Thank you National Geographic

I was watching a documentary on King Tut the other day. ("King Tut's Final Secrets" if you're interested.  I found it on Netflix)  It was mostly about the CT scan on his mummy trying to figure out once and for all definitively why he died, but they also mentioned the contents of his tomb.  They talked for several minutes about the two mummified babies.  For some reason Howard Carter thought the smaller one was stillborn and the larger died shortly after birth but you can't really tell that from the mummies.  Both were smaller than a full term baby.  Anyway, in talking about this, they described the babies' deaths as "terrible tragedy" and it was so nice (especially in light of comments and controversy around the stillbirth of little Jubilee Duggar) to have it recognized as a tragedy when a baby dies.


They also ended the documentary with a quote, that sums up the reason why I write this blog, the reason why I do things in my daughter's name:


‎"To speak the name of the dead is to make him live again. It restores the breath of life to he who is vanished." ~Egyptian Book of the Dead

Turns out she's LITERALLY always with me.

New studies show that, amazingly, cells from the fetus stay in the mother's blood system for decades after that baby's birth.


The best part?  It's not just full term births, but any pregnancy.


"And, says Carol Artlett, who studies fetal cells at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, even if a woman has a miscarriage or an abortion, even if there is no baby, the cells of an unborn child will stay in the mother for decades."


There's some debate about whether this ultimately proves harmful or beneficial for the mother, but the idea that there is a part of Cora literally always with me...is amazing.  I love that her siblings are too, but it's most amazing when thinking about Cora because I don't have her in my arms from day to day.  She's in my very cells.  I just love it.

1st or 20th, it doesn't matter.

I'm heartbroken for Michelle Duggar and the death of her 20th child.  I'm not going to call it a miscarriage, because she was far enough along that she will have to go through labor and delivery.   Her baby will be stillborn.  It makes me so sad.

But what makes me so sick over it is the horrifying comments she's getting.  Like, "it's what she gets for getting pregnant again."  I have to admit, the idea of that many kids seems a little crazy to me, and I really did worry about her health and the health of her baby after the complications of her last pregnancy.  But nobody deserves this.  It's not for the best when a baby dies.

My loss was my first, and futher along than hers.  But that doesn't mean that Cora's death was any more tragic or that I have a right to my pain any more.

I wish people would stop being so hateful.  No mother deserves this.

Family portrait when one is missing

How do you take a picture of your family when your family isn't complete?  I've seen families include a portrait of their lost one, but I don't really feel comfortable doing that.  We went for a subtler approach.  In 2009, for Cora's birthday, we bought a Shining Stars stuffed beagle with a code to name a star.  So we named a star near Orion's belt for our Cora Rei (okay, I know it's not really legitimate but that's okay).  Anyway, we then took a family portrait on Cora's birthday and included the puppy to signify her.

Well, we got a great coupon for The Picture People, and since it'd been so long since we'd had a professional portrait done (we hadn't had one since!), we got one done today.  And the puppy joined us again.

I don't know how long I'll include him.  As long as I can.  It'll probably be weird once I stop having young children, but I don't care.  It makes me feel like she at least got to be in our family portrait somehow.