PGAL

randoms.

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Today Landon brought home his little report card. He is above his grade level for reading which is awesome, and he’s supposed to be able to count to 50…well he counts to 200 (really he counts to 500, but then we usually stop him haha. I’m assuming a similar situation happened at school).  He also brought home a book from the library on Barracudas, which I found hilarious– Only Landon.

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Today we had our repeat 4D ultrasound. She was flipped head down still, but her head was on the left side, instead of the right side. She had her knees pulled to her chest and held there with her hands. This is a usual position for her; she’s been this way at three ultrasounds now! I’m not sure how it’s comfortable, but she looks like she’s eating her knees. Well, we were able to get a face shot of her in 4d for a quick second! She looks identical to Landon and Kenley. Same eyes, button nose, and huge lips. 

I wish we could have seen her in HDlive, but I guess she just wants to surprise us. At one point I felt a big kick and thought maybe she had rolled so we could see her, so the tech put the wand to the area I felt the kick in. What did I see?

Her leg extended straight up against my stomach, being held up by her hand.

 I laughed so hard. No wonder I’ve been feeling giant kicks in that area.

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Our glider is in at babies r us, so I think we’re going tomorrow afternoon to pick it up. Shane and Dustin moved our Treadmill to the basement so we have room in the bedroom for the glider. I think we’re just going to keep it in our bedroom instead of the Nursery right now as this babe will be in there for a while at first.

On the subject of Nursery…We had a company out to quote painting the nursery yesterday. I wasn’t even considering that I might be triggered by the conversation to change the nursery wall color. I, however, was very much triggered. I walked the man into the bedroom and just lost it. I had to walk out and let Shane handle it all. He eventually told the guy what happened and that the room was just painted last August. The man was very very sympathetic, and I appreciated his comments. We signed the contract with them, and they will be starting January 16th,

One day after my baby shower (that I’m feeling guilty about).

Apparently I like to go big or go home regarding doing a lot of triggering things at one time. UGH.

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27. 

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I’m officially done with grocery shopping at this point in pregnancy. There came a time during Landon and Kenley’s pregnancies where it was just too much to walk around for 2 hours, loading the cart, unloading, reloading and unloading and putting away the groceries…that time is now during this pregnancy. 

I started getting some RLP the last few aisles but powered through, but when I got in the car my stomach was as hard as a rock. Chugged some water when we got home, and laid down (read: freaked out and used the Doppler)  while Shane unloaded the car and put the groceries away. I don’t know if I didn’t drink enough water today or what but I HATE feeling like that. 

Tomorrow Landon goes back to school after being off for the Holidays. It’s bittersweet because I love spending time with him, but also I played more Uno, and Monopoly Jr than any human should in the last few days so…I’m kinda ready. 

Tomorrow marks my 27th week of pregnancy. Some people consider this to be the start of the 3rd Trimester.

 THIRD. TRIMESTER. 

There are only three; this is the LAST. Um excuse me? How is this possible. 

How has it been a year since I lost my first daughter, and now I’m entering the home stretch of a subsequent pregnancy for my second daughter…who will (hopefully) be my only living daughter. 

Life is just like a really bad rollercoaster. 

Life is like the fucking corkscrew at Cedar Point. 

Tomorrow at 10:30 Shane and I are having an elective 3D/4D ultrasound. We’ve had them with our other two pregnancies so, I decided it was 100% necessary for this one as well. I know some people think they’re creepy, but I love them. Both of my children have looked IDENTICAL to the 3D scans. It’s amazing. 

I’m both excited and nervous; more nervous that Baby A is going to look identical to Kenley. I’m not sure how I’ll react, but I plan to be open with the tech when we get there and s/he (undoubtedly) asks if this is my first baby/scan/child/ some other question that’s going to sting.  Also, I’m pretty sure I’m going to warn her, before I even lift my shirt, that my stomach is bruised all to hell from lovenox and to not be afraid/call the cops on me. 

Back in December I ordered curtains for the Nursery. Today they showed up, and I felt my heart drop a little. I don’t want to disassemble the remnants of “Kenley’s” nursery, but slowly it is happening. 

It’s becoming Alden’s room now. 

The curtains are adorable and I love them, but seeing Kenley’s curtains come down was a really sad moment. All of my moments anymore are sad & happy simultaneously and honestly, that is a lot to handle for one persons heart. I folded up Kenley’s curtains and placed them on her rocker. I’m not sure where I’ll put them, but eventually I’ll be able to find a place. 

Shane once said to me that there will be a time where we look at Alden and we won’t know how we would ever survive without her; that we won’t know our family any other way than WITH her in it. 

While I completely understand what he is saying, it breaks my heart that I will always have to wonder how my life would have been with Kenley in it…here, physically, not just in my heart. 

Fuck. Grief and Loss are so incredibly hard to navigate. 

some days. 

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* first off, TW because there is a bump photo at the end of this post…* 

I know that all loss mom’s can relate to having one good day followed by a really bad couple of days. At least that’s what it seemed to be like in my early days. I would have a really good day where I could think of Kenley, smile, and keep my eyes dry. Those days are coming more frequently (although I cry most every day, sometimes more than others, and sometimes I go a few days without crying- it’s kind of a crap shoot really…).  It seems as if I’m having more “meh” days this month which, to be honest, I fully expected. The build up of this holiday, and then her birthday sometimes feels like it’s going to crush me. 

I’ve been feeling really tired lately. The kind of tired where you just never feel rested. I’m sure it has something to do with getting over pneumonia, but it just feels like more than that; it feels like my soul is tired. I would be lying if I said that this is the first time I’ve felt this kind of tiredness- It’s not. And, I fully expect it to not be the last time either. I have been in bed at 8 pm for the past three nights, and tonight I’m in bed again ( crawled in around 8:04…) and Shane is snoring beside me. He’s allowed to be tired; he gets up at 4am, works all day, and comes home to me- the grieving wife. 

The wife who is so tired that she hits snooze on her alarm twice and has to rush to get her son out the door to school. The wife who went back to sleep until 11 am and BARELY found the strength to roll herself out of bed, only to plant herself on the couch until her husband got home at 2pm. The wife who crys randomly. The wife who just sucks all the happiness out of everything (or so it feels) because she is constantly carrying the heaviest of burdens-  The burden of letting her daughter die. 

I don’t know why I’m so tired, but it feels like depression. I’m sure this month is to blame, actually I’m almost 100% positive it is. I’m trying to be excited for Christmas, but every day that Landon and I take a link off our countdown chain, I kinda wanna die. 

20 days till Christmas

24 days until what should be Kenley’s first birthday on earth, but instead it’s the anniversary of the day I had to say goodbye to my perfect child. 

We got our first Christmas card today ( as per usual it was from my Aunt Kathi- every year!) and Landon was so happy that he kept the envelope in his room. 

Yep, the envelope- not the card. 

I am not sending cards this year. Last year, I wrote out cards and as I was writing Kenley’s name in them, I just felt like “You shouldn’t do that. You’re going to jinx it…” and well…we all know what happened. 

So, no cards this year. 

I don’t think we’re doing gifts for anyone but Landon, either. For one, it makes me fucking sick to think about wrapping anything, about sitting on the floor with Shane and being in the exact same situation as last year…pregnant, with our daughter, expecting a good outcome. 

And second, getting anyone to give us ideas is like pulling teeth so, whatever. 

I have a fetal echocardiogram on December 13th, so I’m glad we will have another ultrasound of her before the Holiday but it doesn’t bring me comfort. I also have a growth ultrasound on December 22nd, so again, happy but zero comfort. 

This Christmas I will be 26 weeks pregnant with my second daughter. 

How I wish things were so much different. I wish I had Kenley, and was also pregnant. I wish she could have lived. 

I bought all three of my children stockings. They are hanging in between Mine and Shane’s on the TV stand where we always hang them…

3 stockings= 1 child 

I’m not good at math but that just seems so fucking wrong. 


Also, surprise. We’re naming this little girl Alden, after her big sister. 

And last but not least, here is my first official bump photo. I’ve been very hesitant to post one, mostly because it still bothers me to see myself pregnant to an extent (also I know how much these photos hurt other loss mommas…)  But, in the spirit of loving this child just as much as I love Landon and Kenley…. here is 22+4


Hope you like my bitmoji, I look super pissed in this pic so I opted for a smiling fake me instead. 

tomorrow.

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Tomorrow you should be 11 months old.

You could be walking, and jabbering. I can’t even think about what you would look like because it breaks my heart into a million pieces.

I can’t believe it’s been so long. I can’t believe I haven’t held your sweet body in such a long time. It makes me so sad. I miss you every second of every day.

Today was rough. I think the anticipation of these milestones is what gets me. Obviously the day is bad, too, but the lead up is worse.

I pulled the trigger on two piece of decor for baby A’s nursery today. After I bought the first one, I felt like I was hit by a bus. I pressed “purchase” and I literally didn’t move off the couch for 3 hours afterward. Grief, it’s a really fucked up thing.

I was happy to finally buy something, and then immediately sad and guilty for doing so. I know that those feelings are normal, but damn.

So in the spirit of making myself feel better, and maybe more excited (IDK?) here is what I bought today for her nursery. Ugh. My heart.

safavieh-lilac-shag-outdoor-area-rug-sg151-7272ptru1-23919455dt

I love our mail man.

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Since Kenley died, I have gotten packages in the mail literally every week it seems- some times I get a few at a time. Our mail man has never once said anything about it, he just delivers the mail to us with a smile on his face.

Last week when all of my books came, I walked out to meet him when I saw him pull up the driveway. He said (with a smile on his face) “I’ve been fighting those damn things all day! They’ve been moving all around back there!”, I laughed and almost told him why I ordered 20 books, but decided not to. Today, my candles came. I saw him pull up the drive way, so I walked out to greet him and get the box; it was heavy again so I expected something to be said jokingly. He just sort of looked at me, and I looked at him. I knew he was sort of looking for me to say something (you know how you can just tell someone wants to know what the hell is going on?).

I looked at him and it just flooded out of me. I said, “Thank you for always delivering these packages with a smile on your face! I appreciate it! Our daughter was stillborn at 38 weeks last December and that’s why we are constantly getting packages, so thank you!”…

He looked at me, and said “Oh my god, I am so sorry. I am so so sorry”.

He handed me the box of candles, the rest of my mail, and gave me a smile. Off he went. I don’t know. I just felt like it was the right time to tell him? I’m not sure if the fact that he delivered me a shit ton of stuff last year while I was uber pregnant, and he’s never seen a baby at our house was bothering me and I felt like I needed to tell him, or what…Maybe it’s the fact that I’m showing…again…with no baby here for him to see when I was obviously pregnant all of last year. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I told him today and I hope that I didn’t freak him the hell out.

On that note, like I said, my candles came! I am constantly in awe of people who still do nice things for other people. The company that sent me these candles is a small locally owned company from the PNW. It’s called Aggies on main, and they sell soy candles. I reached out to them by recommendation of another loss mom (Hi Sarah!). The company immediately replied that they would love to work with me. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen but ultimately they donated 20 candles to my project. Amazing…just amazing.

Lisa is the woman who I was working with, and she is just one of the most caring people I’ve come to know on this journey. I am so thankful that she chose to help me. The impact her candles will have on a future mother who loses her children will be immeasurable. She wrote me a wonderful note in the card she sent. It brought me to tears.



I also pulled the trigger today on the other items I wanted in the bags.

-Journals +Pens: I did nothing but cry during my stay at the hospital, and I wish I was able to have done something else. I mean, I didn’t even get to really spend time with Kenley. She was with us, and I did spend time with her, but I wish I would have been a little more clear minded and taken more photos, and held her every second I possibly could. Maybe these journals will help someone to clear their mind so that they can hold their baby longer.

journals

-Chapstick: Ugh. My lips were so chapped in the hospital they felt like they were going to fall of my face or bleed. Im thankful to have been given some chapstick by my mom, but I’m sure some people won’t be prepared for the need.

chapstick

-Memories too few: This book is literally like 10 pages, and it’s an easy read. Like I’ve said before, we were given a book and it was just too long, and too “standard”. I feel like when I read this book, that I could have written it myself. Maybe that’s why I like it more than pretty much any other one I’ve read to date. Amazon only had 1 in stock (wtf?) so I ordered it, so they will have to stock more! I hope they stock them soon.

book

I ordered bags to put them all in as well. I’m going to have about 30 extra brown bags, but maybe that will be inspiration to keep filling them…

 

First Birthday Request.

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Kenley’s first birthday -December 29th- is just a few weeks away. I can’t believe I should have a child in my arms who would be possibly walking, jabbering, or causing chaos in our lives every day. I can’t believe that she isn’t here. It breaks my heart every day that I wake up and I’m alive, and she is not.

For Kenley’s first birthday, I’m asking for help from anyone who reads this, follows me on IG, or knows me any other way.

I’m asking you to write my daughters name. Write her name, anyway you would like to, and send me a picture. I want to take all of the photos that we receive and make a collage to put in my bedroom so I can make a wall dedicated to her. 

I’ve had a few people send me photos already, and I love them! Be as creative as you want, I welcome the diversity of the photos! If you send them, please include who you are and how you know us. I’m assuming I will know most people, but I guess you never know.

If you want to participate in this, I have set up a specific e-mail account for photos to be sent to, you can DM it to me on IG, or you can text them to me if you know my number- I’m fine with whatever.

My goal is to have all of the photos by the middle of December so I can have her collage done by her first birthday party.

Here is the e-mail address for photos:

KenleyPhotos@Gmail.com

I look forward to all the pictures! I can’t wait to see how this turns out for our sweet girl! Thank you in advance for helping with this project, and for loving our Kenley so fiercely throughout this past year. Let me know if you have any questions about this, and I will gladly answer! ❤

Protein S Deficiency OR How my body is still trying to ruin things…

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On Thursday, I had my anatomy scan with Dr.F, and all looked well. She was able to better explain to us the cause of Kenley’s death. It was officially decided that she died from blood clots in her umbilical cord. We sort of knew this, but as I’ve said before, when we were first told about the cause of her death we were VERY fresh in our grief. I was better able to understand it now, at almost 11 months out.

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PGAL and feelings of guilt.

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I’ve been having a hard time with the guilt I feel from being pregnant with our second Daughter. I have found a bunch of very interesting articles, and blogs that discuss the feelings of guilt related to loss and to pregnancy after loss. I just can’t find something that speaks to me like other things have- until today.

I was searching, and came across this post on Huffington Post by a woman named Heather Spohr.  I started reading it and immediately burst into tears.

(Please read this letter. It is AMAZING)

The story is written as a letter to Mothers who are announcing their rainbow baby, and I fell in love with it.

 I know how hard it was to announce this baby, the complicated mix of jubilation and guilt. You want to be excited about this new life, but you want to be respectful toward the life who is no longer here. This is the tightrope you’ll walk down for the rest of your life, but it will get easier.

It’s OK to be afraid. It’s OK to take it day-to-day. It’s even OK if you’re not excited. You’ve learned, in the worst possible way, that nothing in life is guaranteed.

As I’ve written in previous posts, I’m struggling with guilt surrounding this pregnancy. I cannot think of this new baby without thinking of the death of Kenley. I know that’s not a good thing, and I’m trying really hard to allow myself to think of Baby A as her own individual person. I often find myself thinking about her in the Nursery which will be her room until we move; I think about her wearing the clothes we specifically picked for Kenley. When I think about these things, I get sad; I start feeling guilty for missing Kenley, and for not celebrating A.

 

But then I read this:

 Even the practical things are complicated. Will you be able to handle giving your new baby items from your deceased child? Even if that child never had the chance to use them? You’ll resent that you don’t get to look at these things as normal hand-me-downs instead of the few cherished possessions your child left behind — yet another reminder of how unfair life is.

YES. This woman, who has had TWO rainbow babies (after the death of her toddler, and after a miscarriage) gets it. I guess it’s just reassuring to know that what I’m feeling is totally normal. I know in my heart that I love being pregnant with this little girl, just as much as I loved being pregnant with Kenley (and Landon) –  it’s just different now. I can’t help but feel the unfairness of the situation whenever I think of this beautiful little girl I’m carrying. This is not to say that I don’t feel moments (lots of them, too) of joy.

She then goes on to say this:

The day Annabel was born was one of the best days of my life. The day we brought her home was one of the hardest. My emotions, fueled by postpartum hormones, were all over the place, and I was completely unprepared. I sobbed onto the top of her tiny head a lot. My heart was swelling and breaking simultaneously, and it overwhelmed me.

I’m absolutely sure that I will be feeling more joy than I can even fathom right now when this little girl comes. I know she will be a member of our family for the rest of our lives, and I can’t wait to give her a great life…but… The overwhelming anxiety I feel about her coming into this world safely is sometimes crushing. I am a crier, so I know that I will cry a lot when she comes. Maybe not. Who knows. I have no idea how I’m going to feel when she arrives and I get to hear her screaming when they take her from my body. When Kenley was born her silence was so heavy; it was the loudest sound I have ever heard.

I guess this post is mostly for me; A mini pep talk of sorts. I have been feeling the heaviness of being PGAL with our Rainbow a lot lately.

Thinking of naming this baby (we have a name picked and we are 80ish% sure we’re using it) makes me sad and excited.Thinking about redecorating the nursery for baby A doesn’t make me excited like I want it to. I hate that, because instead it makes me feel incredibly guilty.

Shane and I decided that we need to buy something for baby A that is specifically her own. This is very hard to think about seeing as we haven’t been in a baby store/down a baby aisle/ avoid baby items like the plague for like 10 months. I’m not sure when this will happen, but it’s our new goal.

I needed to read this letter by Heather today so very very badly.

Baby A will be here in 141 days.

thinking.

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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.

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