Some nights are really hard. After I say my prayers and I try to sleep. And some nights all I can do is lie awake and think about Charlotte. Usually it's little things like how she would kick so much, and so hard. But tonight it all came back at once. The pizza dance she did. How we were so sure that she would love her pizza her whole life. That she would always do her pizza dance for us. The hot chocolate that I drank gallons of that winter, because she liked it so much. And how when I was holding her in my arms, I couldn't stop kissing her face and telling her how sorry I was. To this day, I'm still not sure what I was apologizing for. For not keeping her safe, I guess. For not being a good enough mommy to keep her. For now knowing that something was wrong. I think about how I was relieved when it was time for the people from Primary Children's to come and get her. Because I thought when she was gone, it would stop being real. It would stop hurting so much. We made them take her blanket because it was the middle of winter. I have never stopped wishing I still had that blanket. It was minty green with blue and pink giraffes on it. I was thinking about how when I would drive to work in the mornings, I would play the CD i made for her. "Fireflies" by Faith Hill. I still cannot listen to that song without her. She wont get to believe in Peter Pan. She was so alive. I would sing to her, every single day. I talked to her non-stop for 8 months. She was real. She was alive. And then she was gone. And some days it feels like it didn't happen. It feels like she's a fictional character in a story I've told too many times. And just saying that out loud makes me want to curl up and die. How can it feel like my baby, my child, my hope, my life.. how can it feel like it was a dream? But I remember when I was in labor, and I had the extra pain medicine (because of the epidural that dripped down my back instead of into it.. because of the pitocin that caused contractions so hard that the nurses freaked out because they thought my uterus would rupture..) and I could not feel anything. When my doctor told me to stop pushing for a second, and I didn't hear her, or just didn't listen. And her shoulders came out and I needed stitches. That was real. And I think about that, and I lay in my bed and writhe in agony because it was real, and I haven't forgotten. But everyone else has. I think about how they moved me out of my room in L&D and stuck me in a room in the basement of the hospital. Like they were hiding me. Like I was a dirty secret. The nurse there was horrid and to this day, I still can remember how she seemed so cruel, and yet I thought maybe they hadn't told her why I was there, and that's why she was rude. How the next day a nurse came in with a Rubella vaccine and made me take the shot, even though I was arguing and crying. And it hurt like she'd stabbed me with an ice pick. All I wanted to do was go home and forget that I was alive.

Lately, every time I see her name, it makes me lose my breath. I wont get to see her name on a check. I wont get to write about her first steps, or her first date. Her beautiful name, that we spent so much time deciding on. Her name that is a song, and a wish, and a beautiful memory. And I can't even keep it for myself.

I miss her so much that I can't catch my breath. So much of my days are spent pretending life is okay. That the sun is shining. But so much of the day is consumed by a need to hold her. To see her eyes, to hear her voice. I want to talk to her. I want to reassure her that I would save her if I could. That I wanted her more than I wanted to breathe. That I still want her more than there are stars. That she can never be replaced. That the hole in my heart is deep, and wide, and endless.