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Wowsa!!  It's been five months since I've written a blog!!  

What got me to dust off the keys to my laptop and write, you ask?  January.  Birth Defects Awareness Month.

I started reflecting on how birth defects effect my everyday life now, 7 years after Marco was born at 29 weeks and died 4 hours later.

In a way, my life isn't quite impacted by birth defects on this 19th day of January 2017.  I don't have a living child with birth defects that I have to care for and take to specialists. I don't have a living child for whom I have to call our medical insurance and fight for services and/or supplies.  I don't have a lot of the struggles that parents of children with birth defects face daily.

And in a way, birth defects has and will continue to impact every second of my life since August 20, 2009 when the perinatologist put down the ultrasound wand after examining Marco in utero at 22 weeks, and said to Bruno and me, "we need to talk", and proceeded to run down a list of things that were wrong with our boy.  Every second since that moment has been impacted by whatever condition took over Marco's body.  

Had Marco not had the multiple defects he did, he would most likely be alive and be a 7 year old right now.  A first grader.  Who would he have been?  A sensitive soul?  Tough and rambunctious? Maybe a mix of both?  Would he have had straight hair like his sister Annabelle?  Brown eyes like his sister Lucia?  

Where would Bruno and I have been now?  Would we have been on our fourth kid?

Would my anxiety be as high as it now is?

Would I have been able to attempt a vaginal delivery with Marco or any of my future children?

Would I be as carefree and excited about pregnancy as many other women I know?

All of these are questions for which there will never be an answer.  

I will always wonder what the answers would be.

I will always live in a world where my three children will never all be alive together, and long for some cosmic way in which they could.

I will always, every single day, even and especially the hard ones, be deeply, at a visceral level, grateful for the 2 living children that I do get to wipe the tears of and tickle and watch grow.

Marco, it's hard to really put into words all the ways in which you changed my life.  It is true, you had multiple birth defects.  It is true, those defects prevented you from ever living a life with us here on Earth.  But you are more than birth defects.  It was more than the defects that changed our lives.  You changed our lives.  You have made me a better person.  You have deepened my ability to love.  Even though you are not physically here with us, you shine your light on us always, and we feel it all around us.  We love you, our sweet boy, and we are eternally grateful for you.