to sit at Bertucci's (yes, we were crazy enough to occasionally venture out to restaurants with four kids!) eating little bites of pizza while we tried to control the chaos of her three older siblings. So happy to listen to the book “From Head to Toe” again and again and act out each page along with her brother and sisters.

And nobody loved a grocery store outing like Samantha. Maybe because she could sit in the grocery cart face-to-face with Mommy, just out of grabbing range of everyone else. Grocery stores aren't any fun anymore. I'll leave it at that.

I've poured myself into the world of online baby loss blogs as a way of coping with this loss. I think only a person who has experienced the hell of losing a child can truly appreciate these kinds of blogs or even understand why they might make for good reading. Me, well, I'm drawn like a moth to the light. Can't stay away. I'm frankly amazed and horrified by how many sad stories there are out there. It's a good thing my tubes are tied, because I can't even fathom the possibility of trying to get pregnant again now that I know how much can go so, so wrong.

I've been writing a lot, too. It helps me process all that has happened since December 9th. I'm already so scared that I'll forget things about Samantha, the details of her life that can easily fade into the blur of a sleep-deprived year in a house with four young kids. I want to do everything I can to keep those memories alive. Writing helps. I could fill up this entire post with the things I miss about her. But really, just to hold her in my arms again, to touch her perfect, soft skin, to smell her sweet little head, well, I think those would make my top three list.