2.0 Round 2 Day 61: Coping With Real Life

I have been completely absent this past week and have not exercised all week either. My father in law has been in bad health for a while but at the beginning of this year he suffered several bad strokes that left him incapable of living on his own and was moved to nursing home care. 11 months later on November 3rd his suffering ended as he passed peacefully and quietly to the other side. We had been able to stay with him, by his side for several days and say good bye, and the kids were able to be there for a short while. He had long since lost his ability to speak and had become mostly comatose those last few days and before that for several months he had not been very cognitive, but on the last 2 days of his life he was able to come back a little. The old dad was there more than it had been in a long time. He recognized my husband, his only child, and myself and was even able to whisper a few words. My husband decided to bring the kids to see him since he was doing so miraculously well. He recognized the kids when they came in and something that took all the effort he had, he smiled at them. Only a few hours before his death, having not been able to do more than faintly move his fingers to squeeze our hand and mouth a few short words without sound, the very last person he smiled at was my little girl.

His grandkids have always been his joy. I know he was sad that his bad health prevented a lot of things, including doing different things with his grandchildren, but he loved them so much. It makes perfect sense that he would manage a smile for them on his last day on earth. We all treasure that moment, such a beautiful parting gift from someone you love, knowing they gave all they had left. I’m crying a little as I’m remembering it just now. He will be so missed.

So with all that’s gone on this week I was unable to do more than run back and forth between the nursing home and where the kids were staying with their Meme and then all the funeral arrangements and trips back to our home an hour away to get needed items. It has been exhausting. I did take my measurements this morning and predictably I have gained inches in my waist and love handles where my belly is growing but all my other measurements are either the same or down, and my weight is the same as day 45. So I’m confident that my habits that have been formed over this year of work have kept me in good stead. And I continue to be a little sick at the thought of junk food. Halloween candy has been no problem, in fact all those cakes and desserts at that down home country meal after the funeral were not even tempting at all, which you have to know a Pleasant Grove Baptist Church funeral pot luck. They are insanely full of delicious things that are not BBMC meal plan approved, including a vast array of delicious desserts. I have to be the only pregnant lady who doesn’t want to gobble chocolate and ice cream. I won’t complain though.

I plan to get back on track next week as my hubby returns to work and life carries on with that illusion of normalcy that comes after you lose someone you love. It can never be the same, but life marches forward. I have mountains of laundry to do and a week’s worth of house work on top of an already messy house. Looks like I’ll be staying busy.

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My BBM Journey: Day 9

Day 9’s workout is in the books. At the end of each workout I typically do a little something extra. Today I did some modified planks and wall sits, but for these, since I’m trying to go as long as I can and they are tedious as all get out, I put a favorite song on Youtube and sing at the top of my lungs while holding these rigid positions. I’m happy to report that I’m up to 3-4 minutes or more for each pose and especially the wall sits have gotten easier – well, a better way of putting it would be it is possible to hold them longer and I feel my legs are much stronger, nothing is really easy. I still drip sweat as if someone turned a hose on me.

Usually it’s my little guy who is all about doing the exercises with me, but my daughter can’t resist anything that has to do with music or singing and today she was by my side while I sang and sweat my way to a stronger me.

My sister captured that one and posted it to Instagram. Super cute! I’m so lucky to have this little ball of sunshine energy. She is definitely the chocolate syrup to my sundae. She’s constantly moving and singing and dancing and smiling. She’s the life of the party.

And my little guy is my strong and steady, my calm and cuddly.

I am just so blessed to be mommy to these great kids. They make me want to be the best mom I can be. And that’s what this whole thing is about, being the best version of me for my kids.

And there’s another little girl I do this for. I’ve been thinking about it a lot this morning after finding out about the passing of an old friend yesterday. You see, he lost someone dear to him several years back and he was never the same. He had always been a heavy drinker, but after he lost his best friend it was like he kind of gave up on life. I’m not here to judge anyone’s grief journey, that’s not what I’m about, grief is very personal and it should be.

But for those of you who don’t know, I lost my first baby girl when she was only 17 days old. It rearranged my life and remade me into the person I am today. That little girl forever changed me. She made me want to live better and bigger and follow my dreams like I never had before, because that opportunity to live fully here on earth, that was taken from her. That was taken from me, the day she died, seeing her live her dreams and grow up. And as a mother, you never recover from that. Ever. But she inspired me, and inspires many others through me, as I’m left to tell her story. And I do, every chance I get. I tell the world, anybody willing to listen, about my amazing little girl.

When I wake up each morning and get hugs and kisses from my son and daughter, there is always a little girl’s kisses that are missing, and I could let that destroy me, but I know that’s not what she would want. She would want me to smile and laugh and enjoy life and play with her brother and sister and be healthy and happy. And so I do. And I am so lucky and blessed beyond measure to be mom to these 3 amazing kids. They each have something to offer me as inspiration and I pray that I will be a source of inspiration and strength down the road for them. Every day is a gift, friends. Every single day. Don’t waste a single one in regret.

My first little girl Skye. She would have been 6 this September. This is the very first picture ever taken of her, minutes old.

Note: if you haven’t read Skye’s story, it can be found here.

Skye’s Story

 

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Bikini Body Mommy, a movement led by Briana Christine, and you can find out more at http://www.bikinibodymommy.com

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Vanquishing Fear – An Epic Tale

My mom had 8 children, 7 naturally drug free and one (me) a classical incision emergency C-Section. (I was breech, and her second child.) The first 3 were hospital births and the last 5 were unassisted home births. That’s right, 6 vaginal births after a C-section, 5 of those at home with only my father and I helping. So you can imagine I had a very strong back ground in natural birth and a woman’s body being able to bring her child into the world.

When I became pregnant with my first child I originally planned a hospital birth, but used midwives for all my prenatal care. When I was 8 months along we moved from Colorado back to Kentucky and near our family. Rather than try to transfer to a new doctor so late in the game and with my mom now available to support me along with my husband being a licensed paramedic, we chose to have an unassisted home birth. All my prenatal care had been normal and the baby appeared healthy. My last appointment had been at week 35 and every thing was great. I went into labor on my own at 5 days before my due date and labor progressed normally and in a timely manner. However, I had experienced a nagging fear from the early part of my pregnancy that something would go wrong at birth. It was irrational, with no reason to believe it, and I tried to chalk it up to first time mom fears and fear of having no family support out in Colorado. Even after I moved home I still had this nagging, unexplained fear, even with my mom to support me and telling me there was nothing to worry about. So I labored at home for 12 hours before my water broke on its own around midnight. All night I labored and since this was my first baby I mistook pressure for the urge to push and started pushing too early, which wore me out. By the next morning, other than being tired, there was no reason to believe anything was really wrong, but I just couldn’t explain it, I was afraid something was wrong. I said we needed to go to the hospital.

Long story short, about the time we got in the car, the real urge to push came and for the 15 minute drive to the hospital I was holding back from pushing and was afraid I would deliver there in the car. I kept trying to take my pants down because I was sure that baby was coming, but I had to stop because the contractions were coming fast and furious. We got to the hospital, they wheeled me to a bed, the doctor barely got there in time to catch the baby, I was nearly crowning on arrival. 2 pushes and out came my baby girl, 5 lbs. 10 oz. But something was wrong with her skin. She was very red, not bloody, but her skin was fire engine red. The top layers of her skin were coming off over her whole body, but other than that her APGAR scores were perfect.

Our first Daughter Skye, minutes old.

They didn’t know what was wrong with her, so she got transferred an hour away to the Children’s hospital where there was a NICU and that is where she stayed for 17 days enduring every test imaginable, being kept in sterile isolation and wrapped in gauze like a mummy, we weren’t able to hold her because of the risk of infection. Her case went to 10 different states, over 100 specialists consulted on her case, but nobody could figure out what was wrong. She passed away barely an hour into day 18 most likely from infection that had set in because without being able to attach a traditional I.V., they had to use her umbilical vein much longer than was recommended and then finally had to put a direct line into her chest.

We were so devastated. Our first and only child was gone.

I tortured myself thinking about what had I done to cause this, or what could I have done to prevent it. Every doctor reassured me that this was just an unexplained mystery, that there was nothing I could have done that I didn’t do. They ruled out skin diseases, infections, and various genetic defects. To this day nobody knows what was wrong. Genetics seemed to be the most promising avenue to research, but since they didn’t know what to test for (having tested for all known genetic disorders that fit her various symptoms) and since she was no longer living to positively confirm, we were left in the dark.

I no longer felt even remotely strong or empowered. I looked around at all the happy mommies and babies and they mocked me. I had been told that women had been doing this for ages, that it was perfectly natural. I had seen it over and over with my own eyes, yet I had failed. I had not brought a healthy baby into this world. I did not have a baby. Despite a strong desire to birth naturally I had to give my baby over to every intervention imaginable and in the end, those did not work either. I was the very picture of fear and disillusion and defeat.

I became pregnant with my second child by what I consider divine intervention. We were actively preventing pregnancy as well as not in any state of regular intimacy (or intimacy at all, it was more like just going through the motions in order to have the illusion that life would go on and we could somehow recapture what we had lost, which of course, we could not.) However, about 6 weeks after we buried our daughter, I found out I was pregnant again. I was a mess, I didn’t know what to feel. I wanted to be happy, but mostly I was so afraid. What if it happened again? What if it was some genetic thing they had not picked up on? Calling one of my first daughter’s doctors did not help, he told us flat-out we should terminate the pregnancy until we could have more genetic testing done. So you see, from the very moment I picked up that positive pregnancy test, my second pregnancy was wrought with fear.

Because of the outcome of our first birth, my husband and I knew we would not be able to have a home birth. In addition, I was treated as high risk and underwent test after test. I saw a Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist and had more ultra sounds than I can count. The last 10 weeks alone I had 1 ultra sound each week where they took 10 different measurements each time and if baby was not in the right position they worked until she was. The whole 9 months was amazingly stressful. By the time my due date arrived I was literally begging them to induce me even though I didn’t believe in that, it’s just that I was a bundle of shot nerves. Thankfully, I went into labor on my own 2 days before my scheduled induction. I labored at home all day and by 9 pm we decided to go to the hospital since  transition with my first baby had gone so fast and because I was worried about getting hooked up to an intravenous antibiotic as soon as my water broke. I arrived barely dilated and the nurse was going to send me home after the token hour of monitoring, but 30 minutes later my water broke. I didn’t know until after the fact that they hooked me up to some pitocin once I was officially admitted to keep things moving along and that made my labor very painful and the contractions very intense with almost no time in between them. By the time I hit 5 cm I gasped for the epidural. I could not imagine half a night of this pain, strapped into a bed, not able to move or get out of the bed, and barely able to catch my breath. The contractions were 40 seconds apart and I had no ability to focus and breathe. The nurse went out to call for the epidural, and as soon as she stepped back in about 5 minutes later I was beginning to bear down. She checked me and I had gone from a 5  to a 7-8. She told me it was too late to get the epidural and called for the doctor instead. It was the same doctor who had delivered my first daughter and once again he entered the room with barely enough time to throw on a gown and catch my little girl – my perfect, beautiful, healthy 7 lb. 10 oz little girl. We were over joyed!  At that time I didn’t care about how the staff had trampled over my wishes on many points, that the doctor stuck the needle for the numbing agent in my clitoris for a SECOND time (he had done so with my first birth also) to sew up the same place I had torn with my first delivery, that the nurse who had been attending me during labor was almost rude the whole time, and that the doctor shoved the scissors into my husband’s chest and demanded that he, “Stop crying and cut the cord,” and then almost did it himself before my poor hubby could wipe the tears out of his eyes at the sight of our dreams being fulfilled. It did bother me that even though I had been promised time with the baby on my chest, that turned out to be 30 seconds before they whisked her away for long minutes and brought her back to me wrapped and capped, all of which I promptly undid to be able to look at her perfect body and skin and hair. There was no way I was going to keep her tightly wrapped up, not after what I’d been through with my first daughter.

Me and our second daughter Faith, a few hours old.

As time went on and I had months and then years to review my 2 birth stories, I just felt disappointed. Obviously my first daughter’s birth and entire life was traumatic, my second daughter’s pregnancy was extremely stressful, and then the birth was definitely lacking. As someone who had originally wanted an unassisted home birth, my second daughter’s birth was gravely lacking in so many ways. By the time I became pregnant with my son this past year, I had long since decided I wanted something different, yet I wondered if I could ever really have what I wanted. I was more confident about my pregnancy and birth since having my second child, who remains one of the healthiest children I’ve ever known, yet I knew my husband would still never go for a home birth and honestly, I didn’t want to go that route either. We were now living in Tennessee and a friend referred me to the Vanderbilt Nurse Midwives. They are very hands off when it comes to interventions and amazingly supportive of empowering women and providing the most meaningful birth experience possible, yet they deliver at Vanderbilt, one of the leading medical centers in the nation, located in Nashville. It seemed like the perfect match for me. My entire 9 months of prenatal care just confirmed it more and more, and by the time I neared my due date I was down right excited to give birth, something I had not felt with my first 2.

I went into false labor on my due date. It was just strong enough for me to drop my daughter off with my friend, but after a few hours it stopped. Normally I would have been disappointed, but I was very calm and I knew my baby would come when he was ready. I was in and out of false labor the next day, my 40 week appointment, and I had my midwife check me and she asked if I wanted my membranes stripped. I was ok with that, but she said that while I was dilated a 2, I was only 50% effaced and she couldn’t really strip them. However, that night I began having some really good contractions. I was sure this was it. They continued until around noon the next day. My husband had decided to stay home from work and we dropped my daughter off at my friend’s again. As soon as we did, they stalled again! I was ok with the baby coming in his time, but I was anxious about all the false alarms and putting my friend’s life on hold and having my hubby miss work unnecessarily, something we could not really afford. So I called my midwives and they recommended that I try a castor oil cocktail. Within 2 hours of drinking that I knew we were really going to have a baby.

Vanderbilt is about 40 minutes from my house and since it was the middle of rush hour, we decided to go on to the hospital even though I normally would have waited a little longer. However, knowing how fast I tend to progress, I was more comfortable with being in Nashville even if I had to take a walk in the parking garage for a few hours. We checked in and they took us to a triage room in L and D to check me and monitor me for an hour. I was still 2 cm, but I was 90% effaced. My pain was still very manageable and my midwife (it just so happened my primary was on call that night, out of several that could have been) was reluctant to give me a room. I was sure that it wouldn’t take much monitoring, they would see I was in labor for sure. Apparently the monitor was not on my belly correctly because even though my labor was definitely progressing, after an hour the nurse came in and said, “I guess they’ve slowed down, huh?” I shook my head, “No, the exact opposite, they are getting stronger for sure.” She adjusted my monitor and checked me. I had dilated to a 3 and was completely thinned out, but my midwife wanted to monitor me a little longer since they could not see my contractions on the monitor. Another 30 minutes went by and the contractions had gotten pretty intense. I had to focus through them. After a really strong one I told my hubby to tell them I had to pee.

The little triage room didn’t have its own bathroom, so they helped me across the hall. My hubby went in with me to help me with my gown. I will never forget what happened next! I sat down to pee and he was casually scanning the bathroom interior. A hard contraction began, making him glance in my direction and his eyes got big as saucers and he said, “Oh my god!!” in such an intense manner that I completely forgot the pain and looked at him. “What??!” The look on his face and his pointing finger made me look down, afraid that I might somehow have started crowning without knowing it. Turns out I had passed a ridiculously large amount of bloody mucus, a rope almost as long as my fore arm. I started laughing just as the contraction peaked, which made it sound more like a hysterical sob, and my midwife knocked on the door urgently and asked if we were ok, which only made me laugh harder.

Needless to say, they quickly helped us gather our things and head over to a room. I got one of the 2 delivery rooms that Vanderbilt offers with a labor tub and between that and actually getting to have my primary midwife deliver me, I already felt this birth was a success. This was enhanced as I met the nurses who would be attending me. I was almost surprised to find each of them happy and energetic, a glorious relief after the non chalent, almost rude nurse who had been present while I labored with my second child. One nurse bustled about filling the tub while another walked me through paper work, being very sweet and patient while I stopped to have contractions. Another nurse was reviewing my birth plan with Claire, my midwife, and the whole air was nothing less than joyful, like everyone was my personal friend and they had been waiting 9 months just for me to have my baby. It was amazing.

As soon as the tub was full I was helped into it and allowed to get in my zone. They dimmed the lights and very quietly and almost with an air of sacred went about their tasks, allowing me to labor on my own, breathing through the contractions. I had never taken a class on child-birth, but I had self-educated and with every breath I focused on relaxing every muscle in my body, not even scrunching an eye lid, embracing the pain, taking them one at a time, envisioning a portal opening in my mind, slowly, easing my son into the world. It was just me in my zone, in the tub. My hubby was resting and checking Facebook, my doula, who I had originally planned on having there, was not able to come at the last second, and Claire was checking on a few things while I labored, my mom wasn’t even there. She had been present for the first 2 births, but wasn’t able to come all the way down to Nashville from Kentucky. But everything was as it should be, I felt calm, I felt powerful, I didn’t feel lonely, I just felt like I was the only one who could birth my son and I was ok with being in the tub, alone, laboring. Time ceased to exist. It was just one contraction at a time. There was no before and there was no after. (I later realized I was in the tub for just over an hour.)

About the time my breath got wavery during the contractions, Claire appeared and sat with me, gently encouraging me, telling me how wonderful I was doing, how I was so strong, bringing my baby down. She very gently stroked my arm and even though I had not directed her to do any of this, it was perfect timing and perfect support. At one point she had me move from a sitting position to leaning over the side of the tub. I went through maybe 4 more contractions like that and then my body began to push involuntarily. I knew I was very close. That was a very familiar sensation. My husband had just put a music CD on and we were barely into the second song when I told them I needed to get out of the tub. (Vanderbilt policy is that you can labor in the tubs but you cannot deliver in the water.) When I got in the tub I was dilated to 4, and upon checking me when I got out I was only a five. I saw what looked like doubt cross Claire’s face and she quietly said to the nurse, “She’s only a five….” I think she was thinking I may have gotten out too soon, but my husband spoke up and said, “No, you are going to see, it is going to go very fast from here.”

Unlike the doctor and nurses who had delivered my second child, Claire nodded and started getting things ready for a baby to be born even though I was only half way dilated. I was starting to lose control. I was told to breath through and focus, but it didn’t matter what I tried to do to focus, my body was trying to push with every contraction. I was told that my cervix was swelling, to not push, but my body continued to take over. Claire quickly asked the nurse for some Litocain and I barely felt the sting of a needle way up high and knew she was numbing my cervix. Then she began to apply counter pressure through 3 or 4 contractions. If I hadn’t requested my very own self to have no I.V. inserted when I got the room I would have sworn someone had secretly slipped me some pitocin. My contractions were so intense and no time in between them. And then I was given the green light to push. Oh, how I pushed! 2, 3, 4… a nurse grabbed one of my legs and pulled it back when my brain couldn’t register Claire’s command to pull my knees back. My husband was directed to pull the other knee back. Another great push and my baby’s head was out. I think they told me not to push for a second, then I was allowed. It took a few more and out he came, his shoulders had gotten stuck for a second, that’s why I had needed to push so much more than with my daughters. From 5 cm to baby out took no more than 15 – 20 minutes, I know because the song that was playing on the CD was maybe the 4th or 5th track. Everyone was surprised at how quickly that had happened, even me!

And then, bliss. That moment of relief when my baby was out, screaming in indignation at the world he had entered, on my chest, all 7 lbs. 15 oz. of him. He stopped crying when he heard my voice, looked at me for a moment, then, as if becoming aware once again that he had been ejected from his warm home, he began wailing his lamentations once more. He was precious, every screaming bit of him! And my wonderful birth experience didn’t end there, I was able to hold my son on my chest for at least 20 minutes, nobody rushed me. Everything they did to check him over was done with him in my arms. The only reason they finally took him when they did was because I got curious about how much he weighed and told them to take him. They weighed him and brought him right back to me and I nursed him.

The moment of bliss, captured by one of the nurses for me.

I had torn in the very same spot as the first 2 births, but this time, instead of screaming louder than I had while giving birth, I didn’t even feel the needle that numbed me because, apparently, female midwives must know more about the importance and sensitivity of the clitoris, as well as its location, something my OB had failed to grasp in his many years of patient care, considering he stuck me there not once, but twice. I barely felt the four stitches I received. My entire experience was perfect, just as I had always imagined, everyone respected my wishes, my baby was not once out of my sight with out my direction, he roomed in with me and only went to the nursery for his hearing test and PKU, which I was welcome to be there for. I could not have wished a more perfect experience into existence, and since this is the last baby we plan to have, it was an amazing ending to such an important chapter in my life, my child-bearing. And even though my first 2 births had been natural with no pain medication, this was the very first time I felt truly amazing and confident and powerful – and it is a beautiful thing!

The Make It and Break Me Moments of 2012

In the spirit of new beginnings, I thought today, the first day of 2013, was a great day to write my first blog post of this year. Ironically, I’m a big believer in needing to look at the past to gain some perspective on the present and future, so I’d like to review 2012 a little and share some of the “make or break” moments from last year.

SOME BACKGROUND

When 2012 began:

Josh and I had just relocated, after an enormous amount of prayer, thought, research, soul-searching, prayer, exhausting other avenues, and prayer, to Columbia, Tennessee to open and run his second original concept restaurant.

We had been trying for a baby since July of 2011, after we suffered an early miscarriage.

My dad had been sick and unable to work for several months and his condition continued to decline rapidly.

Skye Blue began its 3rd year and I had just started working with clay as a brand new medium.

JANUARY

Making it moments:

I was excited for a fresh start in a new place. We determined once and for all we were going to get a handle on our finances and pay off debt we had accumulated mostly in 2008. (Whole different timeline review for another day.) We were nervous yet excited about the upcoming opening of Sano, it seemed like everything was falling into place for 2012 to finally be the year we clawed our way out of the hole that 2008 had created in our lives, but mostly in our emotions and psyche.

I was on a great track to getting fit and healthy. We had just gotten our juicer for Christmas and Josh and I both were excited about living and eating healthier. I had discovered my new home had an amazing park so getting exercise and keeping Faith busy was easy and soon became a daily lifestyle as our “temporary” apartment was very small with no yard and sat above an insurance agency that conducted normal business hours. I was anxious that my energetic 2-year-old was making disruptive noise above their heads, so this helped motivate me to get out every day, packing a healthy lunch and fresh juice.

Breaking me moments:

My dad’s health had declined drastically. In addition, since he was unable to work and my mom had always been a stay at home mom and still had 5 teen and preteen children that she home schooled as well as needing to care for my dad, they were dependent on Social Security Disability. The problem was payments would be delayed 6 months. So Josh and I, my 2 grown brothers, and mom’s church family rallied to help make up the needed funds to keep them going. (Helping is actually one of the making it moments, but the need to help is the breaking me part.) I began making the 3+ hour drive to Kentucky quite often to help my mom care for my dad and to lend emotional and moral support. This strained our already tight finances, but I would not have had it any other way.

The stress of everything began to take its toll on me and I began to develop a very strange rash on my neck, subtle at first, but slowly getting worse, and while not itchy or painful, it looked awful and stressed me even more.

FEBRUARY

Making it moments:

When ever I was home (which was not much) I worked through my emotions in sculpture and the “Every Tree A Soul” line of sculptures was born.

I continued to get fit while living between 2 state lines, walking and juicing with mom when I was up there.

Sano opened its doors to the public and months of my husband’s hard work were realized as Columbia tasted his food for the first time.

Breaking me moments:

My dad was nearing the very end. Ironically, the one thing that had been his defining trait, his sharp and unique mind, was leaving him. He was not himself at this point, most of the time he could not even talk. When he did, he went on and on about his sons, which was good, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt that here I was daily, disrupting my entire life to be with him and mom at the worst moments, wading through their emotional crisis, financial mess, relational issues with their daughters still at home, and physically helping to care for him. My brothers weren’t able to, my older brother had a family to care for in North Carolina but was able to visit a few times in the last months, and my younger brother had a very demanding full-time job and worked a lot of hours, he came over whenever he could, every few days for several hours. At one point dad over heard a conversation between mom and I about my plans for that week to stay a little longer than I’d originally planned (he could not at this point put everything together, so he didn’t know it was because I didn’t have the gas money to go home that week, I barely wanted to burden mom with that knowledge at this point.) and he just started hollering at me to “Go home! I don’t want you here, I can’t take it any more!” Yes, he was a man losing his mind, yes he was sick – YES, it hurt like nothing else could at that point. He later apologized, of course I forgave him, but you don’t forget something like that. The boys he incessantly talked about and praised did not have to receive that from him. Thankfully.

My rash got worse and continued to spread from my neck and inner arms down to my wrists and chest and I still had no clue what it was.

MARCH

Breaking me moments:

On March 8, 2012, my dad passed away. I didn’t realize it, but the moment he did my world began to shake. It is hard to explain because you have to know my dad, but he literally believed he would be alive to see the world end and Jesus come in all His glory. He believed this so fervently he had based his entire life, lifestyle, and that of his family around it. I cannot begin to go into it here, but my entire childhood, teen years, and young adulthood before marriage and even a little after marriage was consumed with the world ending and preparing for that. Even after I gained a little perspective as an adult and began forming my own beliefs and lifestyle, my dad dying had a huge impact on me in that feelings of anger at the futility of it all began to surface almost immediately. At 61 years young, after a life full of health, physical activity, vitamin taking, preparing, living in poverty because of belief that at any second the economy was going to collapse and it was better to have lots of food and gear rather than possessions and savings, my dad died. Just like that, gone. It did not matter at that point how many of his beliefs were true, that the hardships I’d gone through as a young girl made me who I am, he was gone and all the crap I’d been through began to look very useless and I began to get very angry. (Word is still out on those feelings, check back later.) Even more, he’d left my mom, 5 sisters, and nothing but a very unstable social security system to take care of them. Obviously, whether it was my job or not, whether it was requested or not, whether or not my mom and sisters felt they needed my help, I was left with an overwhelming sense of duty as a burden to bear.

Making it moments:

I finally broke down and went to the doctor about my rash. He diagnosed it as an auto immune condition most likely brought on by severe stress. The best remedy was to reduce stress, which I did, and 2 days later (no kidding!) it was almost completely gone.

A few days after my doctor’s visit, I found out that we were pregnant. After 9 months of trying, we were finally pregnant.

APRIL

Making it moments:

Despite some routine kinks, Sano was doing fairly well. Everyone who ate there said the same thing, “The food is fantastic!”

Breaking me moments:

I began figuring out the new normal with my dad gone. I found the relationships with all my family changing at a rapid pace, a few for the better, but mostly on the darker side. I was prepared for losing my dad, I was not prepared for these other relationship changes.

MAY

Making it moments:

I chanced upon an auction being held on the Facebook page “United Through Pregnancy and Infant Loss” and was able to include one of my tree sculptures. From that point, everything at Skye Blue changed. I found an amazing supportive group of moms who had lost babies too and I did not know how badly I needed them and still needed to grieve until I found them. I also found an amazing support of my art, a jump in Facebook page likes, admirers, and Etsy sales. Most of all, I found purpose. Skye Blue had been kind of floating in an abyss of creative and emotional outlet without any structure or channeling. Through my connection to UTPAIL and all the wonderful loss moms I suddenly had purpose and vision for my art in memory of my baby girl, Elizabeth Skye.

Breaking me moments:

My relationships with my mom and sisters continues to morph into something new. Much like the cocoon stage of a butterfly’s morph, it was ugly, confusing, and appeared rather lifeless, and yet I knew something beautiful would eventually come out of it, it’s just that the change was hitting me very hard.

JUNE

Making it moments:

I launched an ornament donation program that had been on my heart since Skye Blue’s beginning. I had been wanting to make and donate ornaments somehow, knowing how much the one I had been given in memory of Skye from a stranger had meant to me at a time when every one I knew had seemed to forget her, or was trying hard to. I just hadn’t known how to go about it, or who to donate them to, then again, because of a connection at UTPAIL, the final idea came to me and “In Memory Of” was launched and very quickly gained momentum.

Breaking me moments:

A trip to North Carolina with my mom and some of my sisters to visit my brother and his family and my grandmother who I had not seen for 6 years ended in the culmination of something I had felt coming since April. Anger had built. Anger at my dad, anger at the futility of my raising, anger that somehow so many roles were reversed between my mom and I, anger that he was suddenly a saint to her and that I hated him most of the time, anger at myself for not being able to get a handle on it all, anger that my world was upside down once again and could not be fixed. Just anger. No sadness, no grieving and crying, just more and more anger. I won’t go into details, but that trip ended with me realizing that I needed to distance myself, that I couldn’t save anyone from any hardship, and nobody had asked for me to anyway. At that point, I realized I was stretched far too thin and it was my own fault, I was putting it all on myself. As wrong as it sounded, it was time to take care of myself and focus on me. It was something I had never really been able to do, even as a child I was constantly worrying about everyone else, their reactions, anticipating their needs automatically – it was time to let go.

JULY

Making it moments:

It was a month of relative calm, before the second part of the year hit, which turned out to be as hard if not harder than the first part. I enjoyed lots of little moments with Josh and Faith, my pregnancy was going well and the morning sickness was over. I was able to get outside still, be active. I was beginning to accept the new normal of the relationship changes with my mom and sisters and I began to really focus on my relationship with my husband. Mostly I was taking care of myself, not putting too much on myself emotionally, and staying creative artistically which was very therapeutic.

Breaking me moments:

A few very early indicators began surfacing concerning the restaurant, things that vaguely reminded me of 2008, little de ja vu moments that left me feeling uneasy.

AUGUST

Breaking me moments:

This is where 2012 got tough. Not only were we not getting ahead financially as I had envisioned, but we suddenly found ourselves falling behind. I won’t go into details, but basically we found our paychecks cut in half through the months of August and September, and when you are already living on a tight budget, that isn’t a good thing. Sano, as well as it was doing, wasn’t doing quite well enough to support itself due to many factors that were not under Josh’s control, his business partner made most of the final decisions and this was frustrating as he did not have prior restaurant experience, and Josh was left to look like the face of the restaurant yet had none of the power to make critical decisions that could truly help the business grow and succeed. All of this, in addition to being pregnant, as well as some other factors had me not only stressed about the current situation, but I also began to relive the trauma of 2008, an eventful year I had managed to successfully suppress into the corners of my memory and leave in vague obscurity. You see, for those of you who don’t know, 2008 was the year we moved to a new place, in a different state, away from family and friends to open our first restaurant. That endeavor ended horribly after problems with our business partner misrepresenting his ability to back us financially caused us to lose almost everything we owned and go into debt just to survive. We finally made it back to Kentucky with basically the clothes on our back, homeless, jobless, completely defeated, and I was 8 months pregnant. Then, 3 weeks later I gave birth to our first daughter, we spent her entire life in a NICU, and then at 17 days old she passed away, so we lost her too.

There are many differences between the experiences of 2008 and 2012, the main one being this time around we did lots and LOTS of praying and truly felt coming to Tennessee was the right thing to do (we still feel that way, 100%) but right about August all I could see were the similarities. I was in the throes of a desperate battle of the heart and mind and did not yet see that God was indeed giving me my year of redemption, He was just doing it differently than I had envisioned.

The making it moments:

In spite of being extremely short on money, somehow we made it. We didn’t tell anyone about how dire our situation really was, but somehow the money was there every time we really needed it to be. I would paint a picture of some of what I experienced, but I feel it would only conjure pity and not do its intended task of showing how God continued to provide for us, but He did. He provided items of enough worth to sell, sales in my Etsy shop, baby sitting opportunities, and sometimes a gift showing up in my mailbox just when we needed it most,  and while we did fall a little behind, it was not nearly the financial catastrophe of 2008.

SEPTEMBER

The making it moments:

I held my second annual Celebrating Skye Give Away on September 25th, my little girl’s birthday, and it was amazing to give so many gifts away in her honor, hand-made with love as part of her legacy, Skye Blue. Getting ready for that event kept me busy and focused on creating and had me really searching my soul. Sharing it with my community of loss families was healing all on its own.

The breaking me moments:

I continued to struggle with thoughts and feelings of anger, now against God for letting us make another poor choice (so it seemed) in spite of our fervent prayers and our careful research, trying not to make the same mistakes as in the past. I was having a hard time with my pregnancy. Since finding out I was pregnant with a boy, I not only felt out of my element, I was down right scared of the unknown, and I had irrational fears that I wouldn’t love him. I had trouble bonding with him as he was not very active like Faith had been and the uncertainty of our situation and constant reminders of 2008 made me wish several times that I had never gotten pregnant. All the feelings surrounding the loss of my dad and the memory of never seeming equal to his sons even though I was the one who most shared all his interests, that also played horrible tricks on my mind where my son was concerned. I was desperately afraid I would somehow let my baggage affect my love for my boy. (I know this all sounds absurd, but this was the battle I was fighting at the time.)

OCTOBER

The making it moments:

I participated in a project through the month of October called “Capture Your Grief”. Every day (or almost every day) I posted a picture and wrote a blog post. Each day in October had a topic and this simple project helped me do some deep cleaning in my soul and memory. I faced my memories head on, taking a new look at most of them. Instead of hiding from 2008 and its occurences, I faced it for perhaps the first time and let it all wash over me. I gained perspective, I found some things buried that were worth remembering, I worked through a lot of pain. I remembered how God had carried me and began to believe again that He could and would carry me through my current situation too.

I began to bond with my unborn son and really feel the first sparks of love and excitement for him as an individual.

Our paychecks situation got straightened out.

The breaking me moments:

I was reminded again how different my relationships were, how different everything was. The one person who had been with me on every journey through trial and grief, my mom, was not able to come with me on this journey in the month of October. While I completely understood, I still felt pain at the loss of this connection, and even more so, I felt pain that she was on a grief journey I could not really come on with her. I felt very off kilter, like a sail boat that had drifted into a dead zone without wind and was at the mercy of strange currents.

NOVEMBER

The making it moments:

This month is where the tide began to turn. On an especially hard day I sat down and opened my Bible, randomly flipping to the book of Job. I read through parts of chapters through Job, the part where he loses it all, the part where his friends are trying to advise him, the part where he says his beef to God, the part where God answers him. Then I came to this part: And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Job 42:10 It was like a lightening bolt struck me, like I’d never read that verse before. Job FIRST prayed for his friends.

I began changing my prayers from asking God primarily to fix my situation. Instead, I began only thanking Him for the wonderful blessings in my life and I put all my asking energy into my friends and extended family, who ever came to mind at any moment in the day, whether a Facebook friend I hardly knew or a friend from my childhood, I prayed for them. My attitude began to change, things began to look brighter even though the actual circumstances were getting darker. I was peaceful and happier than I’d been all year.

The breaking me moments:

Josh’s business partners basically told him they were going to shut the restaurant down as it wasn’t making a profit. Once he started looking for a new job they changed their minds and decided to keep it open, change-up the concept a little, bring in a manager with minimal previous restaurant experience, and the final kick in the teeth after all the crazy hours he’d put in, the major crap he had gone through, the hoops he had jumped through for them against his own previous experience, the awkwardness of being the face of something he had no control over – the final kick in the teeth was where they changed the locks out in front of him his last day there and treated him as if at any moment he was going to empty the freezers or something. He had been there from day one, put blood, sweat, and tears into another restaurant he was having to walk away from, he had designed the menu, hand-picked and trained the team, put in 16 hour days 6 days a week, sometimes even Sundays. He had missed every prenatal appointment for that place, missed time with his family, lost sleep, forfeited paychecks to keep that place going. It was a hard moment to walk away, and it was hard for me to watch him have to do it.

DECEMBER

The making it moments:

December 2012 may have had some shaky moments, but they don’t even compare to the amazing blessings we received.

Josh started a new job that once it is open (they are moving from the old location to an even better location and should be open later this month) should bring in a substantial pay raise.

Our amazing church family blessed us in ways they don’t even know, and could not have known how big a blessing they would be. Some specific items were given to us, items I had been wanting, wishing, and praying for a long time. Yes, the items themselves were blessings, but the biggest blessing was seeing God answer my secret prayers so specifically.

The November auction at UTPAIL yielded a generous amount of money and since I was the partner organization that month, I was able to fund the shipment of more donated ornaments than I could make in time for Christmas and bless many families who had lost a baby or babies. My list continued to grow and I look forward to making many more donated ornaments in the future.

We had a fabulous Christmas, even though we had suffered such a hard year and had just lost his job at the end of November. God provided through the generosity of others and we had a really blessed time as a family.

AND, we welcomed our healthy baby boy on December 20th, 7 lbs. 15 oz., 20 1/2 inches and perfect in every way. I had an amazing natural, drug free birth, the kind I had always wanted, and the beautiful experience was shared with my hubby who had been able to rest the day of and was right there, holding my hand as our son came into the world, the son I absolutely adore with my whole heart.

My 3-year-old daughter FINALLY began to potty train, right at the end of the year and is still doing well with it!!

There are no breaking me moments for December.

LOOKING FORWARD

2012 WAS a year of redemption. It came by a very unexpected path, but I have somehow been set free from the failure of 2008, the devastation, to defeat, the loss, the fear. Because 2012 was similar in so many ways, it was like the test I needed to retake and I feel I passed it. We learned some amazing lessons this past year, we stuck it out in the hardest moments, we didn’t just quit, give up, let the fear and hardship push us into bad decisions. We matured as individuals and as a married couple. We grew closer. We grew stronger. I found a deeper love for my husband as I watched him grow by leaps and bounds this year. I found a deeper trust in my God as I watched him work miraculously in the midst of turmoil.

My hopes for 2013 are that I can maintain the trust and balance I have found in December, that no matter my circumstances I can find much to be thankful for. I hope that I can find someone to bless this year in the way that we were blessed when we needed it most. I hope that Skye Blue continues to grow, that others find healing in my artwork as I have, that Skye’s legacy stretches to the corners of the earth. I hope that we can finally get caught up and THIS is the year we start paying off debt, but that I remember that no matter what, God sees our situation and He knows. I hope I can forgive and find forgiveness because I need it given as much as I need to give it. I hope I can inspire people in spite of my flaws and because I am flawed. I hope to be the best wife and mommy I can be, to develop lots more patience and understanding and I pray God will take care of the mistakes I make and let my kids grow up happy and healthy.

Welcome, 2013!

 

Memories in Time

I was thinking about something this morning. People who really know me know that I’m all about taking pictures. I mean, not just during the Holidays or special occasions, I take pictures almost every day. I take pictures of random, ordinary moments, sometimes just a quick snap shot, sometimes taking it to the picture editor and embellishing it a little. I post many to Facebook, but there are some that just sit on my computer for a while until I finally decide I’m ok with deleting them or I move them to a named folder to keep for good. My friends and family have varying degrees of the opinion that I’m “picture crazy”, and others who are more of an acquaintance might think I’m silly, annoying, or even a little self-absorbed.

Well, you have to understand my history to understand my pictures.

I was born in the 80’s, into a world of Polaroids, long before the digital age. It wasn’t nearly as easy or as cheap to take and keep pictures around as it is today. You had to keep the photos in album books if they were going to stay nice, and film and books cost money and you had to keep buying them. To get a good portrait shot, you had to pay a photographer and pay for copies of those photos, and then you had to buy frames and all that. This, of course evolved a little, but pretty much was the norm until the very late 90’s, early 2000. Needless to say, my parents having 3 kids at that time, and 8 by the time it was all said and done, had better things to spend money on.

In addition, when I was 9, my family moved from a big, normal house into a tiny 31 foot travel trailer to travel west and begin a new life of adventure and pioneering. (Long story for a different day.) We had to down size to the very barest of minimals to fit us all in. After giving precious items to friends and family, many things just had to be pitched, including a lot of photos. It sounds harsh, but my mom did what she had to do and a drawer full of pictures and Polaroids that had never made it into albums had to be thrown away. I remember she cried while those memories went into the trash. Baby pictures, birthdays, family snap shots – all gone. To this day, I have no pictures of myself as a baby except for the few that my aunt has shared from the ones she kept. Sometimes, and Facebook has been a great thing in this respect, a long-lost memory surfaces as a very old picture is scanned and shared by family or friends that my mom reconnected with in the past few years. It is rare, though.

Between that time and the years we lived in Colorado and then Kentucky, disposable cameras were cheap and made it much easier to take pictures, but developing still cost money, and after moving so much, we learned to travel light and we didn’t take many pictures that have survived. There is a small handful that each of my sisters and my mom have, pictures my dad hand-picked before he died of the cabin he built and the years in Colorado.

Then, in 2005, I moved out on my own and was introduced to a world of rapidly evolving digital cameras and camera phones. I was young and single, so I had very little incentive to take pictures for a little while, but then I got married, a year later we were pregnant with the first grandchild on Hubby’s side and moving a thousand miles away to Colorado to open our first restaurant. My mom in law bought me my very first, very own digital camera. Suddenly, pictures were so easy to take, and storing them on our new laptop was incredibly easy too. No more developing charges, bulky photo albums, and any “bad shots” could easily be deleted. It was life changing.

But the biggest piece of this puzzle fell into place later that year, the reason why I like to capture so many ordinary moments.

Many who have read this blog and followed it even a little know that in 2008 we lost our first baby girl to a surprise and mystery condition she was born with. She lived 17 days, all of them in a NICU unit, and while I took pictures and a few videos, I did not realize she would die and how many memories I would not make. I didn’t take nearly enough pictures, and even if I had, there would be none of the ordinary moments we take for granted. There were no pictures of her first bath, her first time getting dressed up for church, her first steps, her first birthday, her first day of school, and there certainly weren’t any every day moments to remember and smile over. What’s worse is that the time I did spend with her is missing huge chunks in my memory. I have blocked out most of the traumatic days of her in the NICU laying in pain, unable to be held by us, a blur of doctors and medicine and sterilization. Those are the only memories she is part of and many of them are lost.

We were blessed, by surprise no less, the following year with our rainbow baby Faith. From about half way through that pregnancy (the point where I begin to remember life again, the months directly after Skye died are almost completely gone, I vaguely remember very little, clips here and there) I had decided that no matter the outcome, I was not going to wait to spend time with her. I was going to make memories and make the most of her time with me, whether that was days or years. I talked to her all the time, just as you would a friend, when she was in my belly. I told her what I was doing, how things looked, my hopes, my fears, why I was doing a certain chore and how. Someone watching me would have pegged me as insane, walking around the house talking to “nobody” about needing to do the dishes and why one brand of soap was better than another.

I took pictures of my pregnant belly, but I really began taking pictures when Faith was born and I just never stopped. Over the past 3 years the picture-taking has really evolved as I found fabulous free picture editing sites to fix flaws and enhance the mood of the shot, add frames, etc. and Facebook has been invaluable for storing my pictures in albums. In fact, after my first computer crashed, I learned a valuable lesson. I lost even more of the few precious memories I had, pictures of Skye, on my old laptop, and would have been utterly devastated if I had not put pictures on Facebook and videos on YouTube. So yeah, I post A LOT of pictures on Facebook and my friends may or may not think I’m a little obsessed, but I don’t care. I know that several times I have needed to download them back off the web to have them.

Memories friends, you can’t buy those. They are priceless.

Just a Fall day at the park with my girl.

 

Every time I snap a picture of this little girl loving life, I think of another little girl who is not here. She never got the chance to go down the slide.

 

Another every day memory. One day she’ll be grown up and this picture will be all I have. I don’t take it for granted.

 

 

Written On My Heart

As many of you know, June of this year marked the beginning of something that had been the humblest of thoughts in my heart since my daughter died. From 2008 until this year, 2012, it slowly evolved until, in one day, the final light bulb moment came and my little dream was birthed into reality.

I’m referring to my Christmas ornament donation program at Skye Blue.

One of the first, only, and most cherished gifts I got in memory of Skye came at the perfect time. The funeral was over, she was buried, the mourning visitors had gone home, my husband (and I, for a short time) went back to work, life began as the New Normal. I was anything but normal though. Nobody talked about my little girl anymore, no more cards came mentioning her name. My memories had been stolen from me before I had a chance to make them with her, and winter descended like a vulture on my soul. There was nothing to look forward to, no bouncing baby girl, no milestones, even the Holidays promised pain and tears without my little bundle to show off, to cuddle, to open presents with, and mostly just to hold and love.

And then, in November, I got a little parcel in the mail. It was from the organization Hearts and Hands. We had been connected with them soon after Skye was sent up to Kosair. At first I didn’t understand who they were and why I was being pushed to meet with yet another set of people when I could be spending time with my daughter. In fact, I don’t think I understood who they were and why we were being introduced the whole 17 days I was there. It was only in the months following Skye’s death that they became the most invaluable comfort to me. You see, they are a group of people who deal with families who have babies that have a huge chance of passing away soon after birth. I guess this is why I didn’t make the fateful connection. It never sank in that I probably wouldn’t bring my little girl home. Nobody thought they should “burden” me with the gravity of her situation.

In the blur that night, when my daughter passed away, it was the sweet ladies from Hearts and Hands as well as one of Skye’s regular nurses that lovingly prepared her body, unwrapping it, dressing it in real clothes for the first time, putting baby lotion on her damaged skin so she would smell like a baby and not a hospital when we held her for the first time without her wrappings. They made the little molds of her hand and feet, they photographed her and us holding her. And they told us that they would be in contact with us over the next few months, we didn’t have to answer back at all, but they would send us some things in the mail. I barely heard this and remembered it at that time, I was too shattered and numb.

I believe the first thing I got was that package in November. I had pretty much forgotten that they had said they would be sending anything, so when I opened it I was a little puzzled and wondered what it was. As I pulled the little tissue paper parcel out of the mailer and unwrapped it, I burst into tears. There was a little pink and white candy cane ornament and it had Skye written on it. Not Elizabeth, her first name and the name so many people used because they didn’t know her, but the name I had chosen so long ago and given to my precious baby while she was still a tiny hope.

We didn’t even put up a tree that year, but that ornament was so precious, because somebody cared. A virtual stranger cared enough to send something with my girl’s name and a hand written card telling me how sorry they were that I’d be spending the Holidays without her at a time when everybody had stopped talking about her for fear of “ruining the season by reminding me”. As If I could have forgotten her!

To this day, that ornament and the others we have accumulated each year are among my most precious earthly possessions. Pulling them out and hanging them on the tree with my family is a cherished moment each year, remembering, and making new memories with my children here on earth, telling them about their sister they have never met and why they are even more special to us because of how special she is.

That is the story behind my donated ornaments. They are a labor of love, not to families that are monetarily needy, but to those who are in need emotionally of someone, anyone, remembering their children. I want you to know, those of you who have requested an ornament for your child or children who have passed, I am touched and humbled as I sit at my table and shape the clay with my fingers. I contemplate your child who was and is and will always be. I say their name, I marvel at the beauty of their names, I think about the dates you have chosen to record, whether birthdays, conception days, due dates, their date of passing. I think of the colors that you choose to represent your child, I think of the short stories some of you send with your email request and I grieve with you, I truly do. Sometimes, when the house is very quiet I even shed a tear as think of these beautiful little lives and the people left behind to mourn them for the rest of their lives. I consider it a great honor to have my finger prints mingled in the same clay that bears your child’s name.

I felt like all this needed to be said, and now it still seems inadequate to convey what I feel, but I will post any way. God bless you all, thank you for letting me be a part of your remembering.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

For information about my program and how to request an ornament, please visit this link on my Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151009575456271.479378.362725131270&type=3

 

Capture Your Grief Day 31: Sunset

I am posting this a day late as last night I was busy making memories with family and friends. I have to say, it was perhaps the most appropriate way I could have ended this tender month.

When I started this project, I had the great desire to post every single day, using every subject. However, this month has been very busy, especially the weekends, and I had to skip a few days as they got away from me.

I have taken so much away from this project. I have cried and cleaned out my soul, remembered, mourned, rejoiced, freed myself of inhibitions, made friends, reflected, found strength, discovered things inside of me I had not even known were there. Not being lost on me is the irony that as I cried for my first child, I am pregnant with my last, and the cycle of living life fully while continually grieving has been an epic journey. I suspect it will not be over until I reach the distant shore of eternity. I’m ok with that.

Last night, as I spent a carefree evening with my husband and daughter and some dear friends, I kept in the back of my mind that I needed to snap a picture of the sunset. Since we were walking outside Trick or Treating, I figured it would be easy to capture a perfect picture. The evening sky was clear with just a few clouds that added to the aesthetic value and I was once again envisioning an epic photo much like the one I had envisioned at the beginning of the project. However, when the moment came to take the picture, I realized we were on the eastern side of a hill and could not see the setting sun horizon because of houses and power lines, etc. So I did the best I could, snapping a shot of the evening sky. At the moment, it did not seem very epic at all, but I wasn’t bothered as much as I had been with my sunrise shot at the beginning of this project. In that moment, I felt happy and carefree, I had the people who mattered most spending time with me and making precious memories. Perhaps the deep cleaning done to my soul has helped me more than I realize, all I know is something really is different at the end of this month compared to when October started.

Letting yourself grieve is a good thing, friends. Don’t be afraid of the memories and the tears they bring. Let yourself feel the pain, allow yourself to be hurt, admit that you have wounds. You have them anyway, acknowledging them is just the first step in the direction of healing. Denying your wounded state just keeps the wounds festering. Don’t kid yourself, they are there whether you cry or not, whether or not you acknowledge them, and most of all, they are there whether or not others acknowledge them. Grief is not to be feared, use it as a tool for healing your soul and getting stronger.

I hope each person reading this finds peace, where ever they are in their healing process, whether beginning, mid way, well into the thick of it, or maybe even having yet to encounter deep grief in your life. My hope is that you always have blessed memories being made along the way, and that you are never afraid to pull them out from time to time, even the painful ones. Every memory is precious.

Day 31: Sunset
Mt Pleasant, Tennessee, USA, about 6 pm October 31st, 2012

Capture Your Grief Day 30: My Grief – What I Want The World To Know

There are so many things I could say here, but one resounds stronger than any in my heart. Up until this year, I was very quiet, even apologetic about my grief. If someone asked a question that inevitably led to me mentioning Skye, I felt almost ashamed that I had to answer in a way that made them uncomfortable. In turn, that left me in pain, ashamed of my own feelings, saddened that I didn’t do my daughter’s memory the justice that it deserved. For most of 3 years I was a silent sufferer, afraid to shadow an oblivious world with the fact of my grief.

Then, as I began speaking about her, a beautiful thing happened. I began meeting moms I had never suspected that had suffered a similar loss. I met dads and grandmothers who I had known for several years, but I met the grieving side of them for the first time. Like me, they felt obligated by our society to be silent about the fact that their child had died.

We are “allowed” to speak about a friend who passes, a mother, father, grandparent, public official   – any well-known person that many people have met and remember. However, if the lost loved one happens to be an unborn baby or a baby that never took a breath at birth, or even a tiny baby that lived its entire life in the NICU, so many people squirm. They don’t know what to say, so for some reason they say things like, “At least you didn’t have time to get attached,” or “You can have more children, healthy children this time,” or worst of all, they say nothing. The more you speak about your child, the more withdrawn your circle of “friends” get, so you learn to be silent.

You don’t forget though. You never forget the tiny person who touched your life so deeply. No matter how small they were, they were your’s and you loved them with your entire heart. It is a shame that our modern society makes us feel bad for loving, caring, remembering our children.

If there is one thing I want the world to know about my grief it’s that my daughter was and is a person. I refuse to feel shame for speaking about her as often as I feel the need. I now know there are so many people just like me, moms, dads, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, and sisters. You don’t realize it, but you know at least one, right now, who has been deeply affected by the loss of a young child. You know them personally. She is your friend at work, your child’s teacher, a lady in your church, the gas station clerk you chat with every morning. When you find her, don’t feel bad or uncomfortable. Just let her break the silence and offer her the same sympathy you would to someone who lost their parent or spouse. Don’t change the subject quickly and make her feel like she is a terrible person for mentioning what is probably the most precious thing she has ever had.

Capture Your Grief Day 26: Their Age

Oh, how little time we had, in retrospect. At the time it seemed endless, every day seemed like it would never end, like the time we had with her could stretch on and on if we just hoped enough and prayed enough. We were so tired and weary with the not knowing, with the endless cycle of different doctors projecting a possible diagnosis that always came up empty, giving everyone more questions than answers. We wondered if we would have to make hard decisions her whole life, if she would ever have a chance to be “a normal kid” or would it be test after test after procedure for the next few years. We couldn’t know we would not even have a month with her. If we could have known how little time we had, we would have done everything differently – and yet there isn’t one thing I think I would change, except I would have held her. I would have brushed my caution aside and held her every minute I could, I would have savored every second.

At the time I cried over her skin, I cried over whether or not her hair might ever grow with the deep damage to her scalp. I wondered if she would ever be normal or if kids would tease her. I spent so much time pumping milk, away from her, pumping milk that she never got to drink. In the end, nobody ever got to use that love I pumped so fervently, somebody in the NICU threw it away even as I was trying to make arrangements to donate it to a bank. (That was yet another loss I had to mourn in the face of losing my daughter, somebody carelessly throwing away my love, my nurturing, my tears and sleeplessness and broken dreams from breasts that would never hold my baby close to them, tender mommy moments that would never be. That alone was so devastating for me when the nurse called me, tears in her own voice, to tell me what had happened.)

All of it seems so unimportant now in the face of what I know. I had only 17 days with my daughter in this world outside the womb, and I will not get one day back to do over.

A whole lifetime in 17 short days.

Capture Your Grief Day 24: Siblings

Skye was my first baby. When I lost her, I did not have other children to hold and hug and cry with, at least not from my own womb.

I did, however, have five little girls I had all but birthed. My five younger sisters were my first “babies”, I had been as much a part of raising them as my mom and dad. I had seen their first moments of life outside the womb, I had helped with 4 of their 5 births. They will always be my babies more than my little sisters, there is a 10 year gap between me and the oldest, 18 years between the youngest and I.

It was hard on them, I believe, when I got married and moved out of the house. As my sister Grace said on my wedding day, tears rolling down her cheeks right before I headed up stairs to say my vows, (she was 5 at the time) “I’m losing my sister!” I always tried hard to keep that from being so, to reassure them that I would always be there for them, even if I didn’t live in the same house. I tried to include them in everything, do something special on their birthdays, include them in important life events.

We found out I was pregnant right before we moved to Colorado, and they were heartbroken. They used to talk about me having a baby and being aunts (my brother had 2 kids, but he had lived out-of-state for years) and being able to be hands on with their niece or nephew. As hard as it was for us to move home when our business failed, my sisters, in their innocent child minds, were thrilled that I would be home in time for their niece to be born and I would once again be in their lives on a daily basis, living in the same house for a little while. They were so excited when I went into labor and anticipated what the next few hours would bring as the baby would be born right there in the house. Nobody was as excited to hold Skye and love her as they were, each of them being tender little mommies and in love with babies in general.

Then it all went wrong. In the commotion of going to the hospital at the last-minute to deliver and the ensuing drama, nobody really thought about those poor little girls waiting at home for their niece to arrive into the world. Nobody had time to sit with them and ask them what they were feeling. As we all waited for Skye to get better and come home, each person was engrossed in “adult worries”, I don’t think any of us stopped to think about how they were coping. They could not visit the NICU while Skye was there, it was cold and flu season and school age children were not permitted, especially not five at a time. They had to settle for pictures and videos, and the hopeful promise that they would get to hold Skye when she was better.

She never got better. In the midst of my grief, in the very throes of my loss, during the private family visitation on October 14, 2008, my sisters got to meet Skye for the first time. She was in her little coffin. They would never get to hold her. Even Josh and I finally got to hold her at the very end as she passed, but these tender little girls would never have the bittersweet joy of holding her, only lightly touching her tiny fingers and kissing her lifeless features ever so gently. I have a picture that makes me cry every time I see it to this day. For the very first time I glimpsed the real, tangible pain they had been experiencing while all the adults had been busy with their own worries. I saw written on their faces the devastation of loss, and they were so young and so deeply affected by the tiny baby they had never met. They were 13, 12, 11, 7, and 5 years old. The picture speaks so painfully for itself.

Clockwise from left: Nevada 11, Noel 13, Naomi 12, Neryah Grace 7, Nalana 5.