Six Hours.

My sister in law was a week overdue. The baby's heartrate was low so they did an emergency C-section. I got a call at work telling me things weren't OK, that the baby girl had some "abnormalities."
Her dad called her Patience, and though I didn't get to see him holding her, I was told he cradled her four pound body in his arms, keeping his gaze on her tiny face. She had his blonde hair, his facial shape and features.
I wonder what my sister in law knew going into the surgery. When she came to, the first thing she said was, "She's not going to make it, is she."
After having a baby myself, those words would not have even been able to be sucked out of my mouth soon after my own delivery. I expected to have a baby that would live, and to consider otherwise would have seemed as unimaginable as, well, a supossedly healthy baby dying six hours after she was born.
The pictures were sureal, she looked so much like Ethan. Her fingers were chubby and plump, her closed eyes little slits sitting high up on her round cheek bones, like my son's were. The similarities brought her death to whole new level for me--I guess I was thinking she wouldn't look so real, so much like a part of our family.
In one picture my brother in law is holding Patience wrapped in a white recieving blanket, a little pink knit hat on her small head. He's smiling at the camera, thinking what? That maybe it will be ok? That this picture will go in her baby book and they will tell her the story over and over how she needed surgery and tubes, but that she survived?
He has wanted a baby for a long time, and he was a good daddy to her for the short time she needed him here, holding her. I hope he knows he will be her daddy forever, even though she's gone now.