Our Family Christmas 2013

Here we are, with our two girls.  Another Holiday season, how I wish she was here in my arms and not just her bear...

Another month goes by and she is still gone

I have thought about posting so many times.  I have had so many ideas for posts, things I wanted to share, to process about my grief, but life is so hectic and tiring.

I have these moments when my grief wells up and I am right there again thick in my loss.  They come at the strangest moments.  I was applying for new health insurance.  We are one of the 5% of families that could not keep their present health insurance because of the ACA.  It has been stressful to find a new policy that we could afford and could keep our current doctors, but I found one.  The application was so easy, but I only could list one of my babies.  Grace could not be included, she does not need health insurance.  To the world we are a family of three, not four.  I cried and cried while entering that information.

My Molly Bear came this week.  We were on the way to an infant CPR class and it was in a big box on the front porch.  It was so beautiful and heavy.  I forgot what 4.5 lbs feels like in your arms.  I snuggled it close to me and cried.  I so wished that it was Grace alive and warm and in my arms.  We used a new sitter this week for Rosabella.  Mark needed to show her how to change a cloth diaper, and all he could think of to use was the new Molly Bear.  He felt bad about it, but I loved that Grace got to act as a big sister to Rosabella.

We have started a bedtime routine with Rosabella and it includes a bath every night.  We have started by using products that were given to Rosabella, but now that we are running out of those I have started to those that Mark bought for Grace.  There was a sale on baby bath when I was pregnant and he had no idea how much a baby would use so he bought 12 bottles of Lavender and 2 of baby shampoo and 2 bottles of baby lotion.  They were all lined up under the sink in the bathroom, waiting.  My Mom found them when looking for shampoo when she was at my house while we were in the hospital having Grace.  It made her cry since we were so ready, over ready for this little baby and she was not coming home with us.  Now I am using them and I am so worried that I should save them since they are Grace's and she doesn't have that many things.  But how silly to have a dozen baby bath products collecting dust under the sink, it won't bring her back.  Nothing will.

My second holiday season without her looms, it does seem easier than last year, but I still don't want to be shopping for a second memorial ornament for the tree, I want a toddler running around getting into everything and being jealous of her baby sister.

I know that this post is disjointed, but that is how I feel lately.  Too much to do, not enough time, but I wanted to share Grace and my grief again.  I needed to.  I hope that I don't take another month to post again.  Although even when I am not writing here she is in my heart and my thoughts always.

I'll be you Mother forever

It has been a hard few days, maybe something about it being Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month, I have been crying a lot and just missing Grace so badly.  She feels far way and right here all at the same time.  My DH said that Grace did not like him doing something and I thought he misspoke and meant Rosabella, but he said "No Grace does not like this, she holds me to a higher standard."  I bought a frame at a discount store for a picture of Rosabella and then felt so bad because I did not buy one for Grace.  I went back later to look for one for her, but they did not have any more.  I wish that I had gotten to be the mother to Grace than I am for Rosabella.  I wish that I did not lose all those little moments.  I wrote this last week when the missing her and the grieving her just overwhelmed me.

I'll be your Mother forever
Not just for the day I held you and kissed you and wished that you could stay

I cannot rock you to sleep, or kiss away your tears
You sleep soundlessly without me.
And there is no pain or sadness to cause tears where you are.

My heart aches for all that we lost
The million gentle moments we should have shared
The ones stolen from us, by that cruel twist

But the most important thing could not be taken...
Our love for each other.

Know this baby, know this deep and true
I'll be your Mother forever

Luminous Grace

You have felt so far away recently.  The time with your sister is blurring the edges of my memories of you.  I need to re-connect with you.  I need to honor you.  I love you so much, my heart expands with the emotion with every beat.  I will try harder.  I will do better.

Thank You Carly Marie for the beautiful image.

Baby Loss all around

I have been meaning to write this post for sometime, but going back to work full time, and trying to be a fully present mama to Rosabella and mourn my beautiful Grace just exhausts me.  I have heard so many stories of baby loss in the last few weeks.  Did you know that Keanu Reeves lost a baby girl 2 years ago with his then girlfriend?  I had no idea.  I heard about a graduate school class mate of a co-worker whose baby died 23 hours after he was born.  Another woman had a miscarriage from an ectopic pregnancy, who then had her fallopian tube burst and during emergency surgery to remove her tube the surgeon nicked her uterine artery and could not stop the bleeding.  She was in a coma for days before going back to surgery and then had severe blood clots in her legs and is now on dialysis since her kidneys are failing.  Now people tell me these stories since I am the woman who lost a baby and I know what to say or do to help.  Oddly I do know what to say and what to do.  I am experienced and wise in the ways of living through the nightmare of losing your child.  I am knowing of infertility.  I inhabit that uncomfortable space of grief, since I have carried my own since Feb 10, 2012 the day my daughter died.

I had a dream last night that Rosabella had died, she was in her car seat at work and she was gone and a co-worker drove me home without her and I told him that we needed to go back because I could not sleep without her.  I woke in a cold sweat with my very living breathing baby at my side.  One of my babies is safe.

I ordered another picture for Grace from the Seashore of Remembrance.   I needed to connect with her again.  I wish that I could do more, I just don't know what more is.

The Nursery

I was just laying on the floor of the nursery, waiting for Rosabella to be deeply asleep enough that I could leave.  I was crying, quietly so that I would not wake the baby up, thinking about the first time I was laying on the floor of that room.  It was in the first few days I was home from the hospital, the room was unfinished, no crib, no changing table, and no baby.  Grace was gone and the room looked as if she was never here.  I just screamed and sobbed and shook and hyperventilated on that floor.  So mad at a world that would take my precious miracle baby away, so devastated that I was still here with an empty womb and milk filling my breasts.  Now this room has a baby, and all the accessories and clothes that come with a living child, but even with all that it is empty, because there is another baby who should have napped in there.  My dear Grace, my missing baby, I love you so.

My First Week Back at Work

I survived my first week away from Rosabella.  Holding her and nursing her and being her Mom has been like a balm on my wounded heart.  My heart that misses Grace every day.  Going back to work this week and being away has been so hard.  After Grace died going back to work helped, it gave me a few hours of the day to be distracted from my grief, a routine to keep my depression manageable.  I had a group of co-workers that supported me and it was a good environment.  Now just a little over a year later only 2 employees are still there from when I was pregnant with Grace.  Most of them don't know about her.  My clients ask about my new daughter and some know that I have another daughter, but most don't know that she is dead.  "Two girls only 15 months apart!  You've got your hands full."  I smile and say "yes I do."  What can you say?  I love that there are people out there for whom Grace is alive and I don't want her to die for them too...  It also makes me so sad because it brings back in that moment that she should be here, walking and talking and making life complicated with her baby sister.  The goneness of her resonates.  I am lucky to have her sister, I know this, but God would I love that complicated life that some people think that I have.