Readers: a peer asked to me to address the issue of  a child’s death, which is the topic of this blog. Pretty serious stuff. Just thought you should know beforehand so you could opt out.Over the years, I have often found myself unwillingly in conversation with people about having lost a child. It is something I don’t often volunteer anymore, not like I used to—not because I still don’t think about her, but because I think about her in a very different way.I once told my friend Michele that losing a child is like growing a third leg. You have to completely adapt everything you do to this new appendage: your balance, your movement, how you are perceived by others. And it is so physical for me: I cannot look at my body in the mirror, the body that bears so much evidence of childbirth, and not think of my children. But the choice to go public is always there, every time someone asks me how many children I have. Do I mention the thing everyone has questions about, or do I just pretend everything is normal? I have, now, many years later, learned how to walk with my third leg; one might even say I have learned how to run again. It was slow going, to alter my identity from someone who has lost a child into it being an element of everything that I am, but it happened naturally. It becomes second nature, that third leg, always there, always in your awareness, but not something you have to keep pointing out to people.After a while, I sensed there was this odd, voyeuristic quality about discussing my daughter with people—strangers, especially. It altered the dynamic instantly, either calling all attention to me, or filling the air with such tension, if I didn’t make a little joke, no one could figure out how to break it. Instead of comforting me to talk about her, it started to feel like I was dragging her out a lovely sleep to show her off. She didn’t deserve that.  Even writing this, I feel like I am pulling her onstage again, but it is in service of a greater point, one of which I hope she would approve:  Now that I am carting around a baby again, many more people ask me how many children I have. When they do, I smile, mentally pat my third leg and then tell them I have three.Three legs, three kids, somehow the math works for me.