Christmas revolves around the birth of the Christ child.
A toddler in swaddling portrays ushering in the New Year ....
And I lost the most important one in my life by feeling, looking and acting as goofy as a picture sent ...
Thinking about babies so much kicked up two memories from my nursing days -
--- one always treasured, the other I wish would stay buried .
The first for anything remains forever.
I can still see the first baby I had a hand in delivering.
Okay, I was only the mom's student nurse but ... the delivering of a healthy beautiful baby is so all inclusive ..
We all somehow felt the joy and pride as if the wee one were our very own.
Still have the picture and remember mom's name and baby's too!! In fact, even met the young mother and child years later ... WOW !!
A few years later .. as an RN ... the other side of the coin revealed itself.
Without getting too graphic, the baby was doomed from its tiny arrival.
The treatment then was putting the wee one in a darkened, quiet room .. no sustenance ... and letting Nature take its course.
That shook me to my very core ... and still does ...but had always done what I was told and expected of me.
In this case, any deviation was NOT an option. But even then, I found a way around this that could ease us both.
Every chance I would be there .., cooing and stroking her. Awareness of my presence may not have been known ..
But I knew ...
and no one should die alone!! Especially a baby whose very birth was an immediate death sentence.
So every year at this time, while rejoicing at the Christmas birth ... a part of me dies a little that there was no hope for the other child.
The condition is known as anencephalic ..... soul crushing for all.
or ... 
