Sarah Rose would be eight years old next week. Part of me feels like it was yesterday, another feels as if it never happened. I mean how could I have buried my daughter and lived through it??

      In a sense I didn't. From the time I knew I was going to have her, I began to change. Did all the "expected" things, I grew up and began to think of my child first. Prenatal care...childbirth classes...I even ate green veggies. One minute, I was a 20 year old, theatre/communications major at a small university... with dreams of working on Broadway ... the next I was a parent without her child. I'm sure I aged 10years in the first six months after Sarah's death.

      At the time everyone around me expected me to "get on with my life"... that was the time I began to grieve for Sarah. I did eventually "resolve" my grief, but I was a different person and my life was going in completely different directions than I had planned while pregnant. Her father and I spent the one year anniversary making the three hour trip to visit Sarah's grave. We then went our different ways.

      In October of 1994,I married my husband, leaving grad school in Las Vegas to relocate to SouthCarolina. In 1995 I had my first successful pregnancy, Nathaniel Reed Caufman...a little early but perfect and ALIVE. With the safe arrival of my son... came the realities of motherhood. I had held a "dream version" of Sarah in my head. SHE would have been the perfect baby...no nursing problems, no colic or spitting up...and of course she would have SLEPT through the night as soon as we got out of the hospital. Well, Nathan turned out to be a real baby, in every wonderful (and sometimes frustrating) way.

      My second son, Cameron Patrick, was not so easy. To make a very long story short...he made his way into the world at 27 weeks, weighting 2pounds 3oz. As I was put under for the c-section, I did not know if he would be alive when I woke up. Infact, I had mental lists of how I would handle things different if he did not make it. I would have spent more time with my baby and taken my own photos ect...ect. But, when I came to, he was alive and doing very well for a baby that small. Somehow, once I was able to see and touch him I knew he'd be o.k. He was in the hospital for 3 months, but a year later he is a healthy, beautiful boy.

      That was my last pregnancy, as I had my tubes tied during the c-section. I knew that if Cameron didn't make it I would not have had the heart to try again...and if he did make it, I should count my blessings and enjoy my sons.

      "You're young, you can always have another baby." I heard that so many times that I wanted to scream. Yes, I have my boys and I love them dearly, but they did not replace Sarah's piece of my heart. A part of me will always long for a girl...I look at my niece who was born two months after I lost Sarah and I think "if only."

      But just as I could not imagine my life without her eight years ago...today, no matter how hard I try, I can't imagine my life (now) with her in it. In my mind she will remain a baby. And on the 2nd of November, I will take a short break, from my life with my husband and two little boys...to light a candle and think of my baby girl ,Sarah Rose Goins-Silvas, who changed my whole life without ever opening her eyes.

Written Oct.98
By Jenn Caufman