our little girl

From the day we found out we were pregnant, Joe and I started to wonder whether it would be a boy or a girl.  He wanted a boy, I immediately proclaimed it a girl.  It was the cause for competitive banter for several weeks.  Secretly I didn't care.  I was thrilled to be pregnant.

When we found out that we had lost the baby and I would be scheduled for a D&C, my doctor encouraged us to send tissue in for extra analysis.  That way we would be informed in case we were unknowingly carriers for a syndrome or had an increased chance of high risk pregnancies.  We recently received the results of the testing (and gratefully the answer is no and no).

It was a little girl.

She had Trisomy 21.  Down syndrome.

What a rush of emotions we felt at those words.

I could suddenly picture more clearly the life that could have been.  Rather than just a black and white blur in a strip of pictures I often stare at longingly, our baby was a little girl who had down syndrome.  And because of just those two small details, I felt an instantly deepened love and connection to her.  In that moment more than any other, she became real to us.  She became our daughter.

So too was I filled with a sense of my Heavenly Father's tender mercy in sparing us of that very rewarding but very difficult path.  We were given that possibility early on and naturally we wrestled with the idea of raising a child with Down syndrome (or any other syndrome).  But to some degree we had accepted that possibility and committed ourselves to tackling the challenge.  It just hadn't crossed our minds that our challenge would not be to accept her, but to lose her.

With more answers there are always more questions.  The church has no set doctrine on the destiny of miscarried children; even prominent leaders have varying opinions on the subject.  At what point does a baby receive their spirit?  Will she be ours after this life?  Will that sweet spirit come to us on earth at another time? The truth is, I don't know the answers to those questions right now.  And that's hard.  But I trust that in the Lord's way and in the Lord's time, He will make it known to me.  Until then its a good thing I'm learning a whole lot about patience.