I’ve had to do a lot of thinking lately. I know that sounds weird because you think everyday, but I feel like lately it’s been “extra hard” thinking.  Just FYI, this post talks about my current pregnancy, so if you’re having a bad day please guard your heart. I will not be offended.

For example-

• Am I going to be ok with the giant dinosaur being moved away from Kenley’s door? I will have to look at the physical door every day now when I walk to Landon’s room. You might think it’s stupid, but trust me, it’s not.

• There has been talk about a baby shower for this baby. I didn’t have one for Kenley because I bought every.single.thing. she could have ever needed in her entire first year of life. While I, in theory, would love to throw this baby a shower…I would feel more guilt than ever imgaineable because I didn’t have one for K. How could I not have had one for her; For my perfect sweet girl. It breaks my heart.

• How am I going to deal with her nursery? I know some people say “it’s like a hand me down”, or “reuse some of the things for the new baby’s nursery”. While I appreciate their insight, it’s just not that easy. Repainting her room means I will (willingly) paint over the color I spent so many months picking out. I bought 7 samples of paint before finding her color. SEVEN. It had to be perfect, and it was absolutely perfect– but I can’t reuse the same color. Her dresser will be reused for her little sister, and needs to be repainted as well. I spent a month painting that thing, so happy and enjoying every second of it.

Now, thinking about repainting the dresser makes me want to die. It makes me feel like a traitor to my own daughter. This feeling goes along with everything in her nursery that I will be replacing (don’t say it’s not replacing, because it IS)  for our new daughter. It’s a whole separate level of weird grief.

• I know that I will feel sad using the same clothes for this baby that I bought specifically for Kenley. I want to use them, but at the same time I want to get rid of everything that was specifically hers. I would feel horrible if I really did get rid of it, because they are her things. They are the things we specifically for her; for the daughter that we so badly wanted, yet just couldn’t keep for some reason.

• I can’t help but think that she was failed by modern medicine. It’s 2015/16 and she died inside of me; inside of the one place where she was supposed to be the safest. My body failed her, because someone somewhere SOMEHOW missed something very important on one of Kenley’s ultrasounds. We had so many that it blows my mind it happened.  I do not believe I was given enough NSTs. I had ONE….because I asked for it. I’m sorry, but listening to my baby’s HB on a doppler, once every 2 weeks, for five seconds is NOT good enough. My poor girl, I wish I could have given her better care. I wish I would have been taken seriously when I told ALL of my doctors that I knew she needed to come at 38 weeks. She died at 38+4. Cue all the guilt in the whole wide world.

• Naming this beautiful child I’m carrying might be one of the hardest things I’ll ever have to do in my life. I knew since the age of 21 that if I ever had a daughter, her name would be Kenley. I told Shane and he agreed. We knew her name 9 years before we had her. We never wavered. And now? Now I get to say her name forever, sure, but through grief and sadness. How is any of this fair?

• How can I make myself enjoy this pregnancy? I think I’m keeping my distance, as I’m sure most people do during a subsequent pregnancy after losing their child. How am I for sure that this child will come home to us? What if I was to go through all of the preparations again, and get excited, and this baby dies too? I have an anterior placenta this pregnancy, so I’m already not going to be able to feel kicks as early as before. I can’t find her HB on my doppler yet, when I found K’s @ 10 weeks. It’s like everything is telling me to just “keep your distance” and I don’t want to, but I also feel like I hands down have to.

• We have 2 embryos on ice; they are male embryos. I love having Landon SO much. He was my first baby, and I would never change that obviously… but boys are hard. Maybe it was just Landon, but he was crazy. He didn’t sleep through the night until age 3, and that’s being SUPER generous because he still had a rough night 4/7 days a week up until Kindergarten. Thinking about having this girl, then going on to have 2 more boys freaks me out. On the other hand, those are my babies. I fought so hard and went through so much to get them that I feel terrible for even thinking about NOT having them. When we started the IVF process things were still super fresh for us.

I told Shane that no matter how many PGS normal embryos we got, that’s how many we were going to have. So we got 3. We were satisfied with that number. Now that I’m pregnant i’m worried that I won’t want to go through this again. I love being pregnant; it makes me feel so grounded and amazing. I had pretty rough pregnancies before this one. Landon made me sick, and it was my first so it was new and weird. Kenley’s pregnancy was SO nasty. I was nauseous and sick 24/7. I had intense fatigue, and my pubic bone separated and caused the worst pain I’ve ever felt. This pregnancy has been fucking CAKE compared to the previous two. I don’t know why, but I’m not sick. I’m tired, but no where near the level I felt with K. I feel like this baby knows she needs to cut me some slack because I have been through hell, and deserve to have at least one good pregnancy.

If we choose to have the additional two children, we need a new house. We are busting at the seams as it its now. I know that we could make it work here with 2 children and our grief for the one we lost, but if we added any others we just wouldn’t have the space. So there is a lot that goes into the process. What I wouldn’t give to just get pregnant naturally. I’m so thankful that I was able to experience that with Landon. He gave me that joy, that naive joy of taking a test and seeing it say “pregnant”, the sheer joy of not knowing that bad things can happen to people who want a baby so badly. I will never forget those moments with Landon. I remember the day that created him so well, I remember buying the tests. I remember calling my mom and saying “uh I think I’m pregnant” and her response being” what do you mean you THINK you’re pregnant!”. I’m so thankful I got to surprise Shane that one time. I love those memories so much.

My mind has been a busy battle ground lately. I’m so sad and so happy at all times.

I don’t know how I get through every day.