Our Rainbow Baby Has Arrived, Safe & Sound!

Sorry for the delay in posting.  I hope I didn't leave anyone worried.  But it's been a whirlwind of a week, and I'm just now getting a chance to sit down and write out a post.

It was quite a weekend leading up to the scheduled c-section.  By the time Monday arrived, I couldn't believe we would actually be meeting our baby.  That day itself feels like a distant foggy memory.  I do know I spent a few hours in Labor & Delivery waiting for the OR to become available.  I started having pretty painful contractions that morning, and was in the very early stages of labor.  I'd like to think Baby Dos wanted to pick her own birthday (even though she likely would've been born on the same day anyway--she wanted to do it on HER terms).  Anyway, before I knew it, it was time to head into the OR.

We brought a few mementos of Virginia, so she was very much with us during the moments when her sister took her first breaths in the exact same OR and Recovery Room where we delivered Virginia only 14 months ago.

Cambria Skye Groff was born screaming at 1:24pm on 10/7/13, weighing 8lbs even, 19" long.

We are so in love.  Even through the frustration, the sleep deprivation, and the issues we've had with feeding and her losing too much weight, I am still blissfully, unabashedly happy.  God has been good to our little family.

Tomorrow

As I sit here this morning, quietly sipping on my Pumpkin Spice coffee, basking in the silence and chill of an early fall morning, I can't help but feel like today represents the last page in a chapter we've been waiting to close for what feels like eons.  I've devoted 18 of the last 24 months of my life to the waiting game that is pregnancy.  And the sacrifice has not been mine and mine alone.  Pat has been through just as much as I have, but with way less control.  He hasn't been able to feel this baby move, or get that constant comfort and reassurance that everything is ok.  If anything, this process has been even harder for him because he hasn't been able to develop the bond that I have.
Tomorrow, that all changes.

Tomorrow, that wait is finally over.  

Tomorrow, all the hope and optimism we've tried to desperately to cling to finally comes to fruition.  

Tomorrow, Virginia will be smiling down on us, and we will know that if it wasn't for her, we would never be where we are right now. 

Tomorrow, we will meet our rainbow.  

We are ready.  

October

As I rolled over in bed to check the clock at 5:00am before getting up to for potty break #3 of the night, I realized that today marks the beginning of October, a month that is doubly meaningful for me this year.  Of course you all know by now that Baby Dos, our Rainbow Baby, will be arriving this month (only 6 days from now, in fact).  But what you may not know is that October is also National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Month.  For those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile, you might remember my posts for Carly Marie's Project Heal: Capture Your Grief 2012.  This photo blogging project, Capture Your Grief 2013, starts up again today.  I am going to try to participate and post a few pictures, but I won't be as actively involved as I was last year, for obvious reasons.

As we close in on the final days of this pregnancy, I have noticed a major slide back into many of the PTSD-related symptoms I had in the early days after losing Virginia.  The insomnia is back with a vengeance.  I've been waking up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep, lying awake and starting to ruminate over the past, or worry about what the future may hold for our little family.  The hours of 3:00-5:00 are the darkest of the night for me.  The day we found out we lost Virginia, I had woken up at 3:00am to pee.  Once I climbed back into bed, I realized that I hadn't felt her kick or nudge since at least the day before.  I got up and laid on the couch, drank some juice and had a blueberry muffin.  Nothing.  Then I downed a couple glasses of ice water.  Still nothing.  I tried to fall asleep again, reassuring myself that everything was fine, and I'd be able to hear her heartbeat at our monitoring appointment that morning.  But of course, we all know how that ended.  So when I wake up in those early hours of the morning now, I immediately put my hands on my stomach and wait for movement.  Baby Dos is really good about sleeping when I sleep, and she typically doesn't get really active for the day until mid-morning.  So oftentimes, getting those nudges and rolls at 4:00am is not an easy task.  I'll poke and prod at my stomach, even drink water I keep on my nightstand.  But I refuse to get up.  I refuse to eat, to drink juice or ice water, to lay on the couch.  Because all of those things are triggers, and it's set in my mind that if I do those things, she's not going to move, and we're going to have the same devastating outcome.  So instead I lie awake in bed, changing positions every couple minutes until I finally feel a slight roll or punch.  And then I keep poking at her, just to make sure what I was feeling wasn't just a fluke.  Eventually she gets aggravated by being tormented, and will start moving consistently.  But even then, the insomnia doesn't just go away, because by that point, I've gotten myself so worked up and anxious that it would be next to impossible to fall back asleep again.  I talk to the baby silently in my head and thank her for giving Mommy some reassurance.   I beg her to just hang on for a few more days.  Please, sweetie, just stay alive until we can get you out.

I hate that the end of pregnancy has to be like this for me.  These last few days are getting harder and harder.  I just want to to be able to breathe again, to hold a live baby in my arms and know that she's ok.  I'm ready to stop living in fear.  I'm ready to meet my baby girl.

Six.more.days.

A Gift

Today has been a sad day.  I can't put my finger on exactly what the trigger was, but I knew as soon as I woke up this morning that I was going to struggle today.  As I was driving to my monitoring appointment this morning, I heard a song on the radio that threw me right into a slump.  A deep slump.  One that I've been fighting all day.  I cried through my entire appointment, despite Baby Dos kicking and moving all over the place.  I composed myself on my way to work, talked to a girlfriend on the phone, and thought I had it together, but as soon as I walked into my office and a coworker asked me how I was doing, I immediately bursted into tears.  Then, for the remainder of the day, anytime anyone asked me how I was or commented on my belly, I fought the tears (sometimes successfully, but mostly not so much).  Today was the kind of day where I shouldn't even have bothered putting makeup on.  It was all smudged by 9AM, and completely worn off by noon. 

I have trouble articulating exactly how I'm feeling lately.  I knew the last few weeks of pregnancy would be the most difficult for me, and I've spent several weeks trying to mentally brace for the anxiety of worrying about things going wrong at the very end again.  My therapist and I have been really focused on preventing and coping with the anxiety, and shifting my thinking toward planning for bringing this baby home.  In that arena, I feel like I'm doing pretty well. 

Grief, however, is a monster all its own.  For no reason I could put my finger on, the grief came to the forefront again today, for the first time in weeks.  I miss Virginia, so badly that my arms and chest physically hurt.  I feel that old familiar ache of heavy emptiness in my arms, and the pain of the giant empty void in my heart that no one else can fill.  As grateful as I am to have Baby Dos healthy and squirming in my belly, nothing quells the aching emptiness that her sister has left behind.  Then the guilt set in.  Guilt about not being more appreciative of the fact that I've been given this opportunity to have another baby.  Guilt about betraying Virginia or attempting to "replace" her.  Guilt about still being stuck in this grief, less than 2 weeks before what should be one of the happiest days of my life.  And of course, feeling guilty for still grieving so deeply sent me further into my downward spiral. 

So I decided to text a couple of my loss girlfriends, desperate for a kind of support and understanding that only they can offer.  They both had very encouraging words to pass along.  But one thing that stuck with me is what my friend Lisa said, that it helps her to think of the son she just had as a gift from the baby boy she lost.  I love that sentiment, because it doesn't take away from the grief I still feel so strongly, 13 months later.  And it doesn't mean that Baby Dos will in any way replace Virginia.  It means that Virginia still plays an important role in our lives.  She is still watching out for us every day, knowing that we miss her deeply, but also giving us the greatest gift she possibly could--the hope of a sibling to raise and love.  Suddenly, the emotions of today don't seem quite as heavy.  The grief is still there (it always will be), but now I can see a little more clearly through the grief to the gift on the other side.  Sweet Virginia is still very much here with us. 

Comparisons

I've had several people ask me over the last few months how this pregnancy compares to my last one.  To be honest, the pregnancies have been quite similar in terms of my body's response.  I felt a little worse symptoms-wise at the beginning of this pregnancy, and some of the more obnoxious pregnancy symptoms have come on a little bit earlier this time around.  But physically, I'm gaining approximately the same amount of weight, and started showing right around the same time.  If I had to guess, I'd probably say I'm carrying the same as well.  So I decided to open up my file of belly shots from my last pregnancy, and pull out a few to compare.

Here's 33ish weeks with Virginia:

 And 33 weeks with Baby Dos:

I don't see much of a difference, aside from looking a little rounder in my current pregnancy, but that could be because of the different angles.

In other news, we had a growth scan of our sweet little Baby Dos a couple weeks ago, to check on her size and look at the blood flow in the umbilical cord.  Everything came back perfectly, and we even got a shot of her sweet little face.  I immediately pulled out a picture of Virginia, to compare the two side-by-side.  They definitely have the same chubby little cheeks and button nose.

I sent the picture to my mom that night, and she commented that I have such beautiful little girls.  And then it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I have girls.
I have two daughters.
I am a mother of two children.
We are a family of four.

I hadn't thought about it in that way before.  I guess because it still doesn't feel real to me.  Even as I approach the end of this long journey of becoming a mom to a take-home baby, I can't fathom what it will be like to bring this baby home and care for her and watch her grow.  I still see myself only as a mom to a baby that didn't make it.  And try as I may, I don't know how imagine what my role will look like when I can bring a baby home to nurture and take care of.  Of course I'm already a mom, but that title will take on a whole new meaning in only about a month (33 days, in case anyone's interested, but who's counting??).

I bring this all up because I find myself making lots of comparisons these days.
Comparisons between pregnancies.
Comparisons between babies.
Comparisons between my role as a mommy to an angel and mommy to a living child.
Comparisons between the life I live now, and the life I imagine I'd be living if Virginia was here.
All of these comparisons are a blessing and a curse.  I feel like my experience with losing Virginia has prepared me to become the best mother I can be, and for that, I'm very grateful.  But I miss my life before, the life that didn't have a dividing line drawn in the sand between the person I was before and the person I am now.  Randi before the devastation and Randi after.  I often drift off and daydream, wondering how different life would be if Virginia was here.  Or how much happier and more excited I might be about this pregnancy if this was my first go-'round, and I never had to experience the nightmare that was my life one year ago.  I can't seem to find any middle ground lately.  I'm either stuck in still grieving over Virginia while forgetting (or maybe even being in denial) that I'm pregnant with her little sister, or completely engulfed in all of the "new mommy" stuff.  I struggle to figure out where I "belong" in my role as a mom.  I'm certainly not new to the pregnancy experience, so in that sense, I'm not a first-time mom.  But I also have no idea what it takes to care for a newborn, so in that way, I feel very inexperienced.

I don't know how to fuse these two different parts of myself.  How do the grief and excitement coexist?  How can they both be integrated into a situation that's fraught with contradictions?  I guess this is all part of the journey.  Life seems to be adamant about teaching me many lessons I didn't ever know I wanted to learn, one of them being that there are sometimes no easy answers to these kinds of questions.

So even though this journey through pregnancy is quickly coming to an end, I'm still constantly reminding myself to stay in the moment and continue to take things day by day.  And to breathe.  To relax.  To have hope.  To continue to allow myself to feel whatever I'm feeling.  And to remember that it's ok to not always have all the answers.

Lately...

I haven't written for a couple weeks because there hasn't been much happening that's worthy of writing about.   I'm off work for the summer until next Friday, so I've been keeping myself busy with cleaning projects around the house, working on Virginia's baby book, making a blanket for Baby Dos, and spending time with these little hooligans:

We are currently watching my brother's dog for a couple months while he's on vacation and getting himself situated in his new house in Montana.  I spend my days separating these two when they start rough-housing (this is good practice in playing referee, I'll have to take notes for future parenting endeavors). 

My main focus lately, though, is just trying to keep my anxiety at bay and my grief from overtaking my life again.  My brain is a whirlwind of emotions with Virginia's upcoming birthday along with the stress of entering into late pregnancy.  I was able to maintain a pretty stable emotional state over the last couple months, but lately, I find myself slipping back into my old anxious ways.  I'm in a state of disbelief that next Tuesday marks what would be Virginia's first birthday.  How is it possible that it's been a year?  How have we survived without her for this long?  And most importantly, how do I balance the grief that's very much still a part of my life, with the hope that this new pregnancy brings?  And how do I keep my brain from heading down that road of, "What if this happens again?"  I've had quite a few moments of panic over the last few weeks, worrying myself that something might be wrong with this baby, despite having the constant reassurance of her movement.  Even when there's nothing happening that would lead me to believe that everything isn't ok, I still panic every now and then, because, after all, things were fine with Virginia too...until they weren't.  

All of the fear and stress and anxiety mix to create the perfect storm.  And as is the nature of this beast, some days I feel fine and others, I can barely seem to function.  I have no idea how one goes about sorting out all the feelings, or which feelings are a cause or an effect of the craziness that's happening in my life right now.  It's like the proverbial chicken and egg question.  So needless to say, I'm back in survival mode, at least for the time being.  I have lots of appointments with my therapist, and am trying to do anything and everything to keep myself centered and grounded.

And when that fails, I take lots of naps.  :)