Countdown to Frankie's Fourth Birthday: 13 days

It was right around this time in September that I found out I was pregnant for the first time. We were about to leave for Philadelphia to visit my sister, and Dean was tinkering around in the backyard with my dad when I took a pregnancy test. Literally, I had to turn the test at a forty-five degree angle under just the right light bulb to see a faint pink line. After frantically Googling "faint line on pregnancy test" and learning that it meant it was positive, I could not wait for my dad to get out of our yard so I could tell Dean. I still wasn't sure I believed the news, so I had Dean pee on a stick, too. Only when his pregnancy test, mercifully, showed not the faintest trace of a pink line was I convinced I was actually pregnant.

We were ecstatic. Overjoyed. Feeling blessed beyond comprehension. Until November 14th, when the baby's previously steadily beating heart stopped.

Then I felt like someone had told me I had a big surprise waiting, blindfolded me, and shoved me headfirst down a flight of stairs.

I was still in the midst of grief when I found out I was pregnant with Frankie. I was unprepared and so scared. My journal is full of fervent prayer that she would live. That God would be merciful and let me have the baby I so desperately wanted. And He heard.

I still marvel that we have been entrusted with her, that we are the ones privileged enough to be her parents.

I don't know why my baby died, but I do know that had he or she lived, I would not be Frankie's mother. And somehow, in that light, there seems to be no price I wouldn't have paid.