Ex.act Re.plica

If you haven't read this book yet, you should. It's a beautiful memoir of a stillbirth and a SPAL. Although we have our own stories, the events that led up to the loss of our babies, there are other details that we can all relate to.

I don't want to give away any of the details, but I laughed at an absurd story she shared, a misunderstanding. It reminded me of an absurd misunderstanding I had in the hospital. Our nurse shared a story of another couple, their baby wasn't expected to live but a few hours. The father said out loud, "Grass! I want my baby to experience grass." My first though was "Why would you want your dying baby to smoke grass? But I guess it would numb the parents' pain." The nurse continued, the father ran outside and picked some grass from the hospital lawn. (Oh yeah, lawn/grass, that would be more appropriate.)

I cried a lot too. Ms. McCracken wrote about wanting to know the names of all the babies who have died, to tell their parents "It happened to me too." so they would feel normal and to remember their babies. I know this feeling too well.

It's a quick read, I stayed up too late reading it, but I finished it over a weekend.