Dot Wonderful

The day surgery couldn't have gone more smoothly. I was even able to eat a thumbprint when I got home, but I think it was more out of principle, as I can hardly remember chewing. :)

I am ready to go ahead and move on from this pregnancy. I don't mean I want to forget (at least not at the moment because sometimes I do), but I want to move on with this baby as part of my life. I don't want to be trapped in the grief any longer; I want to embrace some of the good things about this experience.

For example, I can't remember if I told you that we pre-named the baby. I keep calling her a girl, though of course I didn't know (she did actually have a gender at the time of miscarriage, but we wouldn't have been able to tell yet). We gave her the secret pre-name, Dot, because when we saw her on our first sonogram and the tiny flutter of a heartbeat, that is what she was to us - our little tiny Dot.

I don't really mean to romanticise this too much because sonograms are difficult to "read." Remember that Friend's episode when Rachel couldn't see her baby and felt like a horrible mom? It was more like that.

I did actually see her, though (with the lovely midwife's help), and her heart.

I laughed with my Mom when I got home about calling our baby Dot because it was a such a silly thing to do, but the baby did become more real to all of us as a result. Mom wanted to give the dot a middle name and had just met someone whose name is James Wonderful Smith. She thought the middle name was appropriate for the baby. And that's how it went.

We had our Dot Wonderful for almost 10 weeks.

Whenever Fougs and I secretly whispered about the baby (what kind of mom I wanted/didn't want to be, what kind of auntie she wanted/didn't want to be), we called her Dot Wonderful. Whenever I was alone with Dot and had chats with her (mostly in the car in between loudly sung Ani DiFranco songs), that's how I would address her.

The only down side to Dot Wonderful (other than perhaps explaining to others that this was a very endearing name. Really, it was!) was that Rich had taken to calling her D.W. in a thick, red neck, trucker twang, as in, "Dee Dubya, get on outside and slop them hogs, by God! What in THE hell, girl? (mumbled) Dern city slicker."

Not. cool. Rich! :)

We had lots of dreams and conversations about and with our Dot.

Memories like these are what I want to take with me as I move on.

Oh! And there was that whole Mom moment when she couldn't decide if she wanted the baby to call her Gigi or PaPaw... But that's a whole different post.. (possibly under the tag "lunatic!"!) :)