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I bought the cradle in the fall of 1986, when I was expecting Myrna. I remember how sweet it looked, stained a rich maple colour with its mint green matching bedding set (green for boy OR girl--I for some reason can't abide yellow baby things). But it looked so empty, waiting for its "tenant" to be placed in it and rocked. I felt SO relieved when I brought her home, and placed her in it--I took all these photos of her in it.

Myrna spent the first six months of her life in that cradle, next to my bed. She was happy there. I remember the first day I went back to work, after my maternity leave finished (something that's happening to me again at the end of this week, but my feelings are so very different).

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I came home after I worked the first day. Does a little baby miss its mother, I wondered? Four-and-a-half month old Myrna did not look upset about me leaving her with a sitter for the first time. But I remember, when she came home, she couldn't take her eyes off me. She just gazed at me as if she couldn't look away.

And around 3:00 AM, when she'd normally be asleep, I heard sounds coming from the cradle. Not crying, not sad sounds. Baby "playing" sounds. PISH-PISH-PISH-PISH. I looked down into the cradle, and there she was, with this big smile on her face, poking her mobiles and making "PISH-PISH" sounds. Since I couldn't watch her play that day, because I was at work, she was going to play for me--in the middle of the night!

Five months after I got pregnant with Myrna, my sister-in-law got pregnant, and the beloved cradle was later handed to her for HER baby girl. Then my sister-in-law's best friend got pregnant, and SHE got the cradle.

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Ten years later, I find myself, against all expectation, pregnant again. And my sister-in-law asks if I want the cradle, which has been disassembled to save space, back again. "Of course I do!" Now hubby has a LOT of work to do. He must reassemble the old crib AND the old cradle. The crib is put back together, with some special-order replacement nuts & bolts from the local baby store. But the cradle continues to sit in a bag disassembled, in a corner of the baby's room.

"So when are you going to put the cradle togther?" I ask my husband. "When I get around to it," is the reply. We've ALL heard that one before. Anyway, he figures the baby only REALLY needs a crib.

Flash forward in time to 31 days after my baby Rhiannon is born. It is an uneventful night, and I breastfeed her about 2:30 AM. After I finish breastfeeding her, little Rhiannon looks down lovingly, but puzzled, at her Dad. Why is he not reacting to her?

"Darling, he's asleep," I explain to her (and I'm not going to wake him, because he's suffering from a sore throat, and has been groaning in his sleep). "But Daddy still loves you," I say, (using the phrase he always says to her--"Daddy loves you.") "See?" and I lift her down and rest her little rosy cheek against her Daddy's. He doesn't even budge, deep in sleep. I do not know that this will be the last time, that he will never again see her face alive.

It's about 3:00 AM now, the lights are off, and it seems Rhiannon has colic. I burp her, she falls asleep, limp and warm and snuggling, in my arms, her little head lolling in the crook of my shoulder. And suddenly, just a few minutes later, I feel something cold and wet on my shoulder.

Thinking she had "spit-up" on my shoulder, I turn her over to wipe her cheek, only to see the lower half of her face covered in blood, her nostrils stuffed with blood. To my utter horror, she is already turning pale & cold in my arms.

I had had first-aid training from St. John's Ambulance, yet I had never in my life felt so helpless. All my training had taught me is if the brain has been deprived of oxygen 4 - 5 minutes, we're talking at least brain damage, and probably brain-dead. Poor Rhiannon never had a chance. As you can imagine, I still keep having horrible flashbacks. But at least she died while being kissed and soothed to sleep in my arms, not found cold in a crib.

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So that was the early hours of Monday morning, March 4, 1997. It is now Thursday evening. Tomorrow afternoon is her funeral. How I've managed to get through this week, I'll never know. Listening to that flat-line sound on the hospital monitor. The horrible sound of no hope. Overhearing the emergency room doctor speaking to the consultant over the phone at the Hospital For Sick Children, saying to her, that awful phrase that I understand only too well, "Pupils fixed and dilated."

Watching her breathe for hours and hours, after being resuscitated, after being taken off life support. Finally hearing her breathing stop, again in my arms. She died AGAIN, for the last time. Going down to identify her cool pale little body in the morgue at Sick Children's. All those murder mystery books I read, come to life. The signs of "lividity" in the blood, from a body lying in one position after death. And it's MY CHILD. And I say to the pathologist, "Can you fix it so she won't look like that?" not believing my own ears. And he gravely agrees it will be no problem.

Now I'm back in my own bedroom, where she died the FIRST time. We haven't been able to be in our own home or sleep in our own bed, since IT happened. I think this will be terrible, that I won't be able to bear to look at the blood, at what the paramedics left behind. And everyone's trying to spare me this ordeal, to clean up the bedroom for me. But now I am here, and looking at everything.

And it is strangely comforting, not frightening at all. The things scattered everywhere tell their own story. My God, how desperately they tried to save my baby. They didn't lose a moment. They let things fall where they fell. They tried SO hard to save her. I am GLAD they tried, even if they failed.

Gauze bandages scattered here and there. A suction tube with blood in it. Medical tape on the floor. Kleenexes, two of them with blood. Here is our big Canadian atlas--why does it have two bandaids attached on each side?

And then it dawns on me--they needed a stretcher. A stretcher the right size for a tiny tiny baby to be transported to the hospital emergency room. And the atlas wasn't the right size, the bandaids look unused. What DID they use then?

And now I look behind the bookcase, because a jagged piece of wood is sticking out. It is a thin flat piece of wood, square on three sides, jagged on the other side--it has been broken. And it is maple stained. And suddenly, I know what it is. The cradle bottom, broken in half.

I ask my husband about it. He hadn't wanted me to find it, thought it would upset me. He tells me the tale of a desperate Metro Toronto police officer, who was there helping the paramedics, looking for something to use to transport the baby, so they can rush her to hospital. The atlas is the wrong size.

He goes into the baby's room. Reaches into the bag with the disassembled cradle, and snaps the base in half. Just the right size now, for Rhiannon. He apologizes to Brian afterwards for breaking the cradle.

So God, you had a reason why that cradle was never reassembled. So that it could serve Rhiannon in her hour of need. Now who would ever think that a dissassembled cradle, a broken cradle, would be of any use to a baby?

I still have the jagged piece of wood in the closet in her room. And even if we replace the cradle base, so that someday, another baby Waldron can use it, I will keep the piece of broken cradle, and remember.

------------------Pandora Diane Waldron

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