holidays...they are here

I LOVE the holidays!  Christmas is my favorite holiday above them all.

I love the songs.  Buying presents.  Cooking & baking.  The feeling in the air.

But...about this time in the holiday......I think back to 16 years ago.  I don't want to....I try not to....but....this was a HUGE part of my life.  My first child, his birthday and his death day.

I was so very sick during this time.  I was trying everything that my doctor told me to do to feel better.  I was miserable.  The Doctor kept telling me I was fine but, I had never seen anyone as sick as I was being pregnant.

So....we all know the ending.  Dead baby.  Christmas Day!

I could call my doctor right now and only say dead baby, Christmas Day....and he would know immediately who I am.  He is still practicing in Santa Barbara @ Cottage Hospital. 

I spoke to him several times while I was pregnant with Nash.  He was reassuring that I would be fine.
I could not have had Sophie with him.  He promised me a live baby and he delivered  :)

I think about him whenever I think about my son, Nicholas.  Since my doctor was a coward and a quack...I was sent to Dr. Soffici to be told the terrible news.  I would give birth to a dead baby.

I think about what would have happened should I have had a good doctor and Nicholas being my son.  I would have a 16 year old...boy!  Scary! 

I would have had to raise him and Sophie alone since their father died when Sophie was six month old and Nicholas would have been about 2 1/2.

So, I try not to think of all that happened on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve.  I was in Cottage Hospital....I had been isolated from the other patients in the hospital...because my case was very scary to anyone giving birth.  I could have anything I wanted...just not a live baby.

I would say....labor wasn't too bad...I got good drugs.  But, there was nothing to prepare me for the BIRTH.  It was awful.  There is nothing like going thru all of the labor, the pushing, the breathing....and in the end....you get a baby that will not, can NOT move.  You get a baby that is quiet, still, but loved.

You have no idea what this feels like...until you have been there.  It is a sad that I never, ever want to feel again.  A lost I never want to know.

I miss his daily....but, really around Christmas.

There is something strange in missing an entire holiday.  The family went and had fun.  David and I stayed in the hospital...and wanted for Nicholas' birth.  I have said good bye....but, I am not done saying good bye.

So, now for the holidays....I try to make sure that everything is done before the month of December starts.  I never know if I am going to fall apart in a store because of a song or because there is a little boy named Nicholas.

But, It has tainted Christmas.  But....I pretend and get my spirit going for me.

Some years are easier than other.