{"id":1603,"date":"2009-05-10T20:54:26","date_gmt":"2009-05-11T01:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/?p=1603"},"modified":"2009-05-15T18:12:48","modified_gmt":"2009-05-15T23:12:48","slug":"1603","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/?p=1603","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mothers-day-at-beach-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"mothers-day-weekend-at-beach-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of all of the thousands of people that happened to be at the beach this weekend, Mother\u2019s Day Weekend,<\/em><\/p>\n

and of all of those who decided to go to Target on a Saturday night,<\/p>\n

and of all of those who happened to be walking by the shoe section in Target, while my sister, Kate chased Mary Clare up and down the isles because Mary Clare thought the clicking of her brand new jelly shoes sounded fun as she ran as fast as she could on the hard floors of Target,<\/p>\n

there was one person who just happened to know.<\/p>\n

She first recognized Kate. As Mary Clare ran by, she was a mother that could also recognize a blueberry baby a mile away. She told her husband she had to wait outside of the dressing room, because she then recognized Mel as he waited for me. (Mel was in shorts and a T, so it was astonishing to him that she could do such a thing. Sometimes, even I don\u2019t recognize him without his suit.)<\/p>\n

As I came out of the dressing room, she began to cry. She knew me. She knew all about my blueberry baby because she too had a sweet blueberry baby. She has followed our story and watched Mary Clare grow. Her baby girl, Gracee, was born in 2006 at MUSC. She was thrown into the world of HLHS when she was 19 weeks pregnant with her baby girl, just like me. We had the same doctors, the same nurses. The same surgeon. My Mary Clare ran, laughing through the aisles of Target. But my new friend, Brandi wore a white and purple rubber bracelet with tiny wings bearing Gracee\u2019s name. Gracee wasn\u2019t with her. Gracee only lived to be 12 days old.<\/p>\n

We immediately connected and began to discuss days in the hospital, medical staff we shared, heart moms we knew. She introduced me to her husband and her second baby girl who just had her 1st birthday last week. They were a beautiful family.<\/p>\n

I am so thankful that we happened to drop into Target on a busy Saturday night at the beach. We were going to look at swim suits; Brandi needed aloe for sunburn. When I think back to all of the decisions that we made and changed and how the timing just had to be so perfect. I think that my new friendship isn\u2019t quite by chance.<\/p>\n

Today, Mother\u2019s Day, I have a heavy heart as I think about my new friend and kindred spirit. I wish terribly that Brandi could have introduced Gracee to Mary Clare. That we could plan a play date with all four of our girls, not just three. I wish we could have scheduled a cardiologist visit on the same day to meet up in Charleston for lunch with our blueberry babies.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Brandi for our new friendship and for telling me all about sweet Gracee. I will think of her often. Thank you for a precious reminder that today I should hug my girls a little tighter and relish in every single moment we share.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

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Of all of the thousands of people that happened to be at the beach this weekend, Mother\u2019s Day Weekend, and of all of those who decided to go to Target on a Saturday night, and of all of those who happened to be walking by the shoe section in Target, while my sister, Kate chased […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1655,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions\/1655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}