Bones

When I was 8 months pregnant with Ashley (2 days before Christmas) I ended up in the hospital. I woke up in the middle of the night with excrutiating pain in my back and thought maybe I was in pre-term labor. It turned out to be kidney stones. It was horrible. I had to have an MRI or something like that...they told me that my baby could be exposed to radiation. Great, what every pregnant lady wants to hear. So here I was being wheeled down to the X-Ray room, huge and pregnant with a hospital gown that was open in the back (thank God they let me keep my sweatpants on) and the person who was taking me down kept having to stop at every trash can so that I could puke my guts out not caring that everyone could probably see my "groceries".

After they had done the X-ray or whatever it was called the doctor came upstairs and held up this X-ray film and said "look what we found". It was a picture of Ashley and the doc had typed "Merry Christmas Mom & Dad, I love you" on the slide. Somehow that picture made all of it worth it.

I gave you the background because we have been rearranging things upstairs in the girls' rooms this past week and I have been unpacking their keepsake boxes. Everytime I run across the picture of Ashley I take it out of the envelope and remember that day...fondly. This time I showed it to Ashley. She was terrified at first...then I told her that it was her...I think that scared her even more. We talked about it a little, I told her that was when she was in my belly. I think she likes it now and is proud because she keeps asking me if she can "see her bones".