safe in my arms

Little brother Orrin arrived safely on December 16th--those who are interested can read the story on the family blog.

We are thoroughly immersed in the new baby daze, but it has not escaped me that it is January. Layla's birthday is in 3 days. In the quiet moments, which are so few and far between these days, I feel the grief lurking. But things are so wildly different now than they were last year at this time. My heart is so full, my arms are no longer quite so achingly empty, and that makes it easier. We have an appreciation for this healthy, thriving, beautiful little being that is unparalleled by those who have never known the other side. We are so completely aware of what a miracle he is, and we are so thankful.

december again

It's December again. Yesterday was the ninth. It has been eleven months.

I am unclear how this year has slipped away from me, how it can possibly have been eleven months since we let you go. It seems just yesterday I was cradling you in my belly by the fireplace as the snow fell outside, wondering if you were a boy or girl, counting down the days until we found out. Could have been yesterday I got the call and the world seemed to stop and I became someone entirely different.

And at the same time it seems impossible that any of it ever happened at all.

Lately I've been feeling really overwhelmed with emotion about you. That is the only way I can explain it. It isn't sadness, at least not completely. There is a softness in my heart, a gratitude, an overwhelming sense of....well, love, I guess. That sort of all-consuming, everything-at-once sort of feeling.

We have officially entered the time of year that I have simultaneously been anticipating and dreading. I am faced with that now familiar juxtaposition of missing you while also preparing for and celebrating your brother. He will be here any day now, and so will all the dates that hold significance in your story. It's hard to know how to feel. If I am sad, is that a betrayal to your brother? If I am happy, does that mean I am forgetting?

Should I forget?

Things have been different lately. There is light where there wasn't before. I am not quite as angry, as guilty, as grief-stricken. There is a buzz of excitement in the air as the world around me anticipates the arrival of your brother. Things are changing. Eleven months has made it easier to breathe, to dig and contemplate and sometimes find some semblance of gratitude for the experience we shared. But it has not made me forget.

In the middle of a nesting frenzy in which I barely stopped to breathe, I pulled out your memory box, held it in my lap, and just cried. As exciting and hopeful as these days are, there is still room to miss you. Even if only for a moment.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I have lots to say, but have been having trouble expressing my thoughts lately. I can't count the amount of times I have had words begging to be written, only to be ignored and then forgotten. With all the focus on the new baby and the impending birth, it has been hard to find the energy to visit the darker thoughts, even when I probably should. Sometimes it is so much easier not to open that proverbial box.

So that's where I am. Forgetting, but not forgetting. Missing you, but also finding peace with that, somehow.

I don't know what else to say.

halloween 09

"Just think! Next year at this time you will have a little one to dress up!"

Someone said this to me yesterday, and I just smiled, swallowing the first response that sprung immediately to my lips...

That's what I thought last year, too.

In fact, one year ago yesterday, we had our first ultrasound. We watched you wiggle and bounce around on the screen, saw your little heart beating away, and left with the confidence that everything was just fine. For the first time, I let myself start to believe it, and though I didn't know anything about you yet, I wanted to buy something, anything. A vote of confidence, in a way. So I bought your Halloween costume for this year.

I remember sorting through the rack of little costumes, counting on my fingers the number of months between your due date and today. I decided on the 6 month size, and remember commenting on how small it was. I couldn't imagine that in one year, I would have a baby who would potentially fit into it.

But I didn't. I don't. You are gone and your little pumpkin sleeper hangs, unworn, in the closet, certainly forgotten by everyone but me. Like most things.

It sounds silly, but I feel like I am being a bad mother to you lately. If my only job is to honor your memory, I feel like I'm falling behind. Your brother has become the center of attention to the rest of the world. The question "Is this your first?" has become rampant in my every day life, and I find myself just saying "yes" more than I want to. There is no good way to answer it differently without the confused, sad, awkward silence that usually follows. People don't want to know. Is it any of their business, anyway?

The lilies we planted with some of your ashes on your due date have died, leaving behind a pot of lifeless soil. I can't seem to figure out how to feel about it. On good days, I just ponder what I can replant in their place. Other days I wonder if it really even matters. And on the really bad days, I think of course. Nothing else about this year is right. Why would the plant live?

The rest of your ashes are still in the stupid plastic box they came in, tucked on the shelf of my nightstand, waiting for me to do something better with them. Everything I think of feels inadequate. I want them with me, and yet an urn feels strangely inappropriate. And so they remain in their little baggie inside a flimsy box, waiting. It feels wrong. I suppose it is wrong, in a sense, to even have your own child's ashes. This isn't what I signed up for.

Winter is coming, faster than I am prepared for, and it's already beginning to stir memories in the deepest corners of my soul--the places that sickening, heavy darkness has retreated to. Every once in awhile, when it's raining in just the right way, I get a flashback of that terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I'm not ready to relive it all just yet.

I wish I could just accept that it all went differently than I planned, and that that's okay. I wish I could turn off the should's and would's and if-only's.

But instead I find myself wishing that you were here with me tonight, wearing your halloween costume.

I miss you baby girl.

layers of exhaustion

I am really tired.

It's not the kind of tired that sleep can fix, as I've learned. I sleep 12 hours a night on my days off and I am still exhausted.

To most people, it is fairly one dimensional: I am tired because I am pregnant. And it's true, my body is working so hard, and has been for more than a year now. It seems impossible that I ever had an existence that did not revolve around growing tiny bodies.

To me, it's obvious that there are layers to this exhaustion. I am tired from harboring the weight of everything that has happened this year. I am tired from missing my daughter. I am tired from bearing the guilt that comes with having had to let her go. I am tired from the tears I still cry much more often than anyone knows. I am tired from walking this emotional tightrope that I can't quite define as hormonal or just consequential of the circumstances. I am tired from falling off more than I'd like to. I am tired from moving, gathering what remnants of normalcy I can manage, and attempting to put my life back together. I am tired from constantly pulling it all back in, burying it under the surface, and pretending that I am okay--even to those who would hold me up if I wasn't. Even to myself.

Maybe I am okay. Maybe I should be. But why, then, do I feel like I am constantly teetering at the edge of a proverbial line? One more thing, and I could tip into the yet-to-be-defined abyss of unimaginable despair. Why is it that the tiniest thing gone awry can send my entire day into a downward spiral, or at least into hysterics that are undeniably inappropriate for the situation? Because suddenly I am not crying about that tiny thing that happened, but because my baby died, and I have no idea who I am anymore. Still.

I have sadness in my eyes that I catch in glimpses sometimes, when I am surprised by my reflection. There is heaviness there, and it's making me tired. I wish I could explain it better to those who can't understand. I didn't even know her after all. It's been almost nine months. I am having another baby! Her little soul is fine. I made a loving choice.

Even when I can get okay with all of that, when I can wrap my head around it in such a way that I can feel the goodness that came from it (and these moments are rare), there is still my life to consider. When I got pregnant the first time, everyone told me my life would never be the same. They had no idea. I feel like I have been mentally, spiritually, and physically uprooted, tossed around, and left staggering in the dark, trying to find my path again. I am still completely lost in my life.

Sometimes I question the timing of this subsequent pregnancy. Did we rush into it? It certainly doesn't feel like the ideal time to have a baby sometimes, grieving a daughter and struggling to put a life back together. Not to mention the physical, mental, and financial strain it has created on top of what already existed. But at the same time, I am terrified to think of where I would be otherwise. He gives me purpose again, and even in those times when I am sure I have crossed that line, that I am going to be a mess forever, there he is, kicking defiantly. Hey, remember me? I am the best thing that's happened to you in nine months!

I just really need him to be okay.

heavy

I am weighed down by guilt lately. Heavy. I don't even have words.

It is incessantly nagging in the back of my mind, what could have, should have, might have been.

The sight of baby girls that are about as big as you would have been makes my heart seize, makes that fragile, broken, instinctual mother inside me curl into herself and try, unsuccessfully, to protect her wounds. Like blaring reminders...IT COULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT.

I have nightmares about arguing my agonizing decision with people who will never understand, arguments littered with words like "kill" and "pro-life" that inspire the deepest rage in the pit of my soul. I have dreams about having a baby, but it is a daughter, not the son who is alive and kicking in my belly. She is too small, and I can't see her face, no matter how hard I try.

You have been gone for so long now. So much has changed, will change. It's been a year since your tiny life began, and I find myself longing for those days, the final, beautiful days that came before the conclusion of my old life.

I am not sure where I go from here. Your brother is the only thing keeping me on some kind of designated path, but even that feels all wrong sometimes.

I find myself caught up in the if-only's. If only I had known then what I know now. If only I could change it. I blame myself, still, for your poor little spine. I am so angry. It is my fault, my body's fault, and yet I did not know any better.

People don't understand. It's been 8 months, I should be over it. I should be unabashedly celebrating the new life that is thriving inside me without hesitation. But I am not immune, and I know it. And I will never get my daughter back, and I will always miss her. That is something many people can't quite process, because they did not see her, feel her, hold her. Say goodbye to her.

Sometimes I feel like I minimize your loss even to myself. And then I find myself justifying it--I have your ashes, you were real. You did exist. I am a mother of two, no getting around it. I have every right to miss the one who is not here, even if no one else understands.

I feel a million years old. I want my daughter. I don't want to be this version of myself anymore.

I thought of you and where you'd gone
and the world spins madly on

nines

I am twenty one weeks pregnant today. Today, I woke up, went to work. Today, I smiled about the sunshine. Today, my mother felt your brother kick for the first time. Today your brother has been bouncing around in my belly more than usual. Maybe he is saying "look mom, we made it!" We made it, 21 weeks, and nothing is falling apart. We are still here, both of us. Surviving. Today I celebrate that fact.

But I have not forgotten. Today is the 9th again. Seven months ago at this very point in my pregnancy with you, I took a drive to a hospital in another city, I filled out the paperwork, I changed into that hospital gown. Seven months ago, I started to feel the contractions, I got the epidural, I felt you move for the last time.

Seven months ago, you were delivered in your bag of water and my family wrapped their arms around me and one another and we cried around my bedside because you couldn't. We cried big, heavy, crocodile tears, and the nurse whisked you away to prepare your little body.

Seven months ago, my dad returned from his visit to the hospital chapel and wanted to share what he had read...

"Today we weep, tomorrow we rejoice"

Only his voice caught, and he cried, the only time I have ever seen him cry, and I felt that huge, overwhelming pain so intensely in that moment. This hurt, it was hurting everyone, there couldn't possibly be rejoicing in the future. Surely, the world had ended and I would not feel happiness again. This vast, gaping hole in my heart was certainly too big, there was no room! You died, and a very big part of me died with you.

Everything had changed. There is no denying that, at least.

I am not the same as I once was. And sometimes I have days, weeks, of missing that old person, the one who did not know this sorrow, did not have this wound in her soul. Sometimes I feel so desperate to turn back the clock and change things so that everything would have been fine the first time. You would have been just another healthy baby. We would have gotten up and gone to work after the ultrasound, sharing the good news. January 9th would have been just another day.

But I am learning and slowly beginning to accept that without this wound, the gaping hole, that these moments, these milestones would not be so sweet (even if they do come with hints of bitter sometimes). I know that if this baby is born alive, crying, warm on my chest, it will be an incredible moment made even more incredible by the knowledge of what a truly profound accomplishment it really is.

And that, my beautiful, tiny little daughter, is one of your many gifts.

As I look back on these past seven months, the quote from the chapel has never been so poignant Turns out the "today, tomorrow" is not so black and white, but more of a gradual transition. Sometimes the weeping and rejoicing often get intertwined and tangled up and happen simultaneously. But it certainly feels as though the dawn is breaking on that proverbial tomorrow.

Fingers crossed.

the pursuit of happiness

Lately I've been feeling like I need a vacation.

It's not even that I'm very busy, I've just been having this overwhelming urge to just get away from it all. Unfortunately, I think what I am trying to escape from is a state of mind. Not that I am wallowing in sadness or anything, there is just an incredible mundanity in my every day life as of late. I still feel as if I am in a bit of survival mode...one foot in front of the other without worrying much about the direction.

When it really comes down to it, there has not been a lot of joy in my life since you left me. I feel I am just beginning to find the joy in this new pregnancy, but it is hesitant, careful joy that I seem to entertain only here and there, in fear of putting it back on the shelf in defeat for a second time.

The sun came out today for the first time in more than a week and suddenly I felt myself transported back to that moment, the morning of September 9th, sitting on the deck with the sun on my back, shaking with joy and excitement and nerves as I announced your beginning to my mom, who sat speechless on the other end of the phone. I can almost remember what it felt like, that giddy uncontrollable joy unleashed in the pit of my stomach. It was all so new, so unexpected, so exciting. It consumed me.

And after it was all ripped away, I remember sitting in the car with rain on the windshield and tears all over my face, the new normal setting in around me like dead air, and sobbing to my mom, "but I was just so happy..."

Surely I would be happy again someday, even though it seemed impossible at the time. And yes, here I am, halfway through a second pregnancy with a healthy baby, but things are different this time. I don't think I will ever get that kind of happiness back. The more I fall in love with this little being in my belly, the more I worry that he will be taken away from me too. Sometimes I want to cry at the very thought. Sometimes I want to cry because he gets to keep growing and you did not. Sometimes I want to cry because I don't get to have both of you the way I wanted. Sometimes I can dig down through all the protective layers I have built and really feel the loss of you all over again.

I decided to hang up the bunch of clothes that my mom already bought for him this afternoon. Among them, there still hangs the tiny handful of things that are yours: the yellow dress we bought for you on the day we went to the hospital, the pumpkin Halloween costume that I carefully chose in the 6 month size, anticipating how old you would be when the holiday came around. It will never fit him at the right time, and yet I can't bring myself to pack them away. At one time, I thought I would have a 5 month old on Halloween this year, a 7 month old at Christmas, a two month old at this very moment. Today, for the first time in a long time, I wondered what you would be like right now, if things were different. What would we be doing today, in the sunshine?

I spent so much time imagining and expecting you and now the reality that you are gone, you are really not joining me in this life, hits harder sometimes than others. What I would give to have just a moment in that sub-reality I created of "how I thought things would go." There, you are healthy and happy and growing, crying at this very instant, certainly not giving me enough time to write lengthy rambling posts on a blog that would not even exist.

It's too quiet around here.