NOTE: Because I wanted this to be as honest and full an account of my twins, everything is in here.  Sometimes I swore like a sailor, some of my thoughts were not beautiful, and I just wanted to let you know before you got too far.  Thank you for reading this, and I hope something here helps you. 

THE EARLY DAYS
On Valentine's Day, the day before our daughter Emma's fifth birthday, we found out we were pregnant again.  Although I had only had a little spotting in January, I thought this was due to the stress.  I sat in the doctor's office, staring at the "+" sign while Emma called Mike at work and told him the news.  By the end of the month, we knew it was twins.  My father died in early March and I was convinced that the twins were my reward; a balance for the sadness of my father's long death from an Alzheimer's related disease.

Since I was now a full-time diabetic, we accepted our OB's advice about having an amniocentesis performed on the twins.  By the end of April, I knew I was carrying a boy and a girl, both genetically perfect.  Then, on May 13, I went in for a Level 2 ultrasound that I considered routine.  I didn't even bring Mike with, since what could possibly be wrong?  The sonographer asked me some strange questions - "Did you have these twins by in-vitro?", "Do you have other children at home?"  Looking back, I can see that these were questions to prepare me for Sarah's death.  She said she could only find one heartbeat and then the doctor came in and I heard the words, "The female is dead." 

As the words sank in, I could only babble for my husband.  The doctor said something about how it was not important that I call him, because he couldn't get there before the Level 2 was over.  I remember swearing at the tech to get me a fucking phone. The doctor told me that we still had one baby and implied that if I didn't calm down, something would happen to my boy.  That shut me up while they went in search of the woman in charge of pregnancy loss.  I must have gotten dressed, because I had to have been partially naked for the ultrasound.  They sent me to a room with a phone and I called Mike, then my mom and a bunch of friends. 

After Mike got there, I really wanted to get back home.  I couldn't think of how to tell our five year old daughter, who had been joyfully kissing my belly and hoping for a sister.  We had only just told her that she was definitely going to have a sister a few weeks before.  How could we take away the gift she had so much wanted and we had already thought we had given to her? We had just picked out names and I had decided on the babies' sweater patterns for my mother-in-law to knit.  By instinct alone, we sat Emma between us and gently told her that her sister was already dead.  Her response was the honest feeling of a sister already provoked by a three year old brother - "I wish the boy had died."  She asked if she could tell her Mike's parents and her uncles, which we allowed since she wanted to and neither of us were up to it.

SURVIVING

After Sarah died, nothing was the same.  Some days, I was a zombie and on others I worked on my community playground project.  Physically, I felt much better - but then I felt horrible about feeling better.  Emotionally, I felt I had failed everyone I wanted to make happy; Mike would have loved another little girl.  My mom had retired to help me out when the twins got here.  After we got the amnio back, I told everyone.  Now I had to tell them again. This seemed to me to be the hardest stage and it didn't help that my husband's sister-in-law told some people in my neighborhood without asking me if she should.  So I never knew who knew what and I never knew when someone was going to come up and tell me how sorry they were.  One time, it was just at the first moment I could remember NOT thinking about Sarah when someone told me how sorry they were.   This sister-in-law kept telling me she knew "exactly" how I felt until I nearly screamed, "How long did you have to carry around the dead and rotting body of your child!"

I could never escape my sorrow and pretend that life was normal.  One day, at the grocery store, I heard the clerk telling the person behind me my story.  Great, I thought, I am going to be everyone's "I heard of a woman who had to carry a live twin and a dead twin."  People with the best of intentions said the most horrible things.  Oddly, I couldn't even bear strangers not knowing about Sarah, so when I received the passing questions and congratulations about my growing belly, I still told almost everyone that I was carrying two babies.  I would try and NOT tell people, but it would always surface.  I would feel my face twist into a tight and awkward position, to help keep me from crying right then and there, and then the twins' story would tumble out. 

One of the things that saved my mind during this time was working on the playground at the school by my home.  This school is a third Hispanic, mostly industrial migrant workers, a third African-American, and a third whatever else we all are.  Over 75% of the kids qualify for the free/reduced federal lunch program.  I have spent a year and half doing everything from coordinating tools to all the public relations.  Sam and Sarah's original due date was August 15th.  That weekend, over 200 parents and neighbors installed the play equipment, which I helped design and select.  The thought that I was working on this playground that one of my children would never see was too much, until some neighbors gave me a gift of a tree for her memory and said I could plant it wherever I wanted to.  Emma, Jake and Sam will be shaded by their sister's burr oak tree, which will stand alone in the native grasses garden. 

Mostly, survival for me took the form of counting down the days and then the hours until it would all be over.  At least, I thought it would all be over. 

THE BIRTH

My OB advised a Cesarean delivery because that would be the only way we might get answers to what had caused Sarah's death.  One of her partners, who had done our twins' amnio, had also done a great deal of research into placental implantation and abnormalities.   I wrote a birth plan, made a bunch of copies for all the nurses.  Some of you already have this, I am happy to send it on if you don't.

The first date for the twins was the 25th, but that changed to the 23rd to accommodate the second OB's schedule; delivering two days sooner seemed like a blessing.  I was very nervous, but decided to work myself into a state of exhaustion by planning a little get together for five hundred people on the evening before.  It was the dedication ceremony for the playground.  I was tired and barely packed for the operation.  We had to be there at 5:30 without eating or drinking anything since midnight.  My mom sacked out on the couch and quietly wished the best for us as we left. 

The anesthesiologist was very competent and supported my decision for an epidural, although he did seem to favor a spinal.  My choice was based on the emergency cesarean births of my first two children. This time, something went wrong and I started to feel the knife halfway through the procedure.  Nothing helped - not even the nitrous oxide.  I vaguely remember saying something about feeling like goddamn Jane Seymour, but I may have only thought it.  Finally, my OB asked me if I had had enough and I said yes.  (One incredibly ignorant person asked me how I knew that the epidural hadn't worked.  Answer: Because I was screaming).  I will never forget the concern and fear on Mike's face.  Also, this was a freakish occurrence and very rare. 

The pain was something I am trying to forget, but the general anesthesia was a blessing.  When the sterile field screen was lowered, I started thinking about how Sarah was finally going to be leaving the one and only place she had ever been held, or ever would be held.  After this, she would be on her way to becoming ashes; a dream that was not to be, a sadness that would never heal completely.  I said the Buddhist mantra, which helped, but could not take away the pain.  I was happy to go under.

The first words I can now remember hearing were from my OB.  "Sarah is right here when you are ready to see her, or you can let the staff know."  Supposedly, I looked awake for awhile before anything registered.  I looked at Mike and he was holding a dark-haired baby with shiny black button eyes.  This was Samuel Thomas.  He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. 

Still groggy, I got to hold Sam as we were wheeled to what would be our room for the next few days.  My nurse was Myrna Lou, who could not have been gentler; she got a hand print from Sarah for us to keep.  There was a picture of a leaf with dew on it on the door to our room, signifying that we had lost our baby.  The hospital provided a Polaroid and a camera loaded with black and white film, as well as a professional photo of Sarah for us.  We have the Polaroids, but they allow grieving parents a bit of space to ask for the rest of the pictures.

Sam was amazing. Born at 8:40 AM, weighing seven pounds, ten ounces and 20.5 inches with 8/10 APGARs.  At first he seemed so tiny, until I remembered he had just been inside of me.  Then he seemed huge.  He nursed easily and right away - I could have attached him to my nipple and not even held him (of course I did). In fact, I dozed while nursing him when he hadn't had the nipple all the way in his mouth and he actually gave me a blister!   Emma had a little bit of peach-colored fuzz when she was born; Jake hardly had hair until he was two.  It gave me so much pleasure to watch Mike hold him so carefully, even though this child did not look so much like him. I don't know why this strikes me, since I love all my children.  I had assumed that there would never be a child that looked like me. Wisdom and understanding shone through his blue-black eyes; he seemed to be telling me that the sorrow we had shared inside my body was only the beginning. It would not always be sorrow - we would be promising each other a measure of joy in the rest of our love. 

Settled in, I asked for the basket my mother made to hold Sarah.  She was not what you would call beautiful, although at 18 centimeters, she was a good deal longer than I expected.  When I first saw her, I thought that she had been flattened out in profile, but before she left us forever, I looked at her in the sunlight and what I had thought was her nose was really her ear.  You could make out the tiny slits which might have been eyes as beautiful as Emma's.  Sarah definitely had her sister's stubborn chin.  Only one hand still looked like very much like a hand and her feet were pretty much gone.  The attitude her body was in reminded me of old paintings of the dead Jesus Christ being taken down from the cross, but I still hoped that her death was peaceful.  I stroked her head and felt her cranium, wondering what mysteries she held there and if she knew she was alive.  For some reason, I felt her neck and the rest of her body.  I guess I have always been a great neck nuzzler, but when I touched her throat, a tiny moan came out.  I don't even know how there could have been a sound in her, she was so tiny and fragile.  I know I will hear the echo of this sound, for the rest of my life, in everything remotely like it.  Already Jake has played on a toy clarinet and my heart stopped for a minute, taking a tiny detour into my throat. The only thing I could say, to myself and beneath my breath, was, "She was real."

The only tough part about my stay, besides walking again, was one nurse whose name I have blissfully forgotten.  First, she bottlefed Sam without asking me, then she gave him formula instead of sugar water.  She was just so convinced that Sam was losing weight because he was not nursing correctly even though I kept saying, "Could it be because my milk isn't in?"  After Emma and Jake were there for a visit, she started mewling, "You are going to be SO busy." I finally said, "You know, I was planning on being a lot busier, so could you not say that."  I couldn't believe it, usually I am only brave after the fight (or my flight) is over.  Maybe this is Sarah's legacy to me.

Early on, I had wanted Mike to be able to say that he would wash Sarah and take care of her for me while I was recovering.  Because he is both more laid back then I am and also because he did not feel a pressing need to bathe her, he could not guarantee his actions.  He wanted to see how she was before he made up his mind.  After a lot of fighting and many bitter words, the light dawned on me that this was not ONLY my loss, but Mike's and our family's sadness as well.  When I finally began to imagine how this day would go, I could have written out contingencies for every possibility until my birth plan looked like a critical path analysis. Mike was content that we would cross each bridge together and that we had surrounded ourselves with people who would give us the best guidance. 

One of the most painful decisions was to negotiate with ourselves what we thought was best for our two other kids.  We decided to start with Polaroids of Sarah for each of the children and watch their reactions to see what to do next.  Jake, who turned three last March, glanced at his picture and was, as expected, not very interested.  Emma looked at her picture and wanted to see her sister.  Carefully, and with what can only be described as reverence, she held the basket that contained her sister's body.  She would hold the coverlet tenderly in her hands and with her whole heart in her face, she would help us decorate her basket with flowers from the bouquets we received.  I brought four gift enclosure cards, one for each of us, and we each wrote a little something and tucked into her basket.  Emma bravely asked if she could carry her sister to the lady from the Cremation Society, which she did.  The woman tucked her in tenderly; the small Madeline doll was much bigger than Sarah and a little unwieldy.

I had really thought that once Sam was in my arms and Sarah was gone, my grief would be less.  He is here and with me and I feel that we share something beyond just my carrying him inside me.  As someone wise and kind said, "At least Sarah wasn't alone when she died."  This has been of great comfort to me.  I also went to the Pregnancy and Infant Loss Center's annual remembrance day on Sunday.  I was doing all right - some tears, but Sam tooted along every once in a while, making me giggle that embarrassed giggle we all once had.  Then they handed out plants to each family that had experienced a loss.  I went to get our plants, carrying Sam, proud of him, but worried that the sight of him might make others feel more sad.  As I carried my plant back, the thought struck me that this plant tucked into the crook of my arm was taking my Sarah's place.  She should have been there.  There are no plants beautiful, magical and wonderful enough to bring her back or to replace her.

When I started this tome many days ago, I was hoping that the writing of it would bring me clarity and some sort of closure.  I had thought that saying goodbye to Sarah in the hospital would be enough for me.  What I can see now is that this sorrow will be part of me that will never be lost ~ both because I can't forget my daughter.  Also, because I don't want even want to try.   Someone somewhere wrote that, over time, our losses become a shaded thread in the tapestry that is our lives.  A blessing from my heart to yours.

Catie

• Visit Waiting With Love for parents who know their unborn baby will die before or shortly after birth and for families who learn their newborn will die

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