The best thing ever

I’ve been digging through my old photos over the last few days, deleting and archiving in an effort to speed up my aging and overworked computer.

Last night I got to a set of photos taken while I was in between 19 and 20 weeks pregnant with Esmé. We were on vacation in New Brunswick, Canada, visiting André’s family.

When I saw the pictures I could remember the feeling of that trip–we were so very excited about having our baby. We made plans to figure out how we could visit every summer with our new baby–even asking about cottages that might be for sale. I was practicing my French, getting ready to raise our bilingual child.

We were a matter of days away from that fateful ultrasound–the one we expected would provide us some of the precious first information about our child–whether we were having a girl or a boy. I was so excited about that ultrasound that at times I couldn’t wait for our vacation to end, so it would be time to know.

That ultrasound did tell us we were having a baby girl.

It also dealt us the first of many blows we would receive about our baby girl. With that ultrasound, within minutes of hearing “It’s a girl,” we would also learn that our child had a number of anomalies that indicated that she might have a genetic condition.

What is so odd about these photos is that I do not recognize myself.

I mean, obviously, I know it is me.

But this person doesn’t look like the same person I see in the mirror every morning. This person looks like someone who has reason to believe that everything will go just according to plan. It is the same with the pictures of André–he looks so young and unburdened. Part of me is jealous of this former me…who had a promising career as a professor in front of her, plans for more children–who she would be able to enjoy daily during her summers off.

And part of me sort of hates her…for being so naïve, for being so limited in her image of what it would mean to have a child, for being the kind of person who wouldn’t have known what to say to a mom like the current me.

The next batch of photos I went through were just a few weeks later. We had received news that our baby girl did not have any large genetic changes, such as Trisomy 13, 18, or 21. But we had also been through a second scare with her heart–the doctor thought he detected another anomaly (perhaps he saw a glimmer of her bicuspid aortic valve?). After that ultrasound we waited in the hall, overhearing him trying to get us a rush appointment with a cardiologist as soon as possible so that, as he put it, we would “have all options available before 24 weeks.”

I distinctly remember feeling like I was going to throw up in that hallway…and looking at all the other expectant mothers walking around the office thrilled and unburdened by these thoughts.

After the cardiologist cleared our baby of any obvious major defect in her heart, André and I decided to believe that we were just being wrapped up in the concerns raised by the ability to monitor fetuses so closely. We still went to the extra monitoring required by her two-vessel umbilical cord–ultrasounds that went to weekly visits in the third trimester, but we were certain that everything was “just fine.”

But when I look at these later photos, again on vacation, this time in Austin Texas for a friend’s wedding, I can already see the beginnings of my new self. Tired and worried, despite my insistence that all of our doctors were just overreacting.

This are the best of the photos from that visit:

I can remember standing on this bridge thinking about my baby, swallowing the fears as they crept up with a series of nagging “what ifs.” I can see that I have already started becoming a bizarre new version of myself.

There is not a single one of me on the day she was born–she was whisked off before I could hold her for long. And there are not that many pictures of me after Esmé was born….there are thousands of her, but I didn’t want many taken of me…what I do have are mostly blurry.

There is this one, taken a few days before she almost died, about to take another step into this new world–one where the reality of what I was fearing on the bridge–so many of those “what ifs,” all of those things that old version of me in New Brunswick couldn’t have even imagined, came true.

It was really difficult for me to find these photos…I think especially so with Esmé’s looming fourth birthday, seeing how much the last 4 1/2 years has taken a toll on all aspects of our lives.

But when I look at this picture of me in the kitchen with Ez, still hopeful that things might find a way to head back toward that place I was dreaming in New Brunswick in August 2010…I am reminded of who was looking back at me. I am reminded of the person who has put a smile on my face again and again over these years–sometimes thanks to her amazing attitude, sometimes due to some small inchstone, sometimes due to my desire to show her everything is ok (even when I am not certain myself).

That perfect, fragile, trusting little person, the best thing that has ever happened to me: Esmé.