The "V" Word

I haven’t blogged in two months. Things have been pretty calm.  This baby boy is moving a lot to provide me much reassurance.  Nothing eventful has happened to send me into a tailspin.  I have kept myself quite busy so I don’t have too much time to think or overanalyze what might be going on inside my body.  I’ve let go a lot and realized that I there is little that I really have control over and have resigned myself to just being in the moment.  The last two months have been quite tolerable and I’ve basked in the calmness.  But I’ve noticed recently that I have started changing.  My mind has starting wandering, thinking, speculating, and the inevitable….worrying.  I am thirty-four weeks today.  Getting into territory that others feel is safe.  I have heard from these others in their attempts to reassure me that where I am is a good place to be.  I mean, I reached “viability” weeks ago.   My OB has even been one of the comforters that has reminded me that even if I delivered this baby now, there’s an incredible chance that everything would be okay, that my baby would be healthy, that he would most certainly survive.  And I softly and quite gently have to remind these friends that this bit of insightfulness does little to relieve my anxiety.  I know these friends are trying to comfort, trying to help, trying to make me feel safe, but I feel I can’t let this sentiment slip by unnoticed.  I feel like if they are really trying to help then they must know what’s in my heart, where my fear lies, why I can’t let their comment float on by as I do so many others.  I cannot let this sentiment go because if it dares to come back again, I will flee, I will cry, I will scream.  So I find a way to say it, to let them know that this “viability” means nothing to me.  It doesn’t comfort me, it cuts through me to the core, this false sense of security, this empty promise, this black hole of faithfulness. 

And please let me pause for a moment to say that I am not angry with these friends, I am not hurt by them, I know they mean no harm with their words.  I am grateful for these friends, the ones who are brave enough to have these conversations with me, the ones who will talk with me about the things that scare me the most, the ones whose hearts are open enough to listen when I can no longer fight the tears of fear.  I am not trying to condemn them for these conversations, I am just trying to open the door a little further for understanding.  I am still desperate to be heard and most of all, desperate to be understood. 

So please understand that while others are beginning to breathe their collective sighs of relief during their third trimester, I am, it feels at times, solitarily just beginning to hold my breath.  It is incredibly awkward when this topic of viability comes up to remind you that my first born child, my son Wyatt Nicholas, was born at 40 weeks and 1 day.  He was 8 pounds, 4 ounces.  I went through 40 weeks of an uneventful pregnancy…no gestational diabetes, no high blood pressure, perfect ultrasounds…no reason to believe that I would go to the hospital in labor and turn around and leave empty-handed, with no certain cause of death.  This “viability” brings no truth to my heart.   I am haunted by horrifying memories that only serve to remind me that there are no guarantees.  There is no safety net.   There is no “home free”.  The closer I get to 40 weeks, the more fear chips away at my calmness and I have to search my soul for alternative ways to find peace.  And I am there, in a frantic search for ways in which to bring peace to my heart for the next 5 weeks.   And I will find a way, I am sure.  This anxiety surge is fairly recent and I am beginning to recognize it for who it is.  I am pretty certain I know who I am and I know I am bigger, stronger and tougher than this fear that tries to take me over.  I know I will fight this anxiety, these haunting memories, this taunting beast with tools that I have used before to conjure peace and combat fear.  I just have to remember what these tools were and have to remember where I have stored them.  So all I am asking from you, those around me that have embraced me throughout this journey, is your patience and understanding.  There are going to be moments when I cannot feign complete joyfulness.  There are going to be moments when I break down and sob with little warning.  There are going to be moments when I completely snap and lose any sense of grace or composure that I might have had weeks ago.  Please understand that these are the fleeting moments when peace has escaped me momentarily.  Please understand that these are the moments when I have temporarily lost my faith.  Please understand that I want to believe as much as you do that everything is going to be okay, I just have my history to remind me of the worst case scenario.  But also know that I am fighting, fighting all of this restlessness with all of my might.  And I am determined to win this fight, to find my peace, to find my faith, and find some sense of security to hold onto for the next five weeks.   I am hopeful, I am fightful and I am determined to slay this dragon once and for all.  I just might need my army of supporters to rally along with me and ride by my side.  

October 6, 2005. Rituals, routines and remembering.

October 6, 2005.  It was supposed to be a day that we celebrated every year for the rest of our lives, instead it is a day when grief floods my heart and reminds me of what should have been.  It has been six years since we have lost that little man, our first born child, our first true love.  It’s been six years and although my heart has healed a great deal since that horrible nightmare, this year has been a bit more challenging than the last few for obvious reasons:  another pregnancy loss, being pregnant yet again and being pregnant with a boy once more.  All this being considered, it was a mere two days ago when I realized that this anniversary was coming up.  I struggle with these anniversaries and dates, I have issues with specific rituals and routines, I don’t want to memorialize the bad days, I just want to hold onto the good.  But when your first child’s birthdate and death date are one in the same, it gets a little complicated. 

You see, six years ago, when my fate had been presented before me, I had to make decisions on how I was going to go forward.  I had to decide how this event was going to define me, who I was going to become, and what I was going to do so that I still had choices in a situation that was not my choice at all.  I had to decide how I was going to handle losing the only child I had ever known.  You are put in a situation in which you have to immediately begin making decisions on how you are going to handle your grief for the rest of your life.  And making these decisions is hard, it’s gut-wrenching, it exhausting, and at the same time you can’t believe you have to do this at all.  One of the biggest struggles that I have had in all of this was figuring out how I was going to remember my son.  Of course I knew I would always remember him, but our society, our culture is full of rituals and routines in which we honor and remember those that have gone before us in certain ways.  Funerals, burials, cemeteries, birthdays, anniversaries:  all things that help us in our grieving process, all things that are meant to mend our hearts and commemorate our loved ones.  And along with these events, dates seem to be the most important of all.  Continuing to honor birthdates of our loved ones, branding the death dates in our hearts of the ones that we have lost.  Immediately, I knew these things would be hard for me, I knew I would struggle with some of this stuff, rituals and routines haven’t always been my friend and I knew that I couldn’t rely on them this time either.  I grew up in the shadows of grief, this grief thing was not new to me.   I have a history with this grieving and its rituals that has left my heart a bit unsettled. There had to be another way. 

I feel like I have shared this story with you, although I’m not sure exactly when or in what context, so I feel I need to revisit it to some extent.  When I was 3 ½ years old, my younger brother died.  He was 15 months old.   It was a horrible accident.  Seriously unfathomable.  To this day, I still do not know how my parents survived it.  My experiences with grief started at a very young age.  Many people ask me if I remember.  I’m not sure how much I truly remember from that date, from that age, but what I do remember is how that grief affected those around me.  I watched grief take ahold of my family members, I watched grief grab onto the ones I loved and I watched how grief never really left at all.  And I hope you understand that I am not saying that anyone did anything wrong.  My family handled their grief to the best of their abilities.  We grieved like any normal family would have grieved.  My dad pushed down his feelings as far as they would go and my mom fought the demons of guilt as ferociously as she knew how.  My parents did an amazing job raising my brother and I, and I often wonder how they did such an incredible job considering all they had been through already, being such young parents and tackling such a horrible, horrible tragedy so early on in their parenting years.  Unfathomable. 

But something that I learned at a young age in watching those around me, was that these rituals that we engaged in to remember the dead weren’t always healing, sometimes they seemed to do more harm than good.  I watched my mom suffer.  As I grew up, I watched my mom strictly adhere to the ritual of visiting my brother’s grave every year on his birthday and on the date of his death.  I witnessed her suffering horrible bouts of guilt if there was a reason that she could not get there, whether it was the distance or the weather or a scheduling conflict of sorts.  I watched this guilt surface and take over her spirit and I saw how it penetrated the depths of her.  As a child, it hurt to lose my brother, it was painful, it was brutal.  But it hurt even more to see my own mother in the depths of her own pain.  I hurt when she hurt, and I hated this beast called grief and hated even more what its pal guilt did to my mom.  I’ve tried over the years as I have become an adult to rationalize with her that she does not have to do this to herself, that it doesn’t have to be this way, but to her it does.  This is what she decided long ago.  This is what she has needed to do to survive.  This was her way.

I had my own ritual as a child to help me work through my grief as well.  For as long as I could remember, I said a special prayer to my baby brother.  A prayer that I began saying with my mom every night and then continued to say on my own as I grew up.  I remember saying this prayer every night and I truly believe that it brought me peace at one time.  But as I grew older, this prayer became a burden of grief instead of a tool to heal it.  If I forgot to say this prayer, I felt guilty.  If I was tired and didn’t want to extend this prayer, I felt guilty.  If I even entertained the idea of omitting this prayer from my evening routine, I felt guilty.  And so after years and years of saying this same prayer to my baby brother every night, I realized that this prayer no longer served its original purpose and that somehow I had to free myself from the chains of this grief, of this guilt and cut ties with this routine once and for all.  I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but I remember it was painful, it was torturous, but it was necessary.  I didn’t want to live my life in guilt.  I didn’t want to remember my brother this way.  And when I finally realized that he wouldn’t have wanted to be remembered this way, I realized I could once and for all release this ritual, this routine, this prayer and best of all, this guilt.  And the amazing thing was, I didn’t forget about him and I didn’t stop praying to him.  I just did it when I wanted to, when I needed to, when it was important to.  This was what I needed to do to survive.  This was my way. 

And as I lost my own child I began remembering all of these things again.  I remembered how it hurt to see my mom suffer and struggle with the guilt of grieving.  I remembered how a grieving ritual ended up doing me more harm than good.  I remembered all the things that I didn’t want to do, that I didn’t want to adhere to, that I didn’t want to become.  I knew that rituals and routines wouldn’t be my friend, I had too much history with this creature of grief.  The only problem was that in remembering all the things I didn’t want to do, I had no idea what it was I did want to do.  I knew who I didn’t want to be in grief, I just didn’t know who I should be in my grief.  And I still struggle with this.  It’s been a hard day.  There is guilt involved with grief no matter how you handle it.  I would feel guilty if I didn’t acknowledge this day, but I try not to let myself get all tangled up in and stuck on dates.  We went to the cemetery today, it’s a ritual important to Rob, but I don’t want to get caught up in feeling as if I have to do this every year.  I also feel guilty dragging my child into my grief.  I want her to know about our son, I want her to know he was a part of our family, but I don’t want to get her twisted up into the rituals and routines of grieving for someone that was never a part of her existence.  And I don’t want her to live in the shadows of my grief.   But I also don’t want to hide my grief from her.  I want her to know that it’s okay to express your feelings if you are sad.  It’s such a delicate balance with her and I question daily if I am making the right decisions.   In addition, I feel guilty imposing my issues with routines and rituals onto others, especially my husband.  It was just this year that I told him what I am writing today on these pages.  But I didn’t want to impose my history, my beliefs on him.  I knew he had to work through his grief his way, not my way.  He was doing what he needed to do to survive.

Sometimes I have a point, today I’m not sure I know what it is.  Except that grief is complicated.  There is no right way or wrong way, there is just your way.  And we all do the best we can in our grieving process.  It hurts, it sucks and it remains with you no matter what.  Remembering and commemorating is hard.  We all have to do what we think is best in order to survive the things that often seem impossible to overcome.  And we also have to be willing to change these things when they aren’t working for us anymore and I think this is what is often harder than the grief itself.  If you are grieving someone you have loved and have lost, my heart goes out to you.  Be patient with yourself and remember, there is no right way or wrong way, only your way.  If you are supporting someone who has recently loved and has lost, please be patient with your loved one and remember, there is no right way or wrong way, only his or her way.  I am still finding my way, I am still working on my path through grief, and although my heart has healed a great deal, the grief still finds me, the guilt still haunts me and I am still wrestling with how my grieving process can encourage peace more than pain.   But it is this peace that I seek, it is this peace that is most important, it is in finding this peace within your grieving process that truly brings about the most change and promotes the most healing of your incredibly broken heart.  So today, as I remember my son, as I remember my grief, as I remember this date, I will remember to begin a new ritual:   wishing for peace.   Peace in my heart and yours, today and always.  

What's In a Name?

Today’s conversation in the car went something like this:  “Mom, I know a good name for our baby!”  What’s that Abigail?  “Wyatt.  Wyatt would be a good name.”  Yes, Abigail, Wyatt is a wonderful name, but we already have someone in our family named Wyatt.  “But Mom, that baby died, so he is not here anymore, so we don’t have anyone in our family named Wyatt right now.”  Sweetheart, Wyatt will always be a part of our family and will always be in my heart.  He will always be my son and in our family, his name should be special just for him, it is his special name.

Oh, these conversations are so hard but she has so many questions and I am trying to be so honest with her without completely messing her up for life.  Her tender heart is truly a blessing, but I’m hoping with all of my heart that she gets to experience the blessing of a sibling that we don’t have to talk about in the past tense.  My eyes were welled with tears during that entire conversation and I knew if she saw these tears, her eyes would soon be filled as well.  It’s a delicate balance, talking to my four year old about these things.  I want her to know all that my heart has felt, but I don’t want her to feel it at all.  I think it’s good to be honest with her, for her to know that bad things can happen, but I hope she also gets to witness the good.  I want her to feel safe asking these questions, talking openly about her feelings, to know that it’s okay to have her thoughts and to be able to express them, because I know I have had thoughts such as these, okay, I have had this exact thought, and of course, I have known exactly how to suppress it and not let anyone know it exists.  Wyatt is a great name and it is the name of my first born child.  The one who began to slip through my hands before I even knew I was losing him.  We have been trying to come up with a name ever since we found out four weeks ago that we are having a boy.  We have come up with nothing.  I can find nothing I love as much as the name Wyatt and I often feel myself wishing that I could just chose this name again and be done with it all.  But I know the reality is that it’s not the name that I want back.  It’s the opportunity.  I want to know who Wyatt was, who Wyatt would have been, who Wyatt could have or should have been.  I want the opportunity to hold him in my arms, to kiss him, to mother him, to simply utter his name, “Wyatt”.  And I will never have that again. I can only whisper his name in past tense conversations and hope that it doesn’t make those around me uncomfortable.  And, so I slowly begin to realize why naming this new baby boy growing miraculously inside me has become such a chore:  we had the perfect little boy name, one time long ago, and had to let it slip away, with our first born love and a piece of our hearts.  

Don’t get me wrong.  I am super excited and thrilled and ecstatic for this new baby boy to be entering into our world and into our hearts.  But these emotions don’t come neatly packaged in isolated bundles of joy.  There are ribbons of fear, confusion and frustration that are wrapped and tangled around my every thought about bringing another baby into this world, especially another baby boy.  Before we knew what we were having, people would ask if I had a preference, boy or girl, and I didn’t.  I didn’t care, a healthy baby is all that I’ve ever wished for.  I knew I would be thrilled to have another girl as a lifelong playmate and BFF for Abigail, and I already knew what to do with a baby girl, it’s been amazing.  But I also knew I would be thrilled to have a boy.  One boy and one girl, I might actually feel like our family was complete.  It would be fulfilling to have the opportunity to complete a dream that was so abruptly taken away from me.  A living son might just help me heal a little more this pain that lies inside me.  And these were my thoughts before we found out the gender of this new little miracle thriving within me.

And when we had the ultrasound and we were told it was a boy, my emotions were all over the place.  First and foremost, I was elated.  I felt in some way, my life had come full circle.  Here I was being given the opportunity to really “try again” and attempt to fill a space in our family that had been missing for years.  And that’s when it got complicated.  I knew that void could never be filled, that that baby could never be replaced, that I would never be able to right that wrong.  Wyatt would always be gone and the opportunity to look a baby in the face and murmur that name had been taken right along with it.  A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about revisiting:   "Right Where I Am" .  I wrote about how the miscarriage I had in February brought back a weighty package of past pain, gut wrenching memories and was the impetus for this here blog.  Well, finding out we are having a boy has pushed revisiting to another level completely.  When we found out we were having a girl when I was pregnant with Abigail, I remember feeling relieved.  I knew I would be able to separate her pregnancy from Wyatt’s so much easier, especially since they were so close together.  It gave me comfort knowing that this was indeed a different pregnancy, and therefore had a good chance of having a different outcome.  I desperately needed that bit of hope, that reassurance, that separation, I needed to know in my crazy, grief-stricken, post-traumatic-stress laden mind that there was at least a chance of having a different outcome and this gender difference was at the very least, a good place to start.  So, this time, knowing I am nurturing a baby boy again, well, it creates cracks in my semi-healed heart that are just big enough to let tiny sprouts of fear creep back in to the very back of my mind that often sneak up on me when I least expect it.  Because I promise you, I am over the moon that we are having a boy, truly I am.  It just scares the crap out of me at the same time.  I have been wanting to talk about this here on this blog for the past month, but I guess I’ve been a little scared to.  I’m terrified you won’t understand, because frankly the emotions are so complicated, I often don’t understand.  There have been exactly two people in my world that have either been brave enough or emotionally tuned-in enough to ask me how I really feel about having a boy.  And both of these people really seemed to get it, which made me feel like maybe I could talk about this here with you today.  Interestingly, one of these people was my OB (have I told you how amazing she is? I couldn’t imagine this journey without her)…she even put some of my thoughts into the words that I wasn’t yet able to… “you feel like you already have a son and you don’t want to replace him, right?”  Yep. Nail. Head. Ugh.  And all I could do was nod as I was simultaneously listening to his heartbeat, my heart swirling with competing emotions.  And then the other…a friend who lives far away, we haven’t seen each other for years, a friend I often felt like never got it, never could relate, didn’t understand what I had been through during all these years, however in a moment, I felt like she had always gotten it, maybe I hadn’t been listening.  Of course I hadn’t.  She realized almost quicker than I did that I was afraid that being pregnant with another boy would mean increased chances of losing another baby.  Mmm-hmm.  That’s it in a nutshell.  It’s an association thing and it’s a tough one to escape.  Trust me, I’m trying. 

So, once again, I hope I have made it clear that I really, truly am happy to be having this baby boy.  It is such a blessing and I feel so absolutely, completely fortunate to have this opportunity again.  But along with the joy, fear quickly follows, it’s almost as if one can’t completely thrive without the other.  But the reality is, I’m just scared.  In my heart of all hearts, I have convinced myself that what happened with Wyatt’s pregnancy was just a fluke and that I will never have to go through that hell again.  But there are days when the darkness tries to take over my thoughts and allows me to entertain the idea that maybe Abigail was the fluke and that hell could resurface any time it damn well chooses.  I push this darkness as far away from my heart as I possibly can, but the reality is, its evil memories are a part of me and they have tainted my mind forever.  As positive as I try to be, as uplifting as I want to be, as optimistic as I chose to be, I can never forget that horrible day when I lost my son, that beautiful baby boy with the most beautiful name….Wyatt Nicholas…and there are just times when I have to allow myself to acknowledge the grief that still exists, the pain that still lies within and the memories I can never escape, no matter how much joy is on the horizon….And trust me when I say I will embrace that joy, I will embrace it whole-heartedly, but I will also never be able to forget the journey my heart has been through to allow me the opportunity to experience the joy that lies before me.  

Shedding Armor

I know, I know, I have been a huge blog slacker lately.  It’s been over a month since I’ve written and it’s not necessarily because I haven’t needed to, it’s mostly because I haven’t had the time to give it all my blogging efforts.  I figured it was all or nothing and I guess I chose nothing.  Hope you survived the past month without me.  And if you are completely out of the loop (and not hooked up with me on Facebook), I guess I should at least try to recap the last month so that you know what the heck I was doing to cause me to neglect you for so long.  And there’s nothing like a visual aid or two to help deliver the data in a more efficient way, so here it goes:

Figure 1: Studying for Competency Exams

Over the last month especially, I have been cramming for my in-house competency exams for my doctoral program.  Passing these exams allows me to move onto the dissertation phase of my program and so I FINALLY committed to setting a date and took that darn exam…I’m still working on the take home portion and then have to defend orally, but the bulk of the studying has passed and for that I am grateful!

Figure 2: It’s a Boy!

We had our 20 week ultrasound the day following the completion of my in-house comps.  It was a crazy week, but most importantly, the ultrasound was unremarkable and for that I am grateful!  I even scheduled a massage and pedicure immediately following this appointment in anticipation that all would be well and I would need a relaxing way to celebrate my hectic week.  I was feeling especially grateful that I was confident enough to plan ahead and commit to doing this in advance.  This is HUGE progress!

Figure 3:  Our Anniversary

Rob and I celebrated our 8 year anniversary on the same Wednesday night (our real date was Tuesday) as the ultrasound and spa treatment.  Have I said it was a crazy week?  More importantly, it was a joyful week and we celebrated the completion of my in-house comps, the great ultrasound results and our wonderful marriage with a fantastic night out.  The restaurant was amazing at celebrating with us, and just think if they would have known the history behind how important this celebration really is to us!

Figure 4:  Time for a vacation

We knew we would need some rest and relaxation after this crazy week, so what did we do?  Packed up and left for Myrtle Beach the following Friday (yep, two days later!).  Whew!  It was well needed family time full of smiles, recreation and lots of love! 

So, I’m hoping you have somewhat of a clearer picture as to why I haven’t been writing so much.  Things have been a bit busy lately.  And, I will reiterate, it’s not because I haven’t wanted or needed to write.  I have had so many blog posts swimming around in my head that I have just had to push out until a later date, but they are still around, so consider yourself warned.  It’s also not because I have been laid back, happy go lucky and all nerves have calmed regarding this pregnancy.  I will say that I have relaxed a lot.  I am much less crazy, I am eating and drinking things that I wouldn’t have touched a month ago (you remember the post, right?), heck, I’m even having a nightly beer or two with Rob.  Okay, no I’m not, geez, don’t be so quick to judge.  I rented a Doppler a couple of months ago, so that I could check the heartbeat whenever I needed to, and I have probably only used it once in the last two weeks.  I have started to truly commit to having this baby and the planning stages have begun.  This isn’t to say that I have let go of fear, because fear will reside within me until I hold this baby in my arms.  This isn’t to say that I haven’t had my moments of freaking out, because I was in the doctor’s office just a few short weeks ago for an unscheduled “reassurance” visit that all was well.  This isn’t to say that don’t have dark moments sometimes when I am convinced that I am not fortunate enough for another miracle to bless us again, because those demons still exist in my forever tainted mind.  But I will say that I know it is the time to let go of as much fear as I can and live in the moment that I have right now.  And right now this baby is mine.  He is growing inside of me, he is a part of me and I have him near me right here, right now and right now, that’s all that matters.  I don’t always know what tomorrow brings, but today I hold peacefulness knowing that all is okay today.  I know I owe it to myself, my family and my baby to live in this moment, to hold hope for the future and plan for his arrival whole-heartedly.  It sometimes scares the crap out of me to completely let go and hope and dream that everything is going to be okay this time.  I still have history that doesn’t want to loosen its grip on me and memories that remind me how horribly wrong things can go even when all things point to things being nothing but right.  It’s scary to completely release the fear.  In some strange way, sometimes holding onto a bit of it makes me feel safer.  I’m not sure why this is.  I guess I feel if I let my guard down entirely, I’m setting myself up for a full-fledged attack.  But I know the reality is that this false armor does nothing to protect me and I am working on shedding it, one piece at a time, in my time.  I’m trying to find my security in other places besides fear, in things like positive thoughts, hope, dreams, family, friends and love.  I have been surrounded by the most amazing people supporting me in the most amazing ways and my heart could not be any fuller than it is in this moment.  I am so grateful for my moment, for this moment, for my gradual release, for those who fill my heart and for all the love that is within and around me today.  I am so very, very grateful for my today.  

My Friend

So, I have this friend.  She is a close friend.  She has been by my side through all of my everythings in the last 7 years.  I met her five months before my dad died, so she has seen me through numerous losses and heartbreaks and has proven her loyalty and friendship time and time again.  She has always been a good listener, inspired me with hope when I needed it most, been my cheerleader when I didn’t always know I needed it at all and equally important, celebrated and basked in all of my successes and overcoming of substantial hurdles.  What am I trying to say is that she is a friend that is always there for me.  Even when it is hard for her to be.  Which sometimes I know it is.  She has been through a lot too.   She has been battling infertility issues and attempting to have a child for the past four years.  Unsuccessfully.  And when I say battling, I don’t use that term lightly.  She is a fighter, that is for sure.

So, the other day we were chatting, catching up, checking in with each other.  I began mindlessly ranting about all of the things that I have been going through lately.  The last couple of weeks have been a little ragged.   I have been having chronic headaches and headaches scare the crap out of me.  I had exactly two symptoms, two possible indicators the last two weeks before I lost my infant son just four short hours after delivery that something horrible was about to come. Of course I didn’t know that at the time.   And these two symptoms were horrible headaches and a low grade fever.  And these two symptoms, combined with a pathology report indicating possible infection in my child and myself showing signs of infection just hours post c-section make my head swirl.  And anytime in my pregnancy with Abigail that I had a fever (thankfully never combined with headaches), I rushed myself to my family doctor and insisted on blood work to rule out infection.  Yes, a little nut-so, but the reality was that these visits served to hold the crazy at bay, so it kind of worked for me.  Therefore in the past weeks when I have had headaches (thankfully not with fevers), I have not only been completely uncomfortable physically, I have allowed a little crazy to creep back into my mind.  The what-ifs are somewhat anxiety-producing and so I have just needed to rant, to vent, to put it out there, so that my mind doesn’t consume this crazy all by itself and I can allow it to disperse itself a bit.  And as I was releasing these whackos to my friend, and as she sat there and listened whole-heartedly as she always does, I saw them.  I saw the tears well up in her eyes.  I saw the tears well up in her eyes and I instantly knew that I had been so consumed with myself and my fears and my needs that I had not once thought about how she was feeling, what she has been going through, where she is right now.  And I stopped, and we cried together for a moment, and she told me her recent story and then she said we had to change the subject, she had to go to a meeting.  Tell her something funny.  Oh, I had a funny story.  So I shared a recent story about Abigail and a Reds game and a tantrum.  And while I was telling this story, I once again realized my selfishness, I realized exactly what I was doing, I realized my extreme insensitivity to my friend’s struggles.  I was telling her a story about my child.  The one thing she has been dying to have.  The one thing she has always wanted.  The one thing I have that she doesn’t.  And that’s how I tried to cheer her up?  Ugh.  I instantly realized that in that very moment, I was now that nurse practitioner, I was now that fellow bridesmaid, I was now that well-intentioned friend that truly has no idea what her friend is feeling, has been through or what she is continuously fighting on a daily basis.  Damn me.  How could I be so insensitive?  How could I be so unaware?  How could I be so self-absorbed?

The reality is that there are times when I think I know what she is going through, when I think I understand her pain.  There are times when I think that although she has had difficulty conceiving, my pains have been worse, my struggles have been more intense.  I have lost a child.  I have held my child and watched him breathe his last breath in my arms.  I have an autopsy report of my first child in my file cabinet for God’s sake.  But here I am pregnant again.  So I also carry hope inside me.  And although I don’t yet know the outcome of this pregnancy, I am in a place that she has never been able to experience.  I hold a dream inside me that she is yearning for the opportunity to have.  I have pain, I have fear, I have crazy, but I also hold hope, dreams and a potential that she is not sure she will ever be able to experience.  And even though I have loved and have lost, she has never had the opportunity to love at all.  Even if it was for nine months and four short hours, it was still an opportunity, it was still an experience, it was still a moment of being a mother and having a child to call my own.  And of course, I have Abigail.  And I know how truly lucky I am to have her and to hold her and to love her every day.  I am so damn lucky.  And no matter what happens with this pregnancy, no matter what becomes of these headaches, or if I develop a fever or if infection or some other demon decides to settle itself inside me and take another one of my babies, I still have this amazing, incredible, soulfully brilliant child.  My friend does not have this to fall back on.  She doesn’t have the option to say she has experienced motherhood and if this is all she is meant to have than it is enough.  It is in this moment that I realize how fortunate I am, how blessed I have been and how my struggles have also been my joys.  Joys that some, including my friend, have never had the opportunity to experience.  Yet. 

If you know me very well, you know that I am a much better talker than I am a listener (I mean, I can TALK, if my post lengths are any indication…).  I adore my friendships and value them immensely, but listening has always been my biggest challenge.  I have always admired those who have the ability to listen well, because I think it is a skill that few have mastered.  I know only a handful people who do it well, but those people are the ones whose friendships I have always come to cherish the most, said friend included.  My dad was an incredible listener, commenting on every thought that came out of my head, hanging on every word that I uttered out of my mouth.  I always felt so special and important when I was in his presence.  I know he didn’t always have this skill and that he developed it sometime later in life, so I’m holding out hope that there is hope for me still.  I want to be a better listener, I want to be a better friend, and overall, I just want to be a better person to other people.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m horrible.  I try to be as kind as I can be, I love to do for others, and I feel compassion is a strong suit of mine.  But I also know that I can be very self-consumed (hello, I’m writing a blog about myself, how much more self-consumed does it get?!).  I can let myself believe that my struggles are the hardest, my times are the toughest, what I am going through is the roughest and of course, the reality is that none of those things are true.  Everyone suffers.  And many have much more suffering than I have every experienced.  My life is pretty darn good.  Of course I’m scared, I’m worried, I have ample amounts of anxiety for the months to come.  But don’t we all live that way to some extent?  One of my favorite songs by Ben Harper is “Better Way” where he sings,

Reality is sharp

It cuts at me like a knife

Everyone I know

Is in the fight of their life…

And as he is screaming these lyrics they resonate with me each and every time.  We all have our shit.  Different shit on different days, and some people most certainly seem to have more than their fair share.  But we all struggle, we all have challenges and we all need someone to listen to us, someone to hear us, someone to understand us.  At least, I know I do, and I know that’s why I blog.  No matter how self-serving it is.  But I’m so grateful for my friend, for all of my friends, who are there to listen, who are there to hold me up when times are tough, who are there to remind me of my dreams, my spirit and my fight that is sometimes hard to find.  I hope I am that friend to others too.  I hope I serve to inspire, console, and celebrate my friends in the ways that they have done for me, especially this friend that I speak of today.  I have talked to my friend since this moment, have shared these sentiments with her in person, apologized for my insensitivities and self-consumed rambling (and asked her permission to write this post).  And I hope that I have learned some valuable lessons in this heart-wrenching, tear-jerking experience.  I have already said that I would like to be a better listener and I would like to be a better friend.  But I also hope I have realized that even when people do or say something that seems insensitive to me, that their intentions are not always bad, they may just be a product of our society that promotes the concept of “me”, that encourages autonomy and individuality, that promotes self-indulgence.  I hope I can be more understanding and more forgiving.  I hope I can realize they may just be consumed with what they consider is the fight of their life, and I can most certainly relate to this kind of consumption.  And I hope we all just keep fighting for our dreams, and listening with our hearts, and learning from those we love…  And I will end with the remainder of the lyrics from the song mentioned above, the lyrics that really resonate with me, the part of the song that serves to hold me up just as my friends do on days when I need it the most….

Take your face out of your hands

And clear your eyes

You have a right to your dreams

And don’t be denied

I believe in a better way.

                                                                        -Ben Harper, Better Way

Longing for Normalcy

I am 15 weeks pregnant now and so far so good.  Except that I’m still feeling nauseous and I’m still feeling tired (rumor has it that stuff is supposed to go away at 12 weeks, never been the case for me).  I am also growing quite large and gaining weight rather rapidly.  I am busting out of my typical clothes, but my maternity clothes really don’t fit yet either.  My hormones are all over the place, I’m an emotional basket case, laughing or crying at any given moment.  I feel completely out of my own skin.  I do not feel like myself much of the time, physically or emotionally.  You see, I’ve never worn pregnancy well.  It’s always been a tough road for me, even before it was really tough.  When I was pregnant for the first time, when I was pregnant with Wyatt, I often cried to Rob and told him I couldn’t do this anymore (as if I had a choice), I bought books such as “Pregnancy Sucks”, and scoffed at women who proclaimed that they loved being pregnant.  Don’t get me wrong, I was excited that I was bringing a life into this world, but it was challenging to watch my body morph into a big blob, it was brutal being so sick and so tired, and it was stressful being the one that had to be vigilant, responsible and alcohol-free to boot.  Of course, at the time I had no idea how stressful it could really be and I had no idea what vigilance was really like.  I had no idea.  No idea at all.

After the tragic day of October 6, 2005, after I had carried that beautiful baby for 40 exhausting weeks and then watched him slip through my hands and through my heart in an instant, all of these thoughts, these complaints, these ridiculous rants of mine came back to haunt me in full force.  And they came back in the darkest of forms, in the most distorted shapes, as they came back and changed their images into nothing other than the purest of all guilts.  How could I have thought all of these horrible things, how could I have tainted my mind with these unappreciative thoughts, how could I have not realized how blessed I truly was to be harboring and holding a life inside me?  How could I have been so selfish?  How could I have been so insensitive?  How could I have been so ungrateful?  Maybe if I had displayed more gratitude, maybe if I had complained less, maybe if I had basked in this pregnancy instead of dwelled on the negatives, maybe, just maybe the outcome would have been different.  Of course, my rational mind knew differently, but my emotionally scathed and brutally scarred mind couldn’t help but consider this as a possible option. 

So after this loss, my scoffing at other women transformed.  Instead of turning my nose up at the women who glowed during their pregnancies, I found myself screaming my internal dialogue at those who complained.  At my sister-in-law’s wedding just three short months later, a fellow bridesmaid was pregnant.  And as if that wasn’t hard enough in and of itself, she complained to me about how horrible this wedding was going to be because she wasn’t going to be able to drink.  Whaaa?  Hold the phone.  First of all, insensitive bitch, you have to know what I’ve just been through.  And you have no idea how lucky you are, how blessed you are, how grateful you should be that you have been given this amazing opportunity.  You have no idea how fortunate you are that your baby is still alive and that he still has a chance of being yours to keep, and that you have been given the opportunity to nurture him, and dream of him, and hope for him.  You have no idea what you are complaining about and how ridiculous your complaints are to me.  Fool, you have no idea.  No idea at all.  And at the time, I thought I was completely justified in these thoughts, and I wanted to throw each and every one of them in her face, but I didn’t.  I just smiled and nodded, as I often did when confronted with someone else’s ignorance of the possible tragic outcomes of pregnancy.  I was the Queen of “You have no idea” and most certainly uttered this under my breath to most pregnant women who crossed my path.  It hurt to see someone else’s dreams being realized when mine were crushed, and I longed to be back in their shoes, to be able to take hold of gratitude and hold onto it as tight as I could, in hopes that this clinging would be the saving grace that I longed for it to be. 

And when I was pregnant with Abigail, just six months later, I’m certain I embraced this gratitude and held it like hope that my baby would be safe this time.  But the reality is, my memories of this pregnancy are sometimes cloudy, especially when I try to remember my emotions.  It was wrought with fear, anxiety, and continued grief for my son.  I also know there was hope, excitement, and positive thoughts for a happy ending this time.  But the details are blurred by the swirling and often conflicted emotions.  What I do remember quite vividly, however, is how I felt after Abigail was born.  When I was pregnant with her, I remember many people trying to tell me how difficult those first couple weeks or even months would be.  And I remember my internal dialogue once again scoffing at their ignorance:  You have no idea about difficult.  You don’t know challenging.  I have just clawed my way out of hell and you are going to tell me what is hard?  Ha, you have no idea.  No idea at all.  So I was convinced that after everything that I had just been through, this parenting thing was going to be a breeze.  And I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Holy hell, was I wrong.  But the real struggle wasn’t that I was excessively challenged as a new mom, no, the real challenge was that I felt like I didn’t have the right to complain about how tired, exhausted, frustrated or incompetent I felt.  I had lost a baby, he was no longer here, but I was given the gift of life this time and I thought the only thing I was allowed to feel was gratitude. 

So, this time, I feared your inner dialogue.  I feared whining and complaining on my part would conjure up judgment and misunderstanding on your part.  And I find myself feeling a similar emotion today.  I want desperately to tell you how miserable I am still feeling and how tired I am of chronic exhaustion.  I want to let you know that I can’t stand my roller coaster of emotions, my often sleepless nights, and the horrifying varicose veins that are beginning to pop up on my legs.  I want to be able to tell you how I almost cried when I packed away my skinny jeans and pulled out the gigantic elastic-waisted preggy pants that I will soon fit into.  But I am afraid to tell you these things.  I am afraid of the reactions and thoughts that will pop into your head.  I’m afraid you will label me ungrateful, judge me unworthy, scoff at my unappreciative nature.  And maybe it’s not really you I am truly afraid of, maybe it’s not really your internal dialogue that brings about my fear, maybe you are not my worst enemy.  Maybe you would embrace my complaining, understand my overly-emotional state of being, maybe you might even convince me that all of this whining is very normal.  Oh, how I long to be normal.  How I wish that I could go through this pregnancy with the ignorance and naivety that so many women get to experience.  I wish I could be okay with myself sometimes being irritated with the symptoms of pregnancy, with the challenges that pregnancy presents without the guilt quickly following, without feeling the need to swiftly qualify my annoyances with gratitude.  Because I am grateful.  I am extremely grateful that I have been given this opportunity once again, that I have been given this life to nurture and hold within me.  My appreciation far exceeds my need to complain on any given day.  But sometimes I wish I would just let myself whine without the fear of your judgments, without the fear of my guilt, without the pains of my past coming back to haunt me again and again.  Sometimes I wish I would let myself feel normal.  Oh, how I wish my innermost and darkest thoughts wouldn’t morph into my worst enemy.  I do not like being my worst enemy.  There must be a way that I can be gratefully irritated or irritatedly grateful without completely beating myself up.  I just haven’t quite figured out how to do that.  Yet.  But I have about 5 ½ months left to try to figure that out.  And then years of parenting after that…. I feel like I have just recently gotten there with Abigail, so there is hope for me still, there is hope on the horizon for me to feel like a normal mom, like a typical parent, as crazy and complaint-ridden as the rest of you, with this baby-to-be just yet.  There is always hope, and hope has always been my friend, and hope is most certainly nothing to complain about, so for now I will just hold onto that hope.  Hoping for normalcy, hoping for peace and hoping to be easier on myself in the days to come. 

Learning to Commit Again

We had a 12 week appointment last week.  My nerves had settled a lot since my 10 week appointment.  Hearing the heartbeat at that time was very reassuring.  This appointment, however, was going to get me past that milestone.  Past the point of the last pregnancy when I went in and heard a whole lot of nothing and saw too little of something.  This upcoming appointment was also going to be unchartered territory for me.  We were doing genetic screening for the first time.  I was a complete basket case the night before.  I guess just a huge case of the fear of the unknown.  They had already taken blood a couple of weeks prior and the next day they were going to do an ultrasound that consisted of some measurements that would all be combined with my age to give me a “new” statistic on my risks.  My current risk for Down Syndrome (primarily what the test is for), due to my “advanced maternal age” (aka very old lady trying to have a baby), is 1 in 66.  Sounds alarming, huh?  So alarming that I must always flip this statistic around in my head like this:  this risk is just 1 ½ percent.  So the reality is that there is a 98.5% chance that I will NOT have a baby with Down Syndrome and I’m not entirely sure where the other syndromes and their numbers come into play.  I remind myself that I would play the lottery every single time with these odds.  But I don’t really want this to be a post about my age (because frankly I don’t have the courage to go there yet), and I don’t want this to be a post about genetic abnormalities (because my feelings and thoughts on this issue are complicated and not so straightforward).  So… to be completely anti-climactic and to get directly to the point, the appointment and the testing came back as good as I could have expected.  We now have beautiful ultrasound pictures of a tiny person, heard and saw a fabulous heartbeat, saw a measurement of 2 ½ inches (right on target) and was told that my stats for DS had changed to 1 in 385.  Equivalent to a 32 year old.  Okay, sure, whatever.  I’ve always been pretty bad at math, but I did just complete a three course series in statistics and it is completely bewildering to me how in the heck they can come up with these numbers.  It seems a little like wizardry to me.  Add a little blood test here, a neck fat calculation there, throw in length for good measure, don’t forget the old lady factor, finally a pinch of rat tail and….. poof!  Somehow you get a statistic like 1 in 385 and a new maternal age in a matter of minutes.  I’m often a skeptic, but my ignorance combined with my skepticism really makes me question the science behind this one.  But if you want to start thinking of me as a 32 year old, you have my permission.  I’m all for that.  The new statistic brings some sense of comfort too, of course.  But just when they have my attention, just when you think this appointment has been a good thing, a curve ball has to come….they always have to qualify any result they give you:  “This does not guarantee that you will have a healthy baby at birth”.  Seriously?  Shut. Up. Are you really going to go there with ME?   I already know there are no guarantees at birth.  I have already lived no guarantees at birth.  I just told you my “at birth” story as you nonchalantly asked me if this was my first pregnancy, asked me to relive my pregnancy history before doing your homework and looking at my chart first.  I know about statistics and their lack of guarantees so please don’t qualify to me.  Please just stop at “things look great right now”.  Please just STOP.  But I can’t outwardly project my inner dialogue, it isn’t appropriate, it wouldn’t be acceptable.  This well intentioned nurse practitioner can say or do something that I consider insensitive, but me, I have to just sit, nod my head and only tell you how I really felt.  I often leave situations feeling like I have to be the bigger person or the stronger person when the reality is I often feel like the weakest and least powerful person of all.  It’s funny how the norms of our culture work.  Funny how those of us that have suffered feel responsibility (or obligation) in making those less pained feel more comfortable.  Funny…..or irritating.  Choose your adjective, I’ve picked mine long ago.

But alas, this appointment and these results did serve to do what it was set up to do:  calm my nerves, settle my anxiety and have me trying to reconsider my commitment issues.  And this post is all over the place, which is appropriate, I guess, because my mind is all over the place too.  I’m trying to figure out where to go from here.  We are 13 weeks, we have past our most recent doomsday milestone, we have seen factors indicating only good things, I should be ready to display some signs of committing, but something is holding me back.  Oh, yeah, well there’s always that.  There’s one milestone yet to hit, but 40 weeks is pretty far away.  If I don’t commit before then, it’s going to be quite a rocky ride.  I will need to make some choices here soon.  And I remember crossing this bridge with Abigail’s pregnancy.  I remember all too clearly that I had to make choices, choices that were scary and challenging to say the least.  I had to choose to commit.  And I had to commit as fully as I knew how.  I had to convince myself that this was going to happen no matter what.  I had to fool myself into believing that I had paid my dues and the world was just and fair and this baby would be mine to keep.  I had to lie to myself so that I would hold onto the notion that statistics were now in my favor and my dreams would most certainly be realized this time.  And no matter how naïve this all may seem to me now, somehow it worked.  Somehow it was exactly what I needed to do to get through her pregnancy without going completely insane.  I committed whole-heartedly.  We never took down Wyatt’s nursery.  We never took a single thing back to a store.  I held on tight to these items as if they were my dreams and turned them into hope for another baby to be able to enter our hearts.  Although I had items that were sacred, that were only supposed to be his, I also knew he wouldn’t mind sharing certain things with his little sister.  The sister I hoped he wouldn’t meet for a long time.  A very, very long time.  Holding onto these items and not letting them go was my first step towards committing.  I was committed to securing this dream of bringing a baby to this home, to this nursery, to these things and I was determined to have this dream realized.  When we found out we were having a girl this time, I found myself committing further.  I bought little pink clothes and little pink toys that served as big pink hope that this baby would truly be mine.  I committed again by repainting the nursery.  This nursery had been designed for a little boy to sleep here, but he didn’t even get the chance to spend one night.  Although it was hard to let go of the various shades of blue, I wanted this baby to know that this room was now hers, she shouldn’t have to sleep in the shadows of my grief.  But I still wanted her to know she had a brother, and I wanted us to never forget our first born, so I left one blue square in memory of our Wyatt Nicholas.  It’s still there.  I committed with her pregnancy over and over again.  I was terrified, don’t get me wrong, but I felt she deserved all of the commitment that I could muster.  I didn’t want to look back and realize that I didn’t do everything I could have done to welcome her into our world.  I didn’t want to have any regrets.  Some people believe that doing all of these things might serve to “jinx” the pregnancy somehow, but I think I felt the opposite.  And I also knew that fully committing wouldn’t change anything.  Doing these things or not doing these things would ultimately not change how I felt if for some reason we had a reoccurring fate.  If something horrible happened again I knew that trying to protect myself, that trying to guard my heart, that trying to hide from celebrating this life would not make the pain any more bearable.  It would hurt the same no matter what.  It would hurt like hell whether I sat in a hole for forty weeks pretending nothing was growing inside me and it would hurt like hell if I celebrated whole-heartedly this life that I was carrying within me.  If something horrible happened again, it would hurt like hell no matter what.  And it was this last realization that carried me through her entire pregnancy.  I knew she deserved to be celebrated with everything I could conjure up within me.  And although most days I was scared, and some days I hurt, and often I wept, I basked in the opportunity I was given to carry her with me for each one of those miraculous days. 

So I sit at this crossroads again.  Unfortunately, in some ways, I feel like I have a larger hurdle to overcome.  I have had a lot more time to process everything that has happened.  I have been even more jaded by a subsequent loss that served to make me realize even further that life is not fair and that there are no guarantees.  Even if you’ve been through hell, bad things can still come your way.  The world does not owe me anything.  It’s a very humbling realization.  But each and every day, I find myself committing more.  I have pulled out some maternity clothes, I have been telling others beside my blog followers that we are pregnant, and I have stuck our ultrasound pictures on the fridge.  We even made a huge step in the commitment direction and told Abigail last week.  This was a hard one for me.  I find myself one step away from qualify it to her, you know, “there’s no guarantee…”, but of course, I don’t.  I just hope I don’t have to have another conversation with her about babies and death.  These conversations haunt me often, her frequent questions fatigue my heart.  My body is definitely committing and there’s nothing I can do to fight that. I have a swelling belly, raging hormones, and I could sleep standing up.  This baby is also beginning to commit as well.  I am pretty certain I am already feeling movement inside me, and I’ll say, it’s the most amazing thing ever.  But as far as commitment goes, I’m not fully there yet, although I’m determined to be.  I truly feel like it’s the only way.  I owe this child my joy.  I owe this child my entire heart, not just part of it. I want to give him or her everything I’ve got, regardless of the outcome.  I want to have no regrets, it’s the only way to fully live.  So, I am on my way, I am preparing myself for this journey, I am in the process of teaching myself how to commit one more time.  I owe it to myself, I owe it to my family and most of all, I owe it to this tiny life growing inside me. 

A Brand New Bundle of Someone Else's Joy

I have been waiting for this day.  Trying to prepare myself for my reaction.  I could not even begin to speculate what my response was going to be.  I have been bombarded with a variety of emotions regarding this pregnancy and this impending due date.  Given the circumstances and situations, some of which I can talk about and some of which I cannot, my emotions have swung like a pendulum from one extreme to the other regarding my brother and his wife’s pregnancy.  We found out we were pregnant within six weeks of each other and I don’t know about him, but I was pretty darn excited that we would be having children so close together.  I was ecstatic that we were going to be able to share a journey together and that our kids would be able to grow up so close in age to each other.  When I sent out “the email” telling our extended family that we were expecting, I remember including a sentiment regarding my excitement over this shared time frame, this creating of cousins that were bound to be the best of friends.  My brother and I haven’t always been close.  We fought like cats and dogs growing up, I mean really, multiple broken hockey sticks through multiple bedroom doors of mine doesn’t say much for sibling affection.  But as we grew older, survived the divorce of our parents together, lived in the same town in our adult years, and began playing on the same soccer team (we’re convinced this last one brought us together the most) we really began to form a friendship, a sibling bond and a connection that we had never had before.  And I will never forget that my brother was here instantly when we lost our son, cried almost as much as I did at times it seemed, asked for pictures of his nephew when everything was said and done, and seemed to really get and understand how significant this loss was for me.  I will never forget how much he cared during a time when I needed him the most. 

So when we found out that we would no longer be sharing a journey, that my journey was abruptly stopped at 12 weeks while his continued, needless to say, things were challenging for us both.  Here they were with all of their joy and excitement of the pregnancy of their first child being overshadowed by the loss of mine.  Here we were with the loss of the pregnancy of our third baby being overshadowed by the joy and excitement of theirs.  It was complicated, confusing and frustrating to say the least.  At the end of the day, we both did our best to navigate through this situation and ultimately had to do what was best for each of us individually, on our own, within our respective worlds, taking care of the ones that were by our sides the most and trying as hard as we could to reach out and be understanding of each other. But the reality was I had never been in his shoes before.  I had never been pregnant at the same time that someone so close to me had experienced a loss, a loss with excessive baggage to boot.  And the reality was he had never been in my shoes before.  He had never experienced a pregnancy loss, let alone a loss at the same time that someone close to him was moving on with their pregnancy within the same timeframe.  I didn’t understand his world and he didn’t understand mine.  And I truly believe that both of us would have responded completely different to each other’s events if they wouldn’t have occurred so simultaneously.  But this wasn’t our reality, our reality was, if I must reiterate:  complicated, confusing and frustrating, to say the least.

And I wrote about this early on, how challenging this was, in the post Little Bundles of Someone Else’s Joy.  I didn’t want to feel resentment, jealousy, anger or pain in this situation.  This is my baby brother, we are close, I was so excited when they told us they were expecting, I could barely contain myself.  I didn’t want to experience any other emotion besides happy, but unfortunately these alternative emotions came no matter how much I tried to push them away.  The bottom line was it hurt.  Although I was still happy and excited for my brother, I was still crushed and broken hearted for myself.  And these emotions always seemed to catch up to me the quickest, happy and excited were always a distant second.  But I knew I had to make choices, I had to fight against these darker emotions, because I was not going to be left behind grieving a loss when everyone else was going to be celebrating a life.  I knew I didn’t want to be angry or bitter or broken any longer.  So I dove in from a distance and attempted to be as engaged as I could given the situation.  Most days I succeeded, although I was most certainly far from perfect.  I sent notes, made phone calls, sent a package.  I participated in the planning for the baby shower and sat front and center to write down all the baby gifts that they received.  I decided that being fully engaged would be less painful than sitting on the sidelines.  I knew that when I looked back, I would always regret not giving it my all but would never regret holding onto my grief at the expense of my brother’s joy.  And I’m not going to tell you it was easy, because it wasn’t.  There were times when my excitement was feigned, times when I had to bite my tongue and even times when I had to lie to hide my pain so my brother could experience some joy.  I was honest with myself on how challenging this newly defined shared journey was to me, I just didn’t have to be so honest with him.  His happiness was important to me, this was going to be one of the biggest moments of his life and he deserved every minute of it.  He deserved his fairy tale, his happy ending, if there was anyone in the world who I would want to have it all, I would want it to be him, I would want it to be him more than anyone. 

So when his fairy tale arrived and I received that phone call, I hesitated.  Rob answered the phone and I knew instantly who it was and what it was.  I took a deep breath, I still wasn’t sure how I was going to respond on the inside, although I had rehearsed many times how I would respond on the outside.  I wanted more than anything in the world to be okay with this, to have happy be the front runner of my emotions, to experience true excitement without the interference of pain, I was just pretty sure this was not possible.  I knew this phone call would be a reminder that I would have, should have been having a baby just six short weeks later.  That my belly should be a lot bigger than it is right now.  That I should be much more uncomfortable, sleeping more restlessly, counting down the weeks now until the cousins could finally meet each other.  I braced myself, grabbed the phone and was immediately told that I had a brand new niece.  Her name was Mackensie Marie and she was 6 pounds, 15 ounces and 20 and some odd inches long.  And I couldn’t speak.  I was silent.  I tried to get some words out but I struggled over the tears.  Oh, the tears flowed big and they flowed hard.  These tears caught me way off guard.  I knew I would have a reaction, but I had no idea it would be so intense and so strong.  I really wasn’t prepared to be completely and utterly overwhelmed with so much uninhibited joy.  I was choked up with these tears that only possessed joy and elation, tears that didn’t contain a drop of pain or hurt, tears that soothed my soul in ways that no other tear that has left me in the past five months could have.  And I cannot even begin to tell you how grateful I am for this joy.  I am so very grateful and so very thankful to have experienced this joy and to experience nothing but this joy in this moment.  It makes me feel less broken after all.  It makes me feel like all has not been lost.  It makes me feel that not everything has been in vain.  And all I wanted to do from that moment was hold her in my arms and when I did, the joy exceeded my expectations once again.  And although this wasn’t my fairy tale, and although my experiences have been far from fairy tales, in that moment, I very much felt like maybe I could believe in fairy tales once more after all.  I needed this moment, I needed this joy, I needed to find hope again in someone else’s experience, and I’m so grateful that out of all of the experiences that are out there, this is the one that chose to fill my heart back up again.  I love you Deron, Shannon and Mackensie and I’m so grateful your joy has entered my world and entered my heart.