A Merry Christmas

There are a lot of reasons that I knew this Christmas would be rough. In a way it was. Up until Christmas Eve I was on the verge of tears for about a week straight because, as busy as I tried to stay, I couldn't keep thoughts of what it would have been like out of my ,ind. I kept thinking about my big belly and being totally miserable about to pop. I wonder what it would feel like to know that I would be giving birth to my sweet son in just a few short weeks. 

We also started trying to get pregnant in the first place right before Christmas. So that firs cycle that we tried I truly believed we could have a baby in our arms by Christmas 2011.

It's true that there were moments this season I cried for my son and the life I would have been living now. I also held on to hope that maybe next year we will be pregnant or holding our baby in our arms. Overall, though, we were blessed. The people in our life that have always been there continued to stand my us and hold us tightly and walk next to us through the rocky days. We were lucky enough to be with some of our favorite people and to be able to enjoy exchanging gifts and eating delicious food. We obviously miss a huge part of ourselves but we know how much worse things could be and we truly did have a wonderful Christmas. 

Another Cheesy Husband Post

I just finished writing one of the final papers for the course I'm taking right now, so I can promise that this entry will be concise. Of course I was watching Les Mis because it apparently stimulates me to be productive. Anyhow, I finished my paper just before the finale, where Jean Valjean dies and Cosette falls to the ground and Marius scoops her up in his arms. This moment is always so flawless in the movies. The husband always knows exactly what to say and do when the wife falls apart. For a long time in my marriage, although I was never less that fully satisfied with things just as they were, this was not a reality for me. Mike did not grow up in a family that shares emotions. Once every few years they'll get together and get piss drunk and start talking about their childhood and fall into one another's arms. Aside from those moments, though, grief and stress tends to turn my sweet husband into stone. Things change when they need to, though. Watching that scene made me return to the doctor's office when he stepped out to let us have a few minutes after giving us the news that Landon was not going to make it. I couldn't tell you how he came to wrap his arms around me but just as soon as I took a breath he'd already enveloped me. He spoke right away and pulled me closer and in the most imperfect day of my life he was the perfect person to experience it with.
It's been a bit challenging, as expected, to find the holiday spirit this year. It's actually gone better than I anticipated, though. It took me a long time but I finally pulled the tree out like I always do on thanksgiving. It was later in the day but not for lack of desire, I was simply distracted. The flame isn't as strong as it was but there is still a little passion in there this year for the holidays. The lights are hung and I survived thinking that I shouldn't be allowed to climb the ladder for my big 35-week-belly every time I moved it two feet and stepped up onto it. The presents are bought for the family Christmas, that I honestly didn't anticipate attending because I was sure the thought of driving an hour and a half each way while 37 weeks pregnant would be the least desirable thing in the world. I've swallowed the fact that I'm likely to encounter those I know that were about as far along as me this holiday season. And I'm doing pretty good with it. I'm living on the fact that maybe this can still be our last Christmas without a little one in our arms. I'm praying that next year I will hang lights with a monitor attached to my hip as a wee one naps inside.
A lot of my survival has been thanks to my decision to pick up a copy of the pathology report. It was really easy to do! I just went into the doctor's office, signed a piece of paper, and they printed it up on the spot! I spent many hours on Google later translating what it all meant and I'm happy for numerous reasons. First, there is official documentation that I had a son. It says right on the paper that he was a male! I knew this but seeing it on paper means the world. My little boy was roughly 6.5 ounces and a long 21 cm! He was small for his gestational size and had thymic involution. I'm not entirely sure but my current understanding is that the thymic involution was the cause of his small size and could have been something that was going on already and may have initiated the "spontaneous abortion" (something we would have seen on the anatomy scan the next week), or it may have been something that was initiated by my premature rupture of the membranes. There were numerous signs of infection which again could have happened prior to or following the rupture of the membranes. Finally, there was a clot in my placenta consistent with some abruption. This also could have happened prior to or after my membranes ruptured but what I do know about this is that my doctor said I was already passing placental tissue when he saw me in his office so this abruption most likely started in the few hours between my membranes rupturing and his exam. None of this, aside from him being small, is really news to me, but it's helped me put together the pieces a little better. I still don't know what order things occurred in or what exactly caused my little man to pass but they are all related, research has found strong correlations between thymic involution and premature rupture of membranes and the same can be said for placental abruption. It just makes me happy that something makes sense. I also know there are a few things I want to pay more attention to in my subsequent pregnancies and that's a little piece of mind and power.
Well concise may have been a bit misleading in the beginning, but at least the update was straight to the point!

Avoiding Social Media

 I'm not obsessed with social media but I enjoy getting online and catching up on what is going on in the lives of people I've crossed paths with. I think part of it makes me feel like a normal, social person. And, when people share news, I really appreciate that a bit of their joy sneaks into my day and leaves a small but lasting impression. When we lost Landon and I entered the few hours of peace and strength that I would experience, I shared a brief update with Faceboon not because I felt obligated it wanted to hear from people but because I had been so happy to share my joy with all of those people during my few months, and I knew inevitably people would notice, and wonder, and some would be brave enough to ask. And that was siny a conversation I knew I wouldn't want to have later. 

I nannied until just after I became pregnant and the mother of the girls was pregnant with her third. I knew previously that The day Landon was born was the day that she would be induced. Obviously this wasn't on my mind in the hospital, but sure enough the next morning the annoumcemt came through via text before we were even discharged. And of course, there were a million "reply alka".  Mike watched, waiting for me to fall apart, but I surprised us both. It truly didn't bother me. I knew then that I wouldn't be the person that shrinks away from all things baby and pregnancy related because of my grief. I knew I had that kind of strength and, 99% of the time, that has been the case. 

Now, though, I am noticing that I have shrunk away from social media. Today is Thanksgiving and while I usually take a lot of pictures to share and spend time looking at everyone else's, though I had no intention of avoiding social media, I did. This didn't occur to me until I laid down and started playing on my phone to get my eyes tired. I saw more than one holiday pregnancy announcement and I was overjoyed as always. However, my heart sank a little with every family photo. I realized that because this is a family holiday, social media no longer served a purpose other than making me realize for the first time that all of my friends have children, that everyone my husband works with (for the most oart) has children, and that we are, quite frankly, falling behind. There are going to be peoe that see this and tell me "it all comes in time" and "you can do things on your own schedule" and to those people I say- "I know"!! And for the most part I agree. But really, we haven't done shit on our schedule. We started trying to get pregnant in December of 2010. We were pregnant in May 2014. And yet here we goddamn stand, Thanksgiving 2014,Christmas around the corner, no baby and no kicks. And no matter how optimistic I am I accept on some occasions that it just ain't happening. We don't get pregnant on our time. We don't have babies after we get pregnant on our time.  And while I whole-heartedly agree that everything happens for a reason and one day I will hold my sweet baby in my arms, quite frankly, that doesn't fix my fucking empty womb or my cold and empty arms. I am thankful, I am blessed, but I am a mother with no child and some days, I just say screw it all!  I will crawl into my shell and have a pity party. And on the rest of the days I will have to do lists and homework and dinner to cook and I will tell myself that I'm not avoiding anything, that I am just too busy and fulfilled for social media or group texts or big announcements and I will go abouty merry little way. 

Change of seasons.

Including my last couple of posts, I have been having a hard time. For about a week I was really having to fight to pull myself up out of a slump of depression. I did well to keep busy but I even shared with Mike the other day that there have been a handful of moments every day where I am nearly brought to my knees. It took me a bit to realize that these moments typically correlate with liking at myself in the mirror. Be it when I'm getting ready for the day or as I pass it on my way in or out of the bedroom. I should be, as I like to say, heavily pregnant by now. I should be "out to here" with baby. But it's just flat flabby gut now. I have figured out that the struggle is because of the sudden "extreme" winter weather. This is absolutely my favorite time of year. When I was pregnant I thought many times that if you had told me at Christmas I would be ready to pop the next time we celebrated the holiday, I would never have believed it. I guess because it wouldn't be true! But I looked forward so much to being pregnant through the holidays. Copious amounts of food and close family gatherings and all of us knowing that next year we would be celebrating our child's first holiday season. This was supposed to be our last season just the two of us and now we not know if that will be true or not. So now I'm doing all of these things and going through the motions knowing that a part of the season isn't here. It's hard because I have always felt the magic of Christmas and the holiday season down to my bones. Now, while I do feel some excitement, that magic is gone for the first time. I'm just so damn empty sometimes. We were so close, ya'll. We had our family and our dream come true and now it's all gone. And the worst part of thinking about trying again is the tense back-and-forth between optimism that now we know I can become pregnant and the reminder that it took three years and a round of Clomid after one failed IUI for that to become a true statement. And that doesn't even begin to open the can of worms that will be pregnancy after loss should we ever get to that point. It's easy for me to think of the logistics of pregnancy but when I start to think of myself, it's just a complete disaster. 

So I am up while Mike sleeps waiting to see if it's going to snow just a little before I go to sleep. Wish my luck that a little snowflake lands on the ground and gives me a little bit of the magic back. 

All the feelings.

My baby boy has been on my mind all day. I really could have sat all day and cried in my bed. But I didn't, and I'm proud of that. But I have been reliving little moments and feelings in my head. Until I lost a child, a part of me, I have never felt so much emotion when remembering. Every feeling is just as strong as it was when it happened, in real life. Which is a pretty strong reminder that this is my real life. This isn't some fantasy I had where I finally fell pregnant and then tragically lost it. This isn't a nightmare. This is real life. And they are real feelings. 

I remember how I felt when I saw this shirt hanging in Motherhood Maternity. Mom to be, 2014. That was me! It felt so good to wear this shirt. And then I remember coming home from the hospital and knowing there was a hamper full recently-worn maternity clothes. My mom and dad were at the house with us- they wanted to be with us and help us. A few years ago I had ankle surgery and they came to take care of me. Bed-ridden, I hated asking for help. I did all that I could then. But August 20th, when my mom asked what she could do for me, I asked her to do my laundry. And she started sorting it there in my living room, and shook out this shirt and I told her "that is why I wanted you to do the laundry". I hate the pain that flashed across her eyes when she realized se was washing maternity clothes that were no longer appropriate for my empty body to wear any more. Or maybe it was more the pain she knew those clothes would bring me when they so recently brought such joy. I would find that shirt and some other clothes folded up in Mike's man cave weeks later. She knew I would find them when the time was right and I could handle it. Mothers know these things. 

I remembered today, too, the feeling I had the very moment I realized my water had broken. When it was no longer an embarrassing accident but now a cause for concern. I saw the pink blood in the puddle on the floor. I calmly dressed. I waited for Mike to say I should call the nurse's line. It was a cold morning for August in Texas. 

I relive the way it felt when I laid in that bed in the hospital, holding my husband's hand and knowing our sweet baby boy laid sleeping on the sheet beneath my waist. The cord hadn't been cut. We were together, the three of us, physically for the first and last time. We all were one. That's my favorite moment and the one that I hated leaving the most. Some days I still long to be in that bed with the two loves of my life. But here I am, nearing three months without him, crying in my bed and blogging about how I lost my baby. 

And there's not really anything to say that follows that, is there? 

A Thank You

I am sitting in the man-cave, which now houses the glider that was once in the nursery in an attempt to spread the items out enough that we can move on without letting go. I've just rocked this sweet boy to sleep and it occurred to me that I need to say a special thank you. 

Early last year we had dinner with our best friends. When Mike went to use the restroom, he saw the strategically placed positive pregnancy test on the counter. After becoming sure I wasn't upset (the jumping up and down cleared that up quickly) they told us that this baby was all of ours. Months later, we recieved orders to move to Texas, and they were to stay in San Diego. We were happy to be getting closer to one family but distressed about leaving another. The year has been a rough one but our friends welcomed this joy and we welcomed ours in a different way. When we lost Landon, we flew back to San Diego to find comfort in our family there.   There was a little concern that this little man would be salt in the wound and while, yes, I cried watching my sweet husband feed him and snuggle him, knowing he would never feed or snuggle our Landin, I was overjoyed to feel such love for this little kid. And while I may have teared up a few times, having this baby, all of our baby, in the walls of this house as well as our hearts has been an experience like no other. So my thank you is to my best friend. I know you worry about the pain you know is there, but you will never understand how great of a gift you have given me. You have given me a love so strong that it makes me long for the love I am experiencing in a different way with my own son. I love yours so much that somehow I understand that the painful way that I love my own is a beautiful, perfect love. 

Thanks for having sex and making this cutie. And thanks for sharing him!

Future Pregnancies

I've been thinking more lately about what future pregnancies will be like. We haven't decided yet when we are going to try again, and when we do we will likely not share. We have always been very open about our fertility journey and talked a lot about it in the three years that we tried for Landon. Then, we took advantage of Mother's Day to share our pregnancy with close family and friends very early (four weeks along). We shared with Facebook early as well and I wouldn't change a think about how we did that. Landon was lived by everyone so very early and he needed that love. Not to say our future children don't deserve that, but things have changed and there were negatives that came along with the "publicity" of our first pregnancy. People included themselves on our journey and often felt they had been through it with us. I don't mean to be rude, but they didn't have a damn clue. When we lost Landon some people came out of the woodwork that were extremely distressed over the loss, and whe that is wonderful I can't help but wonder where they were when he was alive. Because I sure didn't see them. 

Anyways, I digress. Although I do not foresee another pregnancy occurring anytime soon, I think about it frequently. I mourn the loss of my son but I also desperately miss being pregnant. I loved being pregnant and, aside from how it ended, I think I was pretty damn good at it. I think every day about what it would be like if I were pregnant still. I'd be 26 weeks along and we would be in awe of making it so far after waiting so long. Mostly I think about my sweet husband feeling his son kick his hands. 

We made the choice that we did, to have Landon quickly and in a hospital after my water broke, because we didn't want to risk me getting an infection that could make it impossible for us to have our own children in the future. So of course I think about those subsequent pregnancies. I've become very active in recent weeks and I think about how I will struggle to want to be fit for the health of the baby but also scared to push myself too far. I can't let go of how one little movement I made immediately led to my water breaking and while I know that it wasn't my fault I know that that've meant was the final straw. I think perhaps it would be easier if I had some more answers about what happened that day. Right now I wonder about my cervix being weak, but I haven't done any research to find out if that is something that can be missed until what happened to me happens. Regardless, I think about how I will be able to balance the fear of losing another child with some sort of excitement. I mourn the opportunity to share with my husband that he is going to be a father again and get a completely excited response. When I told him I was pregnant with Landon it was by far the best day of my life. His reaction was more than I could have imagined and knowing that it ended in heartbreak is something I'm not sure how other stillborn moms survive. I just think about how I will never be THAT happy again. But my dad tolde that every child brings a different happiness and they are all equally great and I choose to believe that is true. So, I look forward to having a private pregnancy and I fear my anxieties and my ability to give this pregnancy all of my heart like I did with Landon. And deep down I just hope and pray that I get the chance to be pregnant again, and that when we do decide to try again we aren't on another three year plus journey and that no matter how long it takes we get to bring home a baby next time. 

Running.

I just went running. I walked as much as I ran, but I fucking ran. The last time I remember really running, not just jogging, is fifth grade. I ran the 50 yard dash during field day and I won. I remember practicing for field day the week before and falling and skinning my knee and I still ran field day and I still won. That's the last time I remember not being scared of getting hurt. Not that I fell and hurt myself more than the average kid but I would say I was more scared of it than the average kid. Since then I feel like life has handede some pretty decent reasons to quit (asthma, injuries, a busy schedule) and I have ran with each one as a solid excuse as to why I couldn't possibly be active anywhere. 

I'm coping better. Today I had a handful or devastatingly sad thoughts about not being pregnant anymore and I didn't let them bring my whole day down. But then I decided it had been a good day and I should get out my fall clothes, try them on, and hang them in the closet. That didn't end well. Suddenly I was pissed. Here I am, not pregnant and no baby, no sign I ever was, and here I am looking like I went full term with the pre-pregnancy fat to boot. I can't change a goddamn thing about any of that. But I could find something productive to do. So I got dressed and told mike I was going for a run. A real run, or at least my version of it. And now I feel a little bit better. Now I've accomplished something and now I win today. 

And here I am with a dog that needs nothing more out of life than a human to throw this raggedy old toy. 

The Perfect Husband

I talk a lot lately about how amazing my husband is but I've been thinking a lot lately about how perfect (for me) he really is. I married such a good man. 

Mike didn't grow up with the perfect examples of love and marriage to show him what to strive for. I believe that his parents loved one another so much that they couldn't be together- it was just too intense. They never stopped trying, but it never worked out. His grandparents, who he lived with alongside his sisters in the midst of his parents trying to figure it all out, must have loved one another at some point but it's very hard to see. It's like you know there are fossils of love doen where in that home but you'd be lucky to ever dig them up. 

My amazing husband is making it up as e goes along. It's easy for days to pass where we are just going through the motions and live in the house together. It's not until I sit and watch him carry himself around the house and see his face as he chooses his next move that I really realize how epic of a man he is. He has taught himself how to be an entire support system, how to figure out what to say in my moments of weakness and to choose what is worth arguing over. In the days where he began toove me he instantly became them that wanted to put a roof over the head of his wife, to hbe a family, to keep us safe and happy. We are his mission now just because he fell in love. 

I couldn't survive any of this without my sweet husband being all that he is. It's like we were to pieces of clay that were prepared but not yet molded and when we found each other we melted together and became solid. I just wanted to share how much he completely blows my mind just by being him and by being more than I could have imagined a husband could be. 

Viability.

My morning today was great and productive. About halfway through lunch the sinking feeling joined me once again. I was happy when Mike asked if I could bring lunch to the office, because I know it is good in those moments to get away from my own thoughts and to interact with others. 

As I was driving to grab him lunch, it occurred to me what has been bothering me for the last few days. I'm living my life as though I was never pregnant, it seems. There is no way to live other than the way I am- picking myself up and moving forwards, living for Landon and doing my best to find happy moments. But five weeks later it's all such a distant memory. I feel completely detached from my memories of being pregnant. I don't remember what it feels like until I feel a phantom kick, and it makes me feel like maybe I imagined them as kicks but that's not what they were at all. I can't recall the feeling of having life inside of me. The psych student in me has come up with two reasons that this is the case. First, it is clearly a defense mechanis for me to prevent a longing for the feeling it or a constant reminder of what I am missing or should be experiencing now. When I think about how my belly would have grown in five weeks, I am crushed. Secondly, I did not experience the standard or desired conclusion to being pregnant, so part of my mind believes I must have never been pregnant. Whatever the reason, it's miserable but I'm sure it's for the best. I am sure when I do become pregnant again, my memories will come flooding back to me. 

Tonight I lost my shit when a baby frog got in the house. I thought it was a cricket because we have been having issues with that, so I yelled at Mike to kill it. When I realized it was a baby frog I lost it. Mike swears up and down he didn't kill it, he was able to get it outside before killing it. But my sweet husband would lie to me a hundred times if he thought it would heal my heart, so I'll never really know. The moment I realized I told him to kill the frog, I thought if course I said to do that, I even told the doctors they could take my baby from me. I didn't think, I just reacted. 

Then it occurred to me that tomorrow is a day I have been dreading- tomorrow would have been 24 weeks and instead it's five weeks gone. We would have reached viability. I hate what-ifs, but I can't help it here. Thankfully my sweet Mike held me whoe I cried and helped me realize that even if we had made it this far, he may have been born early and suffered pain, and may have passed anyways. He was spared all of the pain this way, and it was our only option. We didn't choose it. Our angel went to heaven having never suffered. Most of the time I believe thatd and most of the time it brings me peace. 

Rallying Around Our Loved Ones

I've often heard it said that in times of need we rally around those that need us. While I understood what that meant as a basic idea, I don't think that I have ever really felt the meaning of the phrase. Perhaps there have been times in my life where I needed help but refused to acknowledge it, and in those moments I found my own strength and have been proud to pull myself back up and move on. This has not always been without the encouragement of friends and family, but in my hardest moments I have made it my mission to be my own hero. For the first time in my life, I know that I cannot rise up against the world on my own. Losing Landon changed me in a lot of ways, and this has been the first time that I did not fight the helping hands of others.
There are a lot of people that have offered condolences, love, and support, and those people do not go unnoticed or unappreciated. Every word has meant the world to me as they show how truly loved my son was and is. But I've seen the difference between offering support and truly rallying around someone that needs us. I have an image in my mind of how I feel right now. I lay in the center of the floor in a mess, and there are people in my life that I see surrounding me, keeping me safe, offering me love, and helping me up when I am ready. These people I see are the people I feel around me every day. Be them right next door or across the country, I swear to you that I physically feel the warmth of their love surrounding me. These are the people that you realize make up your world, and while others that love and care for you (and you for them) are important in your life, these are the ones that are your life. This isn't determined by blood or friendship or circumstance, but by the soul. Souls connect and nothing feels quite like that.
I am so grateful for those that have offered support and love as well as to those that rally around me. Today, my son would be a month old. In a few short days we will be at the "viability" mark, and the day when the textbooks say a baby may be saved. This is the hardest thing that I have ever experiences, and after three years of trying and constant struggles in other areas of my life, it's impossible not to wonder what I did to deserve this suffering or even how God could let this happen. Where was God when my son died inside of my womb? Wasn't it God that offered me the greatest gift in the world and then tore it out of me? This is a time during which it is difficult to keep my faith. I have never been a church-goer but I have always believed in God. The moment I discovered I was pregnant I knew he must be real. I had angels looking over me and God guiding me and offering me a chance to create a life and teach a child how to be good in the heart and share that goodness with the world. But now I don't have that and it's hard not to be mad at God.
The sole idea that keeps me connected with God is that he has provided me with the most amazing angels here on earth. I feel the warmth of these angels every day. Sometimes I get to experience that love with a phone call or a hug, sometimes a game night or crying together about my loss or the struggles of my friends. Whatever it is, I know that God has sent these people to envelop me in their love and to teach me how to do the same when they need me. I cannot imagine any explanation or understanding of why such a pain as I feel every day deep inside of my heart even exists in the world. But there is also no explanation for the blessings that I have received in terms of those that have rallied around me and to me that means there is something out there that is taking care of me and that brought these people into my world.
One day I hope that that force, be it God or the universe or the sun or anything, blesses me again with the chance to share my love with a child, and to share a child with the man that makes my heart beat every day. I will never stop hoping for that. But I know that there is something greater than me and tonight, after what I'm sure will be a day of crying and aching, I will go to bed with hope in my heart and the love of my earth-angels keeping me warm.

The Day It Fell Apart

Today it has been exactly four weeks since my little boy went to heaven. I've managed well all day, but typing those words knocked the wind out of me. Somehow this makes it all true. Some hours of the day I can go on not thinking about having ever been pregnant or so close to having the family that I wanted, and there is a bliss that I find in that distraction. When the distraction passes, there is a strong guilt. How could I want to forget him? Sometimes I feel I should be in pain every second of the day, because if I'm not, what the hell kind of a mom am I?

When I started this post I thought it might be appropriate to write a more detailed recap of that day. And maybe I will finish this that way or maybe I will write one later on. But now I feel reconnected to all of the emotions of that day and, while we lost our entire world, I feel connected to what really fell apart for the first time- myself.

I remember the second I realized that something wasn't right. I realized that I was not, in fact, pissing myself. I was so scared. The smallest amount of hope- maintained by my wonderful husband- allowed me to believe that maybe it was just a fluke and even more so I thought that perhaps I could be put on bed-rest. Surely as long as the baby was okay still there was something they could do. It is a knife in my heart to think if we had just made it a few weeks more we could have had a shot at saving him. I still wrestle with the guilt. Maybe I should have pushed to just see what would happen. But at my follow-up, the pathology report showed that I had already started to develop an infection. I imagine we couldn't have gotten very far without causing serious damage to both myself and my precious baby boy. Knowing that helps, some, but still when I begin to think about the difference a few weeks would have made....

When we made it to the ER about an hour and a half after my water broke, (still not sure that that is what had happened), the nurse found the heartbeat on the ultrasound. Later, the nurse at the doctor checked my urine for protein and searched for the baby's heartbeat as they did at every appointment. She found it. At 9:30 my baby's heart was beating in the 150's. He was still alive. He was kicking me as I registered at the hospital and as I changed into the gown. No amount of assurance from the doctor would ever be enough to convince me that my baby would have died on his own. The doctor told me with no fluid and with tissues he believed to be from my placenta, the baby would not have any circulation and would surely pass away before he was delivered. He did die inside of me, but I do not know when. I will never know if it was the induction that killed him- I'm afraid to ask if that's possible. If it is, I killed my child. I took his life. I was just trying to make the right choice. I didn't want to get an infection that could make it impossible for me to have other children, like my mother had later in her life, should it be true that Landon would never make it. But fuck, if we could have just made it a few more weeks....

When the doctor confirmed my water had broken, his eyes were sorrowful. He was heartbroken to share the news and because of this I didn't even try to hold back tears. I couldn't look at anyone because it was such terrible news that no matter how nervous I had been in the beginning of the pregnancy I could never have prepared myself. We were so close to halfway there, everything had been so perfect, and more so my overly-intuitive dad and myself didn't see it coming. We always had a way of knowing when the other foot would drop but this time we didn't. The doctor said exactly this: "It is your fluid that you lost- and you will lose the baby. It is nothing you did, you didn't cause this to happen". I cried and he offered Mike and I a few moments to decide what path we wanted to take from here. He left the room and Mike shot up to his feet and over to me. We cried and Mike instantly told me that it would be okay, we would try again. I apologized over and over for not being able to carry his child. He held me and we made our choices. I called my dad and my best friend. I'll never forget the way my dad's voice sounded. "Oh sunshine", with the saddest tone I had ever heard from him. I couldn't really tell him anything else and told him as well as my best friend that I would text them when I knew what we were doing. I hardly held it together, in fact I lost it a few times, during the trip back to the house to gather some things and the hour long drive to the hospital. When we walked in I felt different- I was numb. I cried once after that, and then not again until I felt my son be born.

An Introduction

My husband Michael and I have longed for many years to be parents. We tried for three years to get pregnant, hurdling over various deployments and workups as well as the obstacle of mild PCOS. In May 2014 I took a test on a whim and discovered I was pregnant. I had never seen a positive pregnancy test in all my years of trying and I couldn't believe this was finally it. I was only 3 weeks and 3 days along, 9 days post ovulation, and this little baby wanted us to know it was there! I told Michael that afternoon that he was going to be a dad by wrapping some clothes I had bought just for this purpose and placing the positive pregnancy tests on top. We told my parents and set up a doctor's appointment- this was all finally happening and we couldn't have been more over-the-moon. We were finally going to have our family. I would grow rounder and feel kicks and get uncomfortable and finally bring our sweet child into the world and hold him or her in my arms and heart forever. Remembering my husband's reaction will always put a smile on my face, although now that smile is followed with a tinge of bitterness.
The day I made it to 19 weeks, we were going to have an ultrasound to determine the sex of our baby. I already knew how healthy he or she was because I was growing and thriving and feeling little kicks every day. Our excitement had led to the room already being prepared with furniture and we were so ecstatic to share with the world if we would have a son or a daughter.
I had trouble sleeping the night before because I was so looking forward to the early doctor's appointment the next morning. Around 5 am, I rolled over in bed and suddenly felt a gush. I was peeing the bed! But soon the humor and embarassment fled as it didn't stop, and I knew it was more than just a fluke of being pregnant. My water had broken at exactly 19 weeks. We were instructed by the on-call nurse to go to the nearest ER. There they showed us the baby's heartbeat and profile on an ultrasound and we relaxed some, although I could hear the doctor tell the nurse that I was "about a fingertip". This hospital had no OB services so they contacted our doctor and told us to sit tight and go to our scheduled appointment, as he would be able to tell us more about what was going on. We rested at home for about an hour and headed to the doctor. The nurse found the heartbeat on the doppler and it was strong, and I could feel baby kick as the machine rubbed across my belly. The doctor did a pelvic exam and tested the fluid in my cervix. He regretfully told us that my water had broken and we were going to lose the baby. At 19 weeks and with no waters left, there was no way the baby could survive. We searched and searched for alternative measures but there were none. We chose to have the baby in the hospital and were admitted not long after leaving the doctor's office. Everyone we saw was amazed that I was not experiencing labor pains as I was already dilating and passing tissue through my cervix, and my water had broken hours ago.
My contractions were helped along with medication and at 1915 I gave birth to the most beautiful baby boy I have ever seen. Landon Edward was born sleeping and went to be with his Grampa, my husband's father, in heaven. We didn't hold him but we looked at him and cried over how perfect he was. Later, I would feel guilt about letting him be born early, about not holding him and about letting him die inside of my womb. I would feel and experience more than I ever thought possible. The intention of this blog is to talk about it all, to help me heal and to put into words as best I can the terror of losing a child that you loved for years before they were even conceived and yet you never got to hold or kiss or raise. This blog will be about pain and healing and some terrible attempt and beginning to live a new sort of normal.