9 days

I don't really know where to start the journey we've been through over the last 9 days since Reuben's birth, yet it has been a journey that I could never imagine having to go through. The immense anticipation of your birth over these last 9 months of pregnancy, that word itself feels so far away from me now. Will I ever experience such joy again? And the jubilation shared in bringing you into this World, the songs, the laughter.

This morning God has shown us some mercy. Reuben has the colaboma condition in one eye which will cause a blind spot, but he has his eyesight. We know his hearing defects but God has saved his eyesight. I know when I look down at him when his eyes are open that he can see me.

There are times when Jason and I have shared the same bleak thought, that God might take him away and spare him what he'll have to go through in life. I feel a distance growing between us and everyone we know, because our lives have so suddenly changed direction. Yet Erica has shared every day's pain with us and I don't feel the same canyon opening up with her. There has been such little time or feeling for celebration. I keep rewinding an endless reel of moments when everything feels normal to be the full onslaught of the pain that this nightmare brings us all.

Memories of your birth. They didn't lower the curtain so I didn't see you being raised out of me. The respiratory man suctioned you whilst Jason cut the chord. I kept asking if you were OK but nobody seemed to hear me. I could hear that your testes hadn't descended, but this was followed by the news that this wasn't uncommon. You hardly cried. I was asking why but nobody answered. Your vernix was wiped away and you were handed to me. I first called you Zu Zu, funny that little Boo. I find it hard to remember what it felt liek being pregnant, what the kicks and swishes felt like. I put you to my belly and try to connect the baby with the foetus inside. Does it feel the same? Do you weigh the same as the weight I felt in pregnancy? When you were handed to me, I recall furtively touching your face... (unfunished note)