Rebecca Claire

 Rebecca was born Sept 14 and died on Jan 28 of SIDS.  I thought this morning it had been 30 years, but realized it was 29 actually.....not that that really matters.  Melissa was born almost 10 months to the day from the day she passed away.  All the girls looked exactly alike as infants, and sometimes I have to look at my hairstyle in the picture to realize which baby it is.  But Rebecca had the strongest personality of all my babies.  She really let you know when she was happy or unhappy.  She was not very patient, but as soon as she got what she wanted she was totally satisfied.

 She was a squirmer when she slept (back at that time tummy sleeping was supposed to "prevent" SIDS).....I had to put her at the end of the crib and she would scoot all the way to the top and then wake herself up when she couldn't scoot any more.  She would begin to squirm and fuss, and all I had to do was put her back at the bottom of the crib so she could begin scooting again, and she would be happy and satisfied and go right back to sleep.

 Rebecca was the only one of my children where I had to go back to work when she was 6 weeks old.  So I didn't get to breast feed her as long as I did Sarah and Melissa. When I would feed her with the bottle, she would hold my pinkie finger while she ate.  It was so sweet.

This is the last picture we took of her, this was Sunday on our way to church.  The next Sunday we had her funeral.  She stopped breathing while taking a nap at daycare, I was at work.  The babysitter was able to do CPR and got her heart started, which is unusual for a SIDS death.  Her heart was strong and kept beating until the next day.  She died on a Friday (just like today is a Friday).  The hardest thing was telling Sarah, she was soooo proud to be a big sister.  I still can cry thinking about sweet Sarah asking if she was still a big sister when we told her Rebecca had died.  The hardest thing I still have to face is answering the question how many kids I have.  It always makes me pause (I'm sure the questioner must think I'm an idiot not knowing how many kids I have if the notice the pause), but if I say 3, and they ask more details about the girls, it makes them feel bad when I talk about Rebecca.  But if I say 2 I always feel guilty for leaving her out.  You would think by this time I would have figured out how to answer such a basic question, but I have not.