The baby’s tissue had grow soft and fragile after a week of decomposing in stagnant amniotic fluid, these footprints were the best the doctors could get after the baby’s body had been removed from mine. There were complications with the anesthesia and I would have to be fully sedated and intubated – a medical coma, in other words – for several hours after the operation. Once I finally woke up in the ICU, my surgeon and my OB came to visit me and presented me with this simple memento of the baby I carried inside for seventeen weeks but would never get to hold in my arms. So tiny, so blurry, so infinitely precious.

Six months ago, today.