For several months now, I have been planning on writing this week about how my almost eight- year-old learned about the 9/11 attacks this year. Since I was 34 weeks pregnant when the Twin Towers fell, I had been thinking about having this conversation with her since before she was even born. But every time I sat down to write about it, I kept thinking about a conversation I had a few days after September 11th, 2001.

Our friends had taken me and my husband out to dinner at a Japanese steak house to celebrate the upcoming arrival of our daughter. I was huge, miserable and emotionally exhausted from the week’s events. Not to mention that my normally size 9 feet had swollen to size 11 ½ wide.

During the meal, a woman seated at the same table had politely asked me when I was due, if we knew the sex of the baby and what names we had picked out. Her husband, who had been silent up till this point, then asked me pointedly how I could possibly bring a baby into this world after what had happened this week. For one of the very few times in my life, I was totally speechless.

I had been asking myself that very question almost every waking moment since the planes hit the buildings, but having someone speak the words to me made my fear much more real. My friend explained to the man that I obviously didn’t get pregnant this week and that it had been a tough week to be expecting a baby. The couple finished their dinner in silence and left without saying another word to me.

But the man’s words continued to haunt me throughout the next few months. I thought about his question the next week where traditional baby shower decorations were replaced with patriotic ones and my cake was in the shape of a flag. I felt a pang in my stomach as I tossed the front page of the paper on the day Laurel was born into a trashcan at Rex Hospital. I had been planning on saving this memento for her, but couldn’t bear to keep it after reading the headlines about anthrax and the fires at Ground Zero. And I kept hearing his words I struggled to find television that didn’t involve the attacks during the next few months while I nursed my newborn in my new rocking chair.

A few months ago when I had the conversation with my daughter about the bad people who crashed the airplanes into buildings, I thought about the dinner at the steakhouse. As I watched her green eyes process the information, I realized that I finally had the answer to the man’s question from so many years ago.

Each time I felt overwhelmed during the fall of 2001, all I had to do was kiss my daughter’s head or hold her tiny feet in my hand and my fear was replaced with hope. During those days we all searched for proof that life continued, but I was lucky enough to be able to look at the baby in my arms and see new life staring back at me.

As I answered Laurel’s endless questions about that September day, I tried to find the words to explain the answer what it meant to bring a child into the world that fall. But that was a conversation for another year.

Jennifer appears Mondays on TriangleMom2Mom.