Dragonflies, Butterflies & Lady Bugs

Happy Birthday, Nina!

Today is Nina's 1st birthday. We're just doing a family thing for her and will have a cake and open the presents that have been sent. I'll take pictures and we'll either post them here or at Ofoto, and I'll post a link here. Last year on this day, at this time, they had just given me the first hormone to induce labor. Jasmine was with us at the hospital, asking questions, watching tv, playing the Nancy Drew game on the laptop. She stayed with me the whole time -- what a trooper. Gab didn't want to deal with the blood or the noise, so she opted to stay with a friend instead. We started a pitocin drip at about 11 AM and Nina was born just a few minutes before midnight. The doctors had told me she was only going to be about 7 pounds, which surprised me as both other girls had been over 8 pounds and I really felt Nina was bigger. When she came into the world, she resolutely proved them wrong as she was 9 1/2 pounds -- in the words of her nurse, already the size of a 3 month old baby. She was a big girl.

Now she's walking and talking and Jasmine isn't here to see it. So much has happened in the last year -- if someone had told me what would happen from last May to this, I probably would have told them there was no way I could handle the extremes. As if I had a choice.

Not sure what's up with the dreams lately. Last night I dreamt that I was at the hospital and I didn't have any clothes. I knew Jasmine's time was coming and I was rushing to find something to wear so I could go to her. I ended up grabbing hospital pajamas and throwing them on as I rushed to the lobby of the hospital, which, by the way, looked nothing like the hospital in St. Louis. I met her transplant staff in the lobby and they were all slightly taller than they are in "real" life. They were all just getting back from lunch and were inappropriately jovial, it seemed to me. I turned around and saw Jasmine and we started rushing her towards a room. Then I realized what was happening and I stopped them and picked her up. She was really small and bony with the finer blond hair -- like she was pre-transplant. I hugged her to me tightly and took a deep breath in of her hair and then she disappeared. I started sobbing as soon as I realized she was gone and had some kind of dual awareness at that point that I was dreaming because I wondered if I would wake myself up or if I was making enough noise that Jeff would wake me up. In fact, I wanted him to wake me up so I could stop. So I've been kind of melancholy all morning. I'm going to shake it by noon. I am.

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