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    Going Rogue
    Just before Track was born, Todd and I moved to a small apartment in Wasilla, next door to our good friend Curtis Menard, Jr., who by now was a dentist like his dad. Curtis was like a brother to me. We asked him to be Track’s godfather. Todd and I shared one car, and we loved our little life together, though with the Slope and fishing schedule we still didn’t see each very much. I
    was surprised by how much I loved motherhood. We desperately wanted another baby right away, so I was excited when I learned I was pregnant again. We were sure it was another boy, and we decided to call him Tad, a combination of Todd and Track. I loved the fact we had planned so well and that events were falling neatly into place in our well-ordered lives. Our babies would be a year apart, right on schedule. At the beginning of my second trimester, I went in for my monthly exam. Todd was on the Slope. He had always been good about leaving me short love notes before he left, bur as I drove to the doctor’s office, his latest replayed in my head because it had a special addendum: “I love you, Tad!”
    At my exam, the doccor listened for the baby’s heattbeat. When she didn’t smile, I didn’t warty; she ·was known fat her mellow demeanor. But I noticed that she kept moving the sterhoscope around. And she didn’t hand it to me as doctors usually do, so the expectant mother can listen to the sound of life.
    “Let’s do a quick sonogram,” she said.
    I agreed, eager to confirm that Tad was a boy-at to be surptised. We moved to another room, and I lay down on a sheet-covered table. The doctor spread gel on my belly and began sliding the transducer back and forth. I waited expectantly for the familiar shoosh-shoosh-shoosh sound of the baby’s beating heart.
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    SARAH
    PALIN
    But it didn’t come. And the sonogtam pictute looked empty. The doctot said coldly, “Thete’s nothing alive in thete.” Her bluntness shocked me. I felt sick and hollow, and into tears.
    “You have a couple of choices about getting rid of it,” she said.
    “It.” That’s what she called our baby, whom we’d been calling Tad for three months.
    She went on to explain that I could go home and let “it” pass naturally. Or I could have a D&C.
    I wasn’t listening. I was praying. Why, God? Why?
    I was stunned and felt so very empty.
    It was my first taste of close personal tragedy, the kind that rocks a relatively untested faith. I dressed, then walked numbly rhe waiting room and out to the parking lot and drove myself home. Mom came over to watch Track. A friend stopped by. But I just lay on my bed feeling like the world had stopped spinning.
    As my mom had warned me years before, everyone goes through trials. Our friend Mary Ellan called to echo the same thoughts and to pray for me. A miscarriage is often dismissed as something a woman needs to shake off quickly, but it’s impossible to explain the devastation and unless you’ve experienced it.
    Todd flew home ro be with me when I had the D&C. When the doctor’s bill atrived in our mailbox, it came with a typo. In the box describing the procedure, someone had typed, ”Abortion.”
    Instead of starting ovet with a fresh form, they painted it over with a thin layer of Wite-Out, and retyped, “Miscarriage.” For some reason it just felt like salt in the wound.
    I had lost three of my grandparents and a very good friend by then, but my heart ached more for this baby than for anything else. The miscarriage carved a new depth in my heart. I became a
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    Going
    little less Pollyanna-ish, a little less naive about being invincible and in control. And I became a lot more attuned ro other people’s pam.
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    We were more cautious with our next pregnancy but also more thankful that God was again blessing us with new life. The next year a beautiful, healthy baby girl joined our family on Ocrober 18, Alaska Day. Her shock of black hair, chubby cheeks, and dark, lively eyes