Beautiful in God's Eyes

There's nothing that says Merry Christmas more than being handed your daughter's autopsy report. Sorry for the sarcasm...this just seems so unbelievable at times. It's hard to describe the guilt that I feel as a mother. Bernadette lived within me for 9 months, and I can't understand how and why I couldn't do anything for her. It's crazy how complicated her condition was, yet at the same time, I am angry and hurt that no one told me what a high fatality rate is associated with it. No perinatologist, besides the one I saw the week before her death, suggested that she would die. I'm not sure if they just didn't have a full understanding of her anomalies or what, but I wish I could've been at least a little bit prepared. The report states that she had omphalocele-exstrophy-inperforate anus-spinal defects (OEIS) complex (which I pretty much knew), "which is almost always fatal". I made the mistake of googling OEIS just now, and the first research article that was listed described the postmortem exam of an aborted baby. She was so beautiful, and I guess since I'm so used to seeing photos of exstrophy kids, it was easy to overlook her problems and only see a sweet little baby who died too soon.

So, the autopsy report states that Bernadette's cause of death was due to multiple congenital anomalies. You might be thinking "well, duh", but since almost none of the doctors I spoke to
suggested that she wouldn't live to see her birthday, I was concerned that her death was caused by something like an abrupted placenta or a blood clot in her brain. Something that "just happens". Not that that would've made me feel any better, but as her mom, I felt quite unsettled not knowing how she died. The list of abnormalities is overwhelming, although most of them we already knew. However, I didn't realize that she was missing a gall bladder or that there were anomalies in her thoracic spine. Or that her liver had an extra lobe. She did have 2 ovaries and fallopian tubes, and her uterus was split in two. Her kidneys, pancreas, lungs, stomach, heart, and brain looked beautiful.

No matter how emotional this is for me, no matter how much my heart aches when I look down at this 8 page report or when I relive her death in my mind, she's at peace. She feels no pain. She is with all the saints and angels, praising the One who created us. She is with God. And for her, everyday is like Christmas.