4.

Posted by Randi

Today is your fourth birthday. I can still remember the way your skin felt under my fingers–like cool velvet. I would give anything to feel that again.

4 years ago on this day I woke up and had no clue my life would be forever changed. But, maybe I did? I naively thought that all was well, and that we would get to keep you. But, this day four years ago I found out the truth.

Nothing is guaranteed. Life is fragile.

I found out what it feels to die; to have your entire soul ripped from your chest and tossed away never to be repaired.

I found out what it felt like to lose everything you have ever known to be true about yourself, your husband, your life.

When you were born I found out what it feels like to give birth to death. I held you, the exquisite, perfect human we had created after years of infertility, as you were lifeless. You never knew life outside of me, and you never knew pain or hate or heartbreak.

When you were born still, my world shattered around me. I changed. We changed. He changed. Your brother changed. Your grandparents and great grand parents and aunts and uncles changed. You changed us; you brought us closer, even though you left us.

My sweet Kenley, I, still and always, will never know why I didn’t get to keep you. I will never know why you had to be taken from us 4 days after Christmas and 4 days before I was scheduled for a c-section. FOUR DAYS. I hold on to so much hate and anger toward my doctors for this. I asked, begged, pleaded to be taken at 38 weeks and no one listened. 38 weeks was Christmas. No one wanted to be bothered.

I bet they wish they had listened to a mother’s intuition now.

It’s like I knew in the depths of my soul that I wouldn’t be able to keep you.

I feel like such a failure; I’m an outcast and an example. I couldn’t keep you alive, in the safest place possible. What kind of Mother am I?

It has taken me years but, I know that your death was not my fault. I know that what happened was out of my control, but it still hurts.

I look at your brother and it hurts to think about the pain he has endured. The loss that he has suffered as well. How little he was when I had you…it breaks my heart into a million pieces.

I look at Alden and I don’t see any of you, but I know that she would not be here in the slightest if you were and I swear to god that’s one of the hardest feelings to wrap my head around.

I look at Rowan and I see you. I see your hair and eyes. I see your nose and mouth. I see you. I watch her grow and wonder if she looks like you. I see you in her in many many ways, and it’s heartbreaking and lovely all at the same time.

I admit that time has softened some things for me, yet some things take me right back to that day. I struggle with anxiety on the daily and I am often taken by surprise at the things that trigger me now a days.

You should be here.

We should be together. I should be holding your hand while we walk through the store. I should know how you smell, and know the color of your eyes, and the freckles on your face.

But I don’t.

And I never will.

And that’s the hardest most painful realization in the whole universe.

No matter how bad I want you back, I just cannot have you. Nothing will ever make that right.

Happy 4th birthday in the stars my beautiful first born daughter.

You are so loved every second of every day. Mommy cannot wait to hold you again some day. I love you forever.

Rowan is ONE!

Posted by Randi

How did THAT happen?! I cannot believe that at 10:32 a.m., my sweetest surprise came into this world. Screaming, dark haired and perfect. She chose to share a birth time (only a.m. v. p.m.) with Kenley. This is so special to me and makes me feel that maybe, in some way, they planned it that way for me together at one point…

Rowie, you are a bundle of laughs all the time. You are feisty, and sweet; You’re smart and out going yet a little shy. You started walking at 9.5 months, and we can’t keep you down. You have the sweetest personality and we don’t know how we ever lived with out you.

You are my greatest surprise and I am so thankful for the chance to be your Mommy. Some day I will explain to you allllllllll the things that came together to make you being in our lives possible, but for today?…

I just want you to know that I will love you with every ounce of my soul until the day that I die.

And I will love you after that, too.

3.

Posted by Randi

My sweetest Kenley,

Today you are three. Except you aren’t…but you are? You are three, wherever you are. You have been missed earth-side for 3 years.

Three years have passed since you were physically here. Three whole years since I held you in my arms.

I can’t believe it.

I was planning to write this huge wonderful birthday letter but honestly? Your momma’s heart is broken into a million pieces and I have no words.

I have said it a million times and I don’t think saying it again would make it any different. It changes nothing.

I miss you. I love you. I hope you know how much your life changed mine. I hope you see how important you are in our daily life. I hope you see all the good I try to do in your name.

You are so loved.

You are so missed.

Your life meant something and it always will.

I see your absence in your sisters presence. It is heart breaking to say the least.

I love you. I love you. I fucking love you more than life itself and I hope that you know that.

I wish I knew that you knew what you mean to me.

Happy Birthday, my beautiful daughter.

Mommy loves you.

two and a half.

Posted by Randi

Today you should be two and a half years old. You should be doing a wide array of things that I have not allowed myself to even think about quite honestly. I don’t know what type of little girl you would be. Would you be a stubborn independent child, or would you be a cuddly love bug? Or both? Would you let me put your hair in pigtails and let me paint your nails?

What would your voice sound like?

Would your eyes stay brown like I read on your autopsy report they were?

How much would you love Landon? He loves you so much and he never got to meet you. That is one of my biggest “I don’t know if I did the right thing” moments…it’s probably the only moment in my life that I’m always questioning or replaying…should I have let him see you? He misses you so bad.

I don’t typically allow my brain to go to these places because it’s just too sad. It is so fucking sad. My heart breaks daily for you and what our family lost when you left us. I wish so badly that you were alive and I was able to hold you in my arms and kiss your warm skin. I would give anything to run my hands over your beautiful face one more time. I love you, sweet girl.

It is not lost on me that both of your sisters wouldn’t be here if you were and that is a very hard thing to swallow. These days, it feels like I can’t imagine you being alive, and them not being here. I never thought I would be able to even think that way, but grief is weird and confusing. I know it’s all part of healing but it makes me so sad.

Grief is changing for me lately.

Maybe it’s not the grief that is changing per se; I still miss you as much if not more than the day you left me. Instead, maybe it’s the fact that your sisters are helping me heal in ways I never thought possible mixed with the fact that my heart has cried all it possibly can for you. There are times when everything feels fresh and I am overwhelmed with the raw grief of the early days, but that is more rare now. More often it is something small that brings a tear to my eye; instead of crying for an entire day, I will be blindsided and cry for a few moments. The grief is short lived and super intense but I’m able to pull myself from its grips.

Christmas anything, songs, colors, the weather, noises, driving past certain places, wearing certain clothes, certain scents, the way your Daddy looks at me…these are some of the things that are normal, yet somehow are also triggers for me. Life is like a second hand puzzle you get at goodwill and you are the missing piece; Everything now feels discounted, and cheap. I feel cheated. I’ll never get that piece back.

Today you should be 2 and a half. How is that even possible. The mind is an amazing thing capable of understanding some really intense stuff but I will NEVER understand your death. I know that there is a “scientific reason” why you died; we were fortunate enough to get that answer. But, there is no logical reason in the same sense…there is no reason a perfect child should die. My perfect baby should be alive.

I’ve never allowed myself to fully go back to that day. My heart is one small break away from irreparable damage. It’s not that I don’t want to remember it, I do so badly, but it hurts. It’s a memory that no one should ever have.

Kenley, you were (are) so wanted. I planned for you. I prepared my life for your arrival and you never came. I am so sorry that I couldn’t save you; I know that it’s not my “fault” but IT IS.

Two and a half years…how does it feel like just yesterday, but also an eternity since I’ve held you in my arms? Two and a half years closer to you, my sweet first daughter.

I love you.

————-

Your skin

Oh yeah, your skin and bones

Turn into something beautiful

You know, you know I love you so

You know I love you so

-Coldplay. Yellow.

thinking.

Posted by Randi

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.

711

photo prompt.

Posted by Randi

As many of you know, I am doing the capture your grief challenge on my IG. Each day’s prompt gives you an outlet to speak about the real emotions related to losing your child. Today’s prompt was Beautiful Mysteries.

Um. Ouch. Mega mega ouch.

This prompt urged you to speak about the mysteries of your child. I chose to speak of where I would see Kenley now. What would she be? Who would she be? I found todays prompt extremely hard. I have a rough time with envisioning my dead baby as a real baby. I don’t know if it’s strictly because I don’t want to think about it because I know it can never happen. I don’t know if I don’t want to hurt my heart like that? When I opened my heart for this challenge today, I just found myself crying while writing it. I chose to use a photo of Kenley’s hair for todays photo. Her beautiful, auburn, strawberry hair makes my heart melt; it was the most beautiful color. The lock of hair we have from her is dark brown, though. I don’t remember it looking that way in real life, and I HATE that. I hate that I can’t clearly recall what her hair looked like. Sure, photos help, but she’s my daughter…why does my brain block it out?

Grief brain?

Is it my heart and soul protecting itself?

I’m not sure what it is, but I am sure one one thing…I would give anything to be able to see her one more time.

random.

Posted by Randi

I think today is going to be a post of a bunch of random things because I can’t really think of a way to put them into an organized post…so here goes nothing.

• I’m participating in the capture your grief social media photo prompt challenge. I really enjoy writing all of my feelings out, even when they don’t make sense or come off super bitchy. I don’t mean them to come off that way, but it seems like they do. It doesn’t make me worried that they’re offending people because that’s not the point of the photo challenge, it’s to express your feelings. I think it’s very helpful for me. I didn’t think I would be able to do it, honestly. I thought that I would just cry every single day when I went to post, but I’m handling it pretty well. I’m proud of myself.

• Yesterday was my birthday. I knew it was going to suck (emotionally) strictly because it was supposed to be so different than it actually was. I was supposed to have my beautiful almost 10 month old daughter with me. I don’t really know how I expected the day to go had she been here, but she wasn’t here and it sucked- bottom line. Shane and Landon bought me flowers, and cards so that was super nice. Shane spent the day hanging our new bathroom light fixture, and installed two new dimmer switches in the house. We had a nice dinner with Landon and watched Harry Potter. It was a nice day, just a sad one.

• Landon LOVES Harry Potter. I mean, he asks to watch it every night. We are already on the Goblet of Fire. I don’t see his interest slowing down any time soon. He even asked to be Harry for halloween. My heart is so full! (We are mega HP nerds here…) After Shane and I found out we were pregnant, we took a trip to Orlando and went to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It was the first place that Kenley went when she existed. I was so happy to know that she was with me then.

• I’ve spent way too much time in front of the TV the past day or so watching news about the Hurricane. I mean…like WAY too much time. I find it very interesting, honestly. I’ve been watching clips from Haiti and there are children standing next to rushing water. Uh…maybe don’t stand so close???? It gives me serious anxiety!

• This morning we got Landon up and ready for school. We watched him get on the bus, and then came back inside. When I walked in, Shane yelled “hey wanna watch tv in bed for a little bit?”. UM. YES. So we laid in bed, watched the weather channel, had breakfast in bed, and ended up falling asleep. It was such a nice relaxing morning. I do not remember the last time I felt that relaxed. I didn’t roll my ass out of bed until 12:40! It was amazing.

• Next weekend my little sister is getting married. I’m hoping to be able to head to my hometown in the middle of the week next week. We’ll see what happens with Shane’s work schedule, but it would be nice for all of us to “get away” for a little bit, even if it is going to be hectic.

• I can feel myself maybe falling back into a slump? I’m not sure exactly what it is that I’m feeling, but I have been putting off house work again, and just feeling like I want to sleep all the time. I know it very well could be the fact that I’m pregnant, but it doesn’t feel that way. I dunno. I guess I’ll just keep an eye on it. What does that even mean? I guess i’ll just wait and see how much more laundry builds up and I will equate that to how I’m feeling emotionally? Ugh.

• and last but not least…we went to Lowe’s on Wednesday while Landon was in school. We walked through the paint, and picked out a few colors for this baby’s room. We had talked about what colors we wanted to look at, so…I decided that since I have officially hit my 2nd trimester (already…) that I would look. So, there’s that.