Sense of Doom

The week before Jude was born, I knew that something was going to go terribly, terribly wrong. I was convinced that we were both going to die and in some primitive way -- my body, my mind, something in me sensed that this was true. Before the advent of modern medicine (something my primitive mind wouldn't even comprehend), we would both be dead. I would have died in childbirth along with my child. Now, there are fetal monitors, there are c-sections -- there are numerous ways that both of us lived -- but at the time I had the overwhelming sense of doom. I wanted my husband to drive me to the ocean to see it one last time. I wanted to have a beautiful afternoon with my children. I wanted reassurance that it would be OK. In a way, it was -- we both lived. In a way, I still need that reassurance.