Worry

There are lots of things I love about our hospital. One of them is something the hospital does for all babies born at the hospital. They make a medallion with the baby's footprint and hang it on the wall. Pink for girls, blue for boys. I walk by these walls almost every day and sometimes stop to admire them. I love finding the names of babies I delivered up there. I'm excited that our baby will one day have a sweet footprint up there, too. Here you can see John Owen Reinhardt - a baby of another friend that I delivered this past July.

















You notice that some of the medallions are silver and some are gold. The silver ones just have the baby's name and birthday. The gold ones have both the baby's birthday, and the death day. These are for babies who died. I think this is part of why part of me still struggles to be too excited about this baby. There are too many reminders around that things do not always end happily. And I'm a worrier, so I waste lots of mental energy thinking about all the possible what ifs....

These tiny footprints are the smallest ones on the wall. Olivia Rhiannon Confer. She died in 2006. I always notice her medallion and think about her parents. How I'm sure they still grieve her. How nice it is that there is still this tangible memory of her that others can look at know that she was born, and was loved, and died.

Comments

Pam said…
I can't believe how tiny those feet are. So so sad.
11:05 PM
The Howell family said…
That is a really neat thing to do. It shows a great respect for life, no matter how long the life was. If that respect for life carries through the whole hospital then I bet it is a great place to work.
10:26 AM
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