The memorial service

that I desperately prayed, and hoped, that I wouldn't have to plan, is all set to go ahead.

My princess was cremated yesterday. We will collect her ashes after the service tomorrow, and she'll come home with us. Its bittersweet, bringing her home. She belongs here, with her sister, and her mummy and daddy, but that she has to come in an urn is so incredibly wrong to me. To me, she should be laying in her rocker while her sister dotes on her. She should be sleeping in our room, in the cradle we bought just two days before we found out she was so sick the doctors gave her no chance. She should be in my arms, keeping me awake at night. To me, she should be home as our baby, as our Ariana. Not as a memory.

I know God has a plan and a purpose. I still feel so blessed, and peaceful. But knowing that tomorrow is the day. THE day, that we say goodbye scares me. It scares me to think that people might forget about her. That she will become just another statistic to hydrops. That to our family, she'll be the rarely talked about, barely mentioned "other child".

I want Lucy to be able to talk about her sister for as long as she wants, to whomever she wants, without the fear that someone might tell her to stop because its upsetting.

I'm scared that my heart has been broken into so many pieces it can't be healed. I worry that I'll become bitter. I worry that I'll lose my compassion for other peoples circumstances. I worry that I will start to feel my hurt is more justified than the hurt of others.

Somehow tomorrow, I have to say goodbye to someone that was such a part of me, for 29 weeks that when I'm asleep, i dream i can feel her move. I look at my c-section scar and I think back to when they pulled her body from mine, when they told me she was a girl and when they let me see her, gasping for breath, for that one second before they rushed her away. Until we took the tubes out, it was the only glimpse of her face without tubes and wires that I had. How i wish i could remember every detail of that tiny baby, instead of shaking like a leaf, and begging them to help her.

My arms feel so empty tonight. My heart is breaking for what is yet to come. I just miss my baby. And somehow i have to face that, every day, for the rest of my life. Ariana is at peace, dancing in God's garden. But here on earth, right now, tonight. I just cry.