Mnemonic devices

As an educator, I know that one way for students to remember things is to give them mnemonic devices. PEMDAS, Roy G. Biv, Thirty days hath September. I guess there are mnemonic devices out there for helping people associate names with faces, but are there any out there that will store in my memory the little things about Lily that I'm so afraid I'll forget if she happens to leave us? Things that a photograph may or may not pick up.

Lily has her next doctor's appointment tomorrow. I fear this appointment. What if the doctor hears a heart murmur this time, signifying that dreaded VSD (ventricular septal defect)--that needle-point sized hole in the heart that the ultrasound never picked up, the one that eventually causes congestive heart failure, the one that may not show itself until weeks after the baby's birth. The one I'm praying Lily doesn't have. My motherly fear won't let me forget about it.

My heart breaks thinking about it because I can stare at Lily all day long, trying to memorize her, and I'm so afraid that maybe I've not had her long enough to where she'll constantly be ingrained into my mind's eye. It's bad enough if I forget about the little line underneath her bottom lip or the way her second toe is crazily longer than her big one or how her little fingers overlap in that classic Trisomy 18 way. But what if I forget how she looks--her little monkey face when she purses her lips, her leave-me-alone face, how she curls up when we lay her on her back and she rolls over to her side? Things I don't want to forget about.

In essence, I'm terrified for tomorrow, and even though I'm hoping for the best, I'm preparing myself for the worst. I hate that I'm even thinking in that way--it's making me sick thinking about it in that way--but I tried the whole pregnancy to prepare myself for every possible situation. I guess I'm still up to my old tricks.