Yes, gratitude. Oddly, that was my most salient emotion yesterday morning, a morning spent at the hospital for Paige's kidney tests.

Gratitude nearly overwhelmed me when they handed us the baby-sized hospital gown for her to wear during the x-ray. We were alone in the room as I pulled it over her arms and began tying it closed in the back. Fumbling with those ties as Paige wiggled and squirmed, leaning forward to chew on my arm, I felt a lump rising in my throat, not just for my baby, who would wear her hospital gown for no more than an hour, but because baby-sized hospitals gowns exist at all.

In half-an-hour I'd be allowed to take this sad garment off of Paige and dress her again in her bright cotton dress, take her home, snuggle her to sleep for her nap, then feed her dinner at our kitchen table. Gratitude.

And beneath that, Fear. Bad things happen. Horrible things happen. To babies. To children. Families have to live through bad things. Children spend weeks, months, years in tiny hospital gowns.

Once she was dressed, they catheterized her and began to fill her bladder with a contrast dye. They had to wait a bit for the dye and for the doctor to arrive, so they left us alone in the room for a few minutes. I could tell the catheter wasn't hurting her once they'd gotten it in place because Paige was in a good mood as we waited, giggling at my funny faces and playing her favorite game: tug mommy's bottom lip then laugh when mommy grimaces.

I was standing over her, hovering above her radiant little face as she giggled and kicked, and I felt a strong sense of her spirit, a sudden consciousness of the difference between the soul and the body. I'm not sure how to explain it, but as she laughed and wiggled, lying there catheterized with kidneys inside her body that possibly weren't working right, I sensed the divide between body and spirit, this realization that the spirit exists in spite of the body--and that in a baby especially, the spirit is nearly oblivious to the body. Paige seemed to exist only in her happiness while we waited, aware only of our playing, unaware of what could be going on in her body and of what she was doing on that table.

Overall the VCUG wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it was heartbreaking all the same. I don't think it caused Paige much pain, but it certainly caused her a great deal of fear. They asked me to stand at the head of the table, so she couldn't see me, and I was afraid even to soothe her with words as they took the films, because I knew she'd try to flip over to see me, and they needed her to stay on her back, keeping as still as possible.  Finally, I reached over her shoulder and held her little flailing hand, and that seemed to relax her a bit. I could tell she knew it was my hand she was holding, though she couldn't see my face.

She does have reflux. While I'm not happy about it, it's not an awful thing. Most children outgrow it, and the treatment is usually a low dose of antibiotic, administered daily until the reflux is gone. We can manage that. I'm grateful that we've been handed something we can manage. Grateful that, again, we have escaped tragedy, though lately I'm aware that the line between us and those families who are facing terrible illness and suffering is thin, thin, thin. Even the relatively minor brushes we've had with bad luck recently remind me that the abyss is out there. It's always out there, like some heavy, dark creature. Crouched and waiting.