Remembering Our Losses

October 15th is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I have long followed various blogs of people who have lost pregnancies as well as infants, and of course some of our closest friends had a daughter who was stillborn last year. However, aside from a moment or two of pause that I've given to the memory of those babies, October 15th has always been just another day to me. Maybe that's because I wasn't as sensitive to loss as I should have been. Maybe it's because it just wasn't that personal to me. Either way, that has changed. October 15th is very personal to me now. 

After losing B3 at the beginning of this year, I began attending a support group called MEND (Mommies Enduring Neonatal Death). My attendance has actually been pretty sporadic as it's very hard for me to convince myself to go. The meetings are heavy, and I often have trouble sleeping the night of the meeting. It's hard to confront my own feelings of loss, but it's also intense to watch others grieve and weep over their lost babies. 

However, the meetings have also been very healing for me in many ways. It's such a blessing to have a place to go and talk about my grief and my feelings and have everyone in the room understand exactly what I'm talking about because they too have traveled this road of loss. It's also been very valuable for me to see others in different stages of their journey. My deep grief has been validated, but I've also been able to see those who are 2 or 3 years "out" and are functioning in a new normal. They can talk about their loss, see the blessings in their journey, and they are okay. Forever changed, yes. But okay. I needed that especially in the early days after my losses.

As a side-note: Had you told me a year ago that I would be attending a support group, I'm pretty sure I would have never believed it. I've never thought of myself as a support group type person (whatever that means), and I don't mean that in an arrogant or haughty way - I just never saw myself in this place. It's something no one signs up for, ya know?

So anyway (I totally rambled on for a bit there), MEND hosted a balloon release to honor lost babies on October 15th. Chris participated in this event with me, and - though it was difficult - we're both glad that we went. 

We each released a balloon for each of our lost babies.

All of the balloons floating away were really beautiful.

We each wrote on our balloon released for B3. We just had such a connection with that baby. We had seen him/her 3 times on an ultrasound. We had spent weeks planning for him/her in our life. We had talked about names. Our second loss was very different as we hadn't seen that baby or bonded with it in the same way, so we didn't write on the balloons released for him/her. But, we still wanted to remember and honor that life. 

It felt really good to be able to do something in honor of those babies. Grieving someone who you never got the chance to really know is hard. Sometimes, I feel foolish for being so sad, but I'm truly thankful for the blessing of groups like MEND where I can go and share with others experiencing the same things.

I know I've been talking about grief on here a lot lately, but there's so much that we're still trying to work through, including how to move forward from where we are now. Our trials with infertility and loss has not dampened our dream of having a houseful of babies. Both Chris and myself still wish to have more children one day, but we're taking time to really pray about how to pursue that desire. Right now, we're thinking about starting fertility treatments again sometime during the early part of 2014, but we're not for sure yet. We are still recovering from the nearly $10,000 spent this year for the fertility treatments that helped bring us B3 and July Baby and the testing that I had to have done in May (which we thought was mostly covered by insurance only to be hit with a $1800 bill in late September).

With that said, we have received some pretty negative feedback regarding us continuing to grow our family. We've heard things like "Can't you just be happy with what you have?" and "You have a girl and a boy already" and "Don't be greedy". Though I don't feel like I owe anyone an explanation regarding this issue, I do want to clarify a few things.

One thing is that we are so happy with our two blessings. We know how blessed we are to have them. In the six years we spent trying to have a baby, we had the very real conversation (several times) about the possibility that we may never have children (biological or otherwise), so we THANK and PRAISE GOD every day for how He has blessed us. If we were not to be blessed with additional children, we would still live a content, abundant, joy filled life.

That fact does not, however, take away our heart's desire for more babies. For me, that desire has been especially strong over the past few months. I really, truly thought that I would be pregnant again at this point in the year, so the fact that I'm not (and may never be again . . . I don't take the fact that I can even achieve pregnancy again for granted) is a grief process of its own. There have been several times recently that I have heard a pregnancy announcement (or come across it on my FB feed) and my heart has physically clenched. That physical reaction to an emotional wound is not unfamiliar to me (it happened often during those years of trying for a baby before having one), but it stills stings. That's not to say that I'm not happy for those friends - or that I wish they were on this same road that I am - I'm just sad for me. They are two emotions that I feel simultaneously - the happiness for others and sadness for myself. I'm sad that my dream has had to change and may have to change even more. Realizing how blessed we are does not change our dream. Maybe you don't understand that, and that's okay. I just want everyone to know that we give God the glory for our two beautiful blessings, knowing that He is the true giver of life, while we look to Him for wisdom regarding how to pursue {or rewrite} our dream.

Also, just because we were blessed with a girl and a boy does not automatically make our family complete. I posted about this once before here. I feel the same now as I did then.

Okay, that all just kind of came tumbling out. Ooops :-). As always, thanks for all your support.

Hello, December

And hello, blog-world! It's been a while, yes?

LIFE has been happening at warp-speed, and I'm just really struggling with where blogging fits into it all. However, it puts joy in my heart to have these precious moments documented, so I'm back at it for now. I hope you're still reading :-).


We've had a lot happen since my last post . . . some big things, some not-so-big things . . . but all events that blend together making this one heavy, grief-filled, joyous year. I know that sounds contradictory, so trust me when I say that it is often how this year has felt. I never knew that I could grieve so deeply but still have joy in the everyday. I never knew that grief and joy were so closely intertwined and fused together. I have learned so many lessons this year.

Lest I leave you hanging too much, I'll briefly share some of the biggies that have taken place since the beginning of October (you can look forward to full posts on most of these things later). On October 15th, The Hubs and I participated in a balloon release honoring our lost babies. It was heavy, and I still have trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that I've had TWO miscarriages this year. Then, just two days later, my Pappy (maternal grandfather) passed away. I think I'll always remember 2013 as a year of grief for me.

However, while that was going on, I was taking my kiddos to the pumpkin patch and roasting pumpkin seeds and carving jack-o-lanterns and making caramel apples and taking a hayride and dressing up for Halloween and just enjoying every moment. And, my friend Tia had a beautiful baby girl at the end of October who we have been spoiling and loving on every chance we get.

November brought with it many days spent outside in God's beautiful creation, visits with old friends, my birthday, and of course Thanksgiving. The blessing have been poured upon us!

I'll leave you for now with a photo taken on Thanksgiving Day. Chris was sick on Thanksgiving and not able to travel with us so that's why he's not in the picture. I'm going to try to do better at blogging this month, so hopefully you'll be hearing from me soon!

Lately

Hi, Everyone! We had a great weekend . . . I hope ya'll did, too. We spent our weekend partying it up for Brianna and Brenson's birthdays! Since they are both February babies (born on the 10th and 18th), I decided to do a joint birthday party for them this year. While the weekend of the 16th would have been ideal (since it's right between their birthdays), I thought I needed a little more time to get everything together after our Disney trip. This past weekend worked out great!

I'll for sure do an entire blog on the party, but for now here are a few of my favorite photos from the day.

The party kids (minus one who hadn't gotten here yet):

Brianna bashing the pinata:

Without a doubt, one of my favorite photos from the day! It's so so bad of me, but HILARIOUS of Chris! He was actually only hit twice during the pinata bashing, which isn't too bad considering there were a dozen kids hitting at the thing :-).

I asked my sister to man the camera for me (so I wouldn't have to worry about it), and she did a GREAT job! I think she just found herself a permanent job at my parties :-). Just look at this photo of our birthday boy!

I love our little family and celebrating our February babies! It was such a good day!

In other happenings, we've had snow twice in the past two weeks. That's pretty unusual for our little part of the world. I LOVE snow, so I'm thrilled that we've had a bit. Of course, I took the kids out to play in it . . . they both love it, too!

Brenson loved the snow so much that he cried and cried when we came inside. I was afraid that his little hands were getting too cold, so we warmed up for a few hours then went back out!

When we went out the second time, Brianna and I built a snowperson and named her Delilah. It was perfect snowman building snow!

Brenson hated Delilah for some reason? We discovered at Disney World that he loved the big characters, but if something was his size, he acted really afraid. I'm not sure what that's about, but he for sure was not thrilled to be standing by Delilah for a photo!

All the snow melted off very quickly (last week and today), but we sure enjoyed it while it was here!

Brianna was scheduled for her three year well check today, but I postponed it to next week due to the weather. I'm having a little bit of trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that I'm taking her for her three year well check. I officially have a one year old and a three year old! The baby stage goes waaaaay too fast.

Brenson is speaking more and more each day. His latest "thing" is saying, "I did it!" He must say this fifty times a day, and it's so cute! But really, a whole sentence? He's supposed to be my baby :-(.

Last week, I went to my first MEND (Mommies Enduring Neonatal Death) meeting. My friend invited me, and although I didn't really want to go, I did. And I'm glad I did. And I'll probably go back. I can't believe that I belong in a group like MEND now. It's interesting how life takes paths sometimes that you would never expect. There will be more posts to come on this whole grief process. Also not what I expected.

I did a lot of crafting for the birthday party, and am so thrilled with how things turned out. Here is a {pinterest inspired} wreath I made:

Love it!

I know this post is all over the place. That is totally my brain lately, ha!