A mother SHAREs her grief

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Nothing had prepared her for this. Jennifer Johnstone was a healthy 26-year-old, 35 weeks pregnant with her second child, a girl, whom she and her husband Scott had already named Madison. She had ultrasound pictures of Madison too. One showed her so tiny that it was difficult to see her as anything but an outline. In another, Jennifer could almost see her daughter's smile. "This is your baby sister," she'd tell Cameron, now age 3. "Do you want to feel her kick?" she'd ask, taking his hand and guiding it with her own.

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Lights, camera, childbirth!

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Lights, camera, childbirth!

You wonder exactly what combination of words is used to get a woman to agree to give birth on national television. Something like: "We'll stick with soft lighting. We'll shoot you from your best side," or: "No, no, no, you are definitely not fat and swollen. You have never looked lovelier." Could it be a rush of hormones that overloads the natural circuitry of the brain, that makes a woman actually nod and smile and say: "Sure! Why not film the birth?

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Is that a demon? No, just a little boy

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I have never seen him, the child who lives upstairs. I heard him for the first time the morning after we moved in. Elephant hooves awakened me at 6:45 a.m. I anticipated that the beast overhead would crash through the ceiling and fall in my lap. But apartment floors are apparently constructed of sturdy wood. Good thing. It is only a floor that separates us from him.

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A Child's Joy

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She was just a baby, maybe a year old, sitting in the back seat of a car traveling along Route 128 a week ago. I never saw her before and I'll probably never see her again. I know nothing about her - not her name or where she lives, or where she was going, or whom she was with, though I assume the woman driving was her mother.

I only glanced at her as I was speeding past. But the glimpse made me smile and pause and reflect. It makes me smile still, days later, because she was so full of naked wonder that it was like walking along a street in the cold past a store whose door opens briefly and blankets you with warmth.

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It's after the birth of a child when the worries really begin

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I phoned her the other day to ask how her pregnancy is coming along.

"I'll be glad when it's over," she said in a weary voice. "I'm a nervous wreck. There are so many things that can go wrong. I can't wait for this baby to be born."

My friend is having her second child, but this is her third pregnancy. A year ago she miscarried, so all during the early weeks of this pregnancy the possibility that she might again miscarry kept her joy on hold.

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Childhood joy: It can't last

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There's this little girl, just 13 months old. Her birthday was Valentine's Day, her father tells the woman next to him. She is toddling around the doctor's waiting room totally unconcerned that everyone else is sitting. She races to the TV, stares at it for a minute, then turns away. She picks up a book she finds on a chair, looks at it, then puts it down. She approaches a stranger, meets the stranger's eyes, grins, then runs back to her father who hasn't for a second taken his eyes off her.

She is a tiny thing, a baby, still bald, the blond fuzz on her head barely visible. She wears pink pants and a teal green sweater and a grin that shows off her teeth. Her mother is in the doctor's office because within weeks she will be having another baby. But it's clear the father is totally enthralled with this one.

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