June 2, 2009

The last ultrasound photo I have of Sierra is dated June 2, 2009 - exactly one month before the ultrasound that would show that her heart had stopped.  This photo is blurred because of the lack of amniotic fluid, and it's one of those frontal face "alien baby" shots, not a profile.  It made me cry when I showed it to a friend the day after it was taken.  I didn't like anything about it, but I kept it on my desk all of last June to remind myself she was still with me.  After her death and birth, I put her handprints on my desk in the same place that picture had been, and I put the picture at the very end of her photo album.  I still don't like it - the skeletal face, the fuzzy image that reminds me our placenta failed - but it will stay in the album.  It's the last picture I have of her alive.