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We tried again...
I held my best friend's baby boy. A baby who was born with the same midwife I used, the same hospital my son was born in, a big boy just like my son and she had that baby without pain meds, naturally just like I did. In fact she originally gave me the strength to even attempt to birth naturally myself. I couldn't help but get transported back 4 years to when I had my son. I empathized with her post partum state and my heart got wrapped around this beautiful new addition to her family.
They say grief is just love with nowhere to go. I'd been carrying around a lot of grief in my heart because it was Christmas time and that's when I lost my Sky Dec 27th 2017. God sent a beautiful baby boy to my best friend in December. God's plans are perfect. That baby healed me the minute she sent me his picture over Facebook messenger, looking just like his biggest sister. My heart melted into a puddle that came out my eyes in big crocodile tears. Then a few days later I held him and I knew, I knew we had to try again.
My son turned four a few weeks later. That was hard for me. I felt this "bigness" in him. I no longer have a toddler. He's been potty trained for so long, so smart beyond his years, getting taller and heavier to hold by the day. My baby was slipping away. My heart ached that he still did not have a sibling. I knew we had to try again.
After Sky I thought I was going to be fine with an only child. While my son was younger I felt fine, but the years slowly crept up, and I kept getting older too, and the weeks leading up to his birthday coupled with my friend's baby led me to realize that I had been believing lies that one was the best option. Sure it's easier. Sure I can get someone to watch him almost all the time. Sure it's cheaper to go places with just one kid, but I felt this emptiness in my heart and I knew I had to stop letting fear of the unknown rule me. We had to try again.
So we did. On my son's birthday my body decided it could no longer carry a baby. I knew through the pain I experienced that night that the baby was gone. I held my husbands hand at 4AM through tears and pain and he prayed over me and we let Jesus take another of our children before we got to meet him or her.
It happened so fast! Both my losses happened so fast it seems like I drempt them. I told my two best friends that morning because I knew as soon as they saw me they'd know something wasn't right. This woman who just had her own baby, on a Friday that I was supposed to be going to "check in" on her to make sure she was adjusting to three children ok says to me, "I'm bringing you dinner and we're coming over tomorrow instead and I'm making the kids lunch what do you want."
Cheesy potatoes. That's what I want. My husband went dairy free a few months ago and that's one thing I haven't made in a LONG time. She introduced me to them and showed me how to make them and they're my favorite. I told her not to worry if she didn't have the ingredients for them on hand but I know she went to the store anyway with her three children just for me. Made sure to find the dairy free buns, and made food from scratch that was dairy free so my husband could eat too. Do you know the enormity of love that is! Do you know how hard it is to go to the store with 3 children still in a post partum state. I'm bawling just typing this because sometimes showing love is just in the simple everyday things like cheesy potatoes for your grieving friend.
Her daughter asked, "Why can't Miss Dana cook her own dinner." as they were shopping. That opened the door to share with her how to love someone going through a hard trial. Was I capable of cooking that day? Of course, but as they came and fed my son lunch and I sat down with those potatoes then noticed my entire kitchen had been cleaned up I just bawled. My first instinct was to say "no I'll be fine" when she first offered, but sometimes you don't know what you need until it shows up at your front door. My heart hurt so much yet I snuggled that new baby of hers and her presence brought a joy to my emptiness I was feeling. She fed my tummy that day with those potatoes but more importantly she fed my heart!
She's never experienced a loss thank God. I wouldn't wish this pain on my worst enemy. Yet somehow she's been the one to give this peace to my life in all this. She just listens. Often saying to me "I just don't know what to say I'm so sorry." I don't care if she says anything. She's just there, all the time. She has 3 children of her own to care for yet these past few days I message her at all and she responds instantly. She's the reason I haven't hit rock bottom, and you know what, she said the exact same thing about me when I was helping her though her post partum state just weeks before all this. Be that friend to someone. The one that digs deep in the mess and just loves them.
There's a scene in Last Man Standing where Ed's girlfriend loses their baby. Mike Baxter asks if there's anything he can do. Ed says no. Mike pulls up a chair and just sits there. He just sits there. Available. Showing his best friend he's not alone even if he can't fix it for him or do anything. I'm going to sit here with you and feel your pain.
I told her Satan could destroy all this if I let him steal my joy. I could decide I can't be around her baby and be jealous of her family and fall into a pit of sorrow. Or I can hold that beautiful baby God gave her and celebrate life even if I didn't get to give it.
Am I still jealous and hurting. Absolutely. I will never get the joy of breastfeeding again and that breaks my heart. It was my absolute favorite thing about being a mother. I'm beyond thankful I donated and fed my son for two years with my milk while I had the option too because you never know what the future will bring. Watching my friend breastfeed her son was HARD. I can't hide those feelings but I can choose what to do with them and choose joy.
Not saying everyone can do this, everyone grieves differently at different times. There's nothing wrong with you if you can't hold a newborn days after your miscarriage. Somehow God gave me the strength to and I'm so thankful. Find the way you need to heal on your own time in your own way. Grief has no time table and it sneaks up on you in the weirdest of times and that's OK.
I started out trying for this baby with the mindset I wasn't getting too attached too early, so in that sense this has been a tad "easier". We had planned not to tell anyone for as long as I thought I could hide it this time because of our previous loss. I didn't want showers, or gifts or any baby crap in the house until the baby came because of our previous loss. I knew I couldn't handle walking into a home filled with baby things if this baby didn't make it. I share all of that to help bring understanding to how extremely hard it is for people to have babies after loss. The excitement is coupled with an unbelievable sorrow and having to deal with reality that you could lose this child at any moment. I personally know women who have lost babies at 6 weeks, 20 weeks, full term babies. Loss happens at anytime to anyone.
If anything I want my children in heaven to help me spread the word about this real and honest thing that happens so maybe people will be a bit more sensitive when they aren't told of a pregnancy right away, when they are asked to not get gifts, when they are given a cold shoulder for asking "how many kids do you have?" "When are you having kids" "Aw only one". STOP IT you don't know the heartache someone may be going through to grow their family.
Knowing what to expect since, sadly I've been through this before has made it a tad "easier" too. The worst part is knowing you're carrying a passed baby and waiting for your cycle to start. Life starts at conception so even with these few short weeks there's absolutely a baby there. A baby with a soul, a heart. God's creation.
When you miscarry you go from pre-pregnancy hormones to getting ready to give birth hormones, to period hormones all in a matter of, for me, a few short weeks. I re-arranged the entire house. I had boughts of extreme anger, hot flashes, crying over nothing, insomnia. Total mess. The one positive of all this my hair ROCKED so silky and soft and beautiful thank you pre-natal vitamins. (I have to find the positives or I will lose it so yey nice hair) I just want to be honest so that maybe I'll help someone.
This baby will be named Blu. I'm feeling blue because of loss, but I think of a blue bird flying up to heaven to meet Jesus. My friend got me a painting with a bird flying up to the sky in memory of Sky. Now we'll add a second bird as well to that painting of our family. I won't lie, hanging that painting was HARD I don't want a family full of birds in the sky while we sit in a tree just the 3 of us. But life isn't about what I want. It's about what God wants for me. He hears our plans and then says Mine is much greater. My first plan was to have a baby when my son was about two I wanted them close in age, my second plan was to have another hopefully before he turned five because I just felt like time was slipping away from us. God is outside of time. It doesn't even matter to Him. I have to believe these truths otherwise I will lose it. Do I think God took my babies on purpose for a purpose and all that jazz, not officially no. I believe He works all things for our good, and that we live in a fallen world of illness and bad nutrition and thyriod problems and who knows what caused my losses. All I know is that if I take my eyes off my Creator I lose myself. I don't want to lose myself.
Not sure what the future holds for us but I find when I throw up my hands and say I'm done trying to run my own life God please show me YOUR ways, that's when my life is the fullest and most beautiful. When I'm dwelling in the shelter of the most high under the protection of his feathers. (Psalm 91) My baby Blu bird.. feathers. Jesus <3
Lyrics Ella Fitzgerald
Blue skies Smiling at me Nothing but blue skies Do I see
Bluebirds Singing a song Nothing but bluebirds All day long
Never saw the sun shining so bright Never saw things going so right Noticing the days hurrying by When you're in love, my how they fly
Blue days All of them gone Nothing but blue skies From now on
