The day the earth stood still

This outfit is very special - it is a happy, but very sad outfit.

Mom and I bought this at Dillards the day of Natalie's first ultrasound - August 1, 2007. That was the day Mike and I first saw our little princess and found out she was a girl. I was on cloud 9. I sailed through the rest of my day, telling everyone that I had seen my baby for the first time and that God had blessed us with a daughter.

Mom and I decided to head to the mall that evening to buy some pink things to celebrate. I had picked this outfit out for Natalie to give to Mike. While we were shopping, I received a phone call from one of the doctors from the office.

Here's the excerpt from my pregnancy journal:

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I feel like I just got the wind knocked out of me.

The doctor called - he just reviewed the ultrasound and there's some things that concern him - 3 actually. She has a cyst in her brain (but he says it's somewhat common and normally goes away). She has some issue with her kidney - something like they're dialated or something, and there's slight thickening of the skin on her neck. He said everything is within normal range, but at the high end of normal. Any of these by themselves, and he wouldn't worry too much, but with all 3 - he's recommending an amnio to rule out downs syndrome. He also said we could go to a perionatologist who could do a level II U/S, but the same things would probably show up.

Mike and I are a mess and he's not taking it well at all - I guess neither am I. I'm a wreck.

I'm going to call the OB nurse (who is WONDERFUL) to see about scheduling the amnio asap.


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I remember feeling my legs give way under me as he was talking to me. Mom stood next to me and just held on to me. We stepped outside to try to begin digesting the information he had just given us.

After a good cry, we went back inside the store and I purchased this outfit. Buying it represented my hope and prayer that my little girl would be alright. It also represented to me that if God meant for her to have Down's that I would love her just as much if not more. Regardless of how she would be, I would love the sweet baby that would one day wear this outfit.

Many times during this ordeal, I hugged this onsie, held it over my belly and imagined my perfect little girl in it. I thought it had, for a short time, manifested into a tangable piece of her, when in reality, it was a piece of me struggling to hang on to hope.

20 days later, we received the test results from the amnio and learned that our Baby Bee was just fine.

Mike's sister Julie said: "we will bombard heaven with our prayers for a good report." God answered our prayers and blessed us with the most perfect angel.

I put this outfit on her today and cried a little. I had waited SO long to put this on my baby. At the time, I wasn't sure if she would be ok, but I knew that regardless of how God wanted her to be, I would love the little girl in this outfit more than anything in this world.