Encouragement for my Fellow Loss Moms

I printed and hung this up in my bathroom, because some days, I just need the affirmation.

A Few Belly Shots

The decision to do a maternity shoot for this pregnancy came from a much different place than the last time around.  During my pregnancy with Virginia, I wanted to have maternity pictures so I could create a photo album, maybe frame and hang one or two, and show her one day how mommy looked with Virginia inside her belly.  As I've mentioned many times before, I don't think too far into the future anymore.  The motivation behind these pictures was purely to document this pregnancy, to celebrate where I'm at right now.  I'm trying my hardest not to live these nine months in complete fear, even though that often goes against every instinct I have (which is to do EVERYTHING differently).  I don't want to rob this baby of the opportunity to be celebrated and know that she is special.  So even though it doesn't feel particularly comfortable for me, I'm trying my best to get excited about where I am right now.  It helps that my photographer is my mom, who probably has a better grasp than just about anyone of how hard this journey has been for me.  So earlier this week, the day before I left to head home, my mom took me to a little flower garden in town she'd had her eye on, to take a few pics.  When we arrived and were getting set up, I wandered around to look at all the flowers and plants, and came across this plaque:

"You are entering a garden dedicated to the memory of our beloved children who have gone too soon.  Please honor this peaceful place and our children with your care.  Sponsored by the Compassionate Friends Bozeman Chapter"

We both got chills and knew right away that we were meant to be there taking these pictures.  Here's a few from our shoot (just past 24 weeks).

The picture below is my favorite.  This is a necklace made by my coworkers after we lost Virginia.  I call it my "Virginia necklace".  I wear it probably two or three times per week, and get tons of compliments on it, which always makes me smile because of its special meaning.

That's all for now.  I have more pics of my trip I'd like to post, but that'll have to wait until later.  

Happy summer!

7 Months Later...

Hello out there!

I just got home from spending almost 3 weeks in Montana with my family.  Unfortunately, Pat was unable to come, as he's hoarding vacation time and was on a little vacation of his own with his family.  (Sidenote: I haven't seen him in 3 weeks.  He gets home tomorrow and I.cannot.wait.  I'm counting down the hours at this point.  I love the fact that even after 9 years together, including 5 years of marriage, I still get butterflies about seeing him when we've been apart.)

While I was at home, I was perusing photos on my mom's computer, and ran across a couple that were taken over Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving was our first trip back to Montana after losing Virginia.  At this point, we were 3 months out from her birth, and it's evident from the way I look in this picture that I was not in a very good place at that time.

I wanted to post these pictures not because I'm a glutton for punishment and feel the need to show the world some of the worst pictures I've ever taken, but because it's a good reminder for me of how far I've come in the 7 months since these pictures were taken.  At this point in time, I couldn't slap a genuine smile on my face if someone paid me a million dollars.

These days, I have a much more genuine smile.  I smiled and laughed more in the last 3 weeks with my family (especially these 3 boys) than I have in 10 months.  It felt pretty damn good.

What a difference 7 months makes.

Our 5th Anniversary

This Friday marks our 5 year anniversary.  We decided to celebrate a week early this year, since I'll be leaving for Montana that day.  We kicked off our celebration last weekend with a date night to our favorite (albeit SUPER expensive) steakhouse.  But before leaving, we had to partake in our yearly ritual of toasting with our gifted champagne flutes.  In years past, we've split a bottle of champagne.  This year and last, Pat filled his glass with beer, and mine with flavored seltzer water.  We toasted to another year past, a year that's been by far the hardest on our marriage, but also the year we're proudest to have survived, intact and still in love.  It feels good to be able to say that.

Pat's mom and sister got us a gift certificate for a hot air balloon ride in Napa for Pat's 30th birthday in the fall.  We never used it over the winter because we didn't want to risk bad weather.  Then we got to thinking about when/if we'd be able to get away for the day (or weekend) with a baby, and quickly realized that it would likely be awhile before we'd be ready to leave the baby.  So I did my homework, calling the hot air balloon company and my doctor to get the appropriate approvals.  And doctor's note in hand, we left on 4:30 Sunday morning to make it to Napa by the 6:30 launch time.

Warning: This post is going to be picture-heavy, since I'm my mother's daughter and took over 130 images of our ballooning adventure.

I think several people who thought I was crazy for wanting to do this pregnant.  The employees of the hot air balloon company kept asking me if I was sure I wanted to participate.  My doctor didn't recommend against it, but did caution me to be VERY careful and not take any chances if the weather wasn't favorable.  One of my girlfriends even called me the "pregnant little daredevil".  But our pilot assured us that he's had his license for 25 years and that conditions were perfect for low wind and a smooth landing.  And luckily, we had no issues at all.  However, we did watch a few other balloons who had pretty rough landings (one landed on a hillside and had the basket drug about 50 ft before they reached a landing spot where all the passengers could safely disembark).  But this was an incredible experience, and I'm really happy we got to do it together.

Maybe I am a little crazy for taking the risk.  But life is short.  Hot air ballooning has always been on my bucket list, and if there's anything Virginia has taught me, it's to live life to the fullest, because there's no way of knowing when our time is up.  And while I was up there, I thought a lot about Virginia and how I don't know if I would have done something like this that scared the bajeezus out of me, if it hadn't been for her.  It was so peaceful up there.  Nothing but us and nature (and our 14 closest friends crammed into a little basket, haha).  Kind of what I imagine heaven to be like.  I felt like I caught a glimpse, even if only for a few minutes, of that perfect serenity and happiness.  It was a truly beautiful experience.

And the good news is that we can show Baby Dos this picture someday (God willing) and tell her all about how she got to go on a hot air balloon when she was in Mommy's belly.  And I think that's pretty badass.

Encouragement for Other Loss Moms

I'm copying and pasting some of this from an email I just sent to a fellow baby loss mom girlfriend who experienced the fairly recent loss of her full-term daughter.  I hope she doesn't mind...  ;)

I just read an excerpt in a book today that one of my girlfriends suggested.  The book is called "Tiny Beautiful Things".  I haven't read the whole thing (only a piece of it that I was able to preview on Kindle).  My understanding is that the author has a regular advice column that runs in a newspaper or magazine or something, where people write in with their problems, and she gives them insight and advice.  It seems she published a book which included a variety of advice columns she's written over the years.  The very first column is a question from a woman who lost her baby at 24 weeks and is having a hard time moving forward with her life and feeling "stuck" and like nobody understands.  This was her advice, which I thought was particularly powerful: 

"Don't listen to those people who suggest that you should be "over" your daughter's death by now.  The people who squawk the loudest about such things have almost ever had to get over anything.  Or at least not anything as genuinely, mind-fuckingly, soul-crushingly life altering.  Some of those people believe they're being helpful by minimizing your pain.  Others are scared of the intensity of your loss and so they use their words to push your grief away.  Many of those people love you and are worthy of your love, but they are not the people who will be helpful to you when it comes to healing the pain of your daughter's death.  

They live on Planet Earth.  You live on Planet My Baby Died.

It seems to me that you feel like you're all alone there.  You aren't.  There are women reading this right now who have tears in their eyes.  They are women who have spent their days chanting daughter, daughter, or son, son silently to themselves.  Women who have been privately tormented about the things they did or didn't do that they fear caused the deaths of their babies.  You need to find those women.  They're your tribe."

I so wish I would have had someone tell me these things in those early weeks. I needed to hear all of this.  Every.single.word.  This woman articulated in a matter of a few hundred words, what has taken me almost 10 months to figure out on my own.  So I wanted to put this out there to look back on during the sad days in the future, and for any other loss moms that happen to come across my blog.