baby day

I promise to not only write about loss and grief and miscarriage from now on all the time, but today is a special day. 

In all my pregnancies, I've always been overjoyed about one thing first and foremost: baby day. The day, however it looks, that you go in and you get that baby. I always wanted to have really natural labors and I love everything about homebirth, but since the Lord didn't write our story like that, I've tried to make the most of our little (sometimes long) hospital visits. I try to relish the crushed hospital ice, the nurses who help me nurse, the friends popping their faces in to smile and see that sweet babe. But most of all, the baby minute - the pinnacle of the baby day, where you hold that sweet babe in your arms and everything in the whole wide world flys out the window. Maybe before you were anxious about how to do it, worried about money, sad about pregnancy weight gain, mad at your husband (never me), sore from labor or about to pass out from blood loss. But there's always a baby minute, when you hold that baby, and nothing in the whole world matters except the inexplicable joy that comes from the gift in your hands. 

Today is Arrow's baby day. I won't get to hold him or cuddle with him or nuzzle him. I won't get to show him pictures of us together, like all our other kids are obsessed with seeing. But it's still his special day, the one that the Lord has written for me to stop carrying him physically and I'm going to try to celebrate that to the fullest extent that I can. Celebrate has three definitions according to the dictionary. 

- to observe or commemorate an event with ceremonies or festivities.

- to make publicly known, proclaim.

- to praise widely or to present to widespread

So since Arrow won't have a birthday or a graduation or a "hooray! we finally potty trained" day or a wedding day, 

I'm going to soak up this day. 
I'm wearing bright minty nail polish and curling my hair. 
I went to buy a new robe because I always buy a new robe for baby day's, but apparently they don't sell robes in the middle of summer in South Carolina. 

God gifted us with a child, that we totally didn't deserve or earn. 

God gifted our hearts with intense, intense joy and gratitude for a

season that we haven't felt really before. 

And He is meeting us in the loss of those things, with Himself.  

But I'm proclaiming today as Arrow's baby day, and I'm going to try and experience all the joy and sadness that will come from that. Thanks for celebrating and praising the Lord with us, through our trials and through His triumphs. 

(it can't go without saying that this day is made much sweeter 

by the faces that will greet me when I come home 

and I am intensely grateful for them. 

here are some shots of their babydays)

elias powell connolly 1.31.07

gloriana eloise connolly 3.14.08

benjamin haddon connolly 5.27.09