Right Where I Am: Two Years, Two Months and 28 days

I've never participated in this before. I never felt like how I felt changed much until recently. I'm sitting here in the soft light of the morning, watching birds fly by our birdhouse and grab little bits of seed. Bingley, our big yellow dog, lays a few feet away, snoring like a grizzly bear. My little golden haired beautiful boy is standing at the coffee table, dancing to a Blues Clues episode.

And for a few minutes, I feel peace and contentment.

As short as six months ago, I think I wouldn't have been able to say that.

For over a year after Georgiana died, I woke up and every morning was Groundhog Day. I would painfully open my eyes, and she's dead, she's dead would run over and over in my mind. In the early days, it was so much I thought I would go insane from it. I could hardly pull myself off the pillow. As time went on, it was still there but somehow I pulled myself and dressed myself for work like an automaton, despite the horrible chorus in my head.

These days, I wake up to the sounds of Davey chatting to himself on the monitor. It's the most beautiful sweet sound, and his presence calms me.

Right where I am now, I don't go visit Georgie's grave. It brings back too many horrible memories for me, and usually puts me in a funk that lasts for days. I've just recently gotten to the point that I'm ok with not going, and don't really care too much what anyone else thinks on this. I talk to her everyday in my mind, usually in the quiet moments. Sometimes I ask her what she's doing, if she saw that, if she'll protect her little brother, watch over us. Other days, my mind drifts back to those horrible moments, when the doctor told us she couldn't find a heartbeat, laboring with her in the hospital, standing at the cemetery and wrapping my arms around her tiny coffin, wanting to take it with me and run away from everything. Those moments still flash, but thankfully their hold is not as strong.

People used to tell me that time heals all wounds after she died. No, it doesn't. Those of us who have lost a child know it's a wound that never heals. But it softens, so that I can still enjoy my life and days, something I never thought I'd be able to do again after we lost G. I can notice the birds now, my dog snoring, my son, and say a small prayer of thankfulness in those moments. I never thought I'd make my way out of the heavy fog of grief to be able to enjoy those things again. But I have. It's a whole lot of heaven punctuated by small moments of hell, but I'll take the heaven as much as I can.

Everything

I don't even know where to start. I've been away from here for awhile, almost 3 months, I think. I've been reading everyone else's posts and keeping up, and I miss you all! I would love to come to the next rainbow baby convention, though I'm not sure how to drag 2 rainbow babies in tow who are less than 14 months apart.

So much has been happening these last 3 months.

One, I am as big as a house.

Right, right, you say...every pregnant woman says that about herself.

No, really, everyone. I am huge. My face looks like a full moon right now. I feel huge. Let's just put it this way. I'm closer to the hub's weight than I am comfortable with.

But let's get to the important part. For now, this little one looks great, is passing her tests at the high risk doc, is [mostly] passing her NSTs, and for all these things I'm grateful.

Her?

That's right. I said her. See...they had said we were having another boy. Then they said they were having a girl.

I cried for probably 10 minutes straight at the doctor's office when they told us. Dave and Davey were with me. Of course my crying made Davey burst into tears.

It's been hard to characterize this pregnancy. With Davey I was so hopeful and yet so afraid at the same time. Lots of near panic attacks. Lots of laying on the bathroom floor in the stall at work, trying to use the Doppler to find a heartbeat. Combine that with a sleepy, chill baby, and I was a wreck most of the time.

This little one is different. They have all been different. I don't spend nearly as much time terrified as I did last time. I think this is for a lot of reasons. One, she moves pretty consistently, not like Davey who would go for 2 hours at a time with one little nudge, sending me in panic to labor and delivery many times. Two, I'm distracted by a one year old right now, a very busy one year old who is on the verge of walking, likes to put everything in his mouth, and is going through major cling-to-mom/separation anxiety right now. Three, I've had a child live, and it just seems to make my perspective different.

Don't get me wrong. I've had my share of PTSD with this child. I've woken up more than I'd like to admit in the middle of the night and pulled out the doppler because I don't feel her moving, convinced it's over. We had a small scare with the placenta a little earlier on. Right after our 28 week U/S, my high risk doc looked at me and casually said, "So, have you had any bleeding?"

"Bleeding?" I said, dumbfounded.

It turns out my placenta was close to my cervix, and he expected me to start bleeding, sort of like a placenta previa situation. That put me on major panic for about 3 weeks, until suddenly, the issue corrected itself.

Also, I have two wonderful and beautiful cousins who reached out to me a couple of months ago and asked me if they could throw me a baby shower.

A. Baby. Shower.

You BLM's out there all know the fear and sadness those words strike in our hearts. My mom told me to just think on it, and not say no right away. So...I did. I thought on it, and prayed on it, and tried to run through in my mind how something like that might go.

And about a week after they asked me, I told them yes.

We had the shower on Saturday. It turned out...lovely. I mostly dreaded it all week, and come Saturday morning, I lay on my bed, with my head on my husband's shoulder, bawling my eyes out and telling him I couldn't go. Also, I was sweating like you couldn't believe, despite the fact that my thermostat said 67 degrees.

He let me cry, and let me talk to him about how sad I was, how it all made me so sad about Georgie's shower, and how I couldn't stop thinking about the little gold shoes that were out on the table at her shower. These were the shoes we buried her in. I just couldn't shake the image or the memory, or the gut wrenching awfulness of it all.

I began to think that I couldn't trust myself to go to this shower and hold my you know what together. After about 20-30 minutes of crying, I mustered up my courage, got dressed, and left with my mother in law with me. I'm not sure if she could tell I had lost it or not, but I didn't say anything and neither did she, thankfully.

I only cried a little while opening some gifts, but it really was a wonderful time. Most importantly of all, my sweet and thoughtful cousins had set up a little table with 4 white frames. The big white frame had a little print in gold and pink that said "I'm the little sister."

The other three white frames had an ultrasound pic of baby girl, a picture of Davey from Easter, and one of the beautiful pictures of Georgie in her christening gown taken at the hospital after she was born.

And I was just so touched that all my children had been included. It made it just perfect.

Not sure if I'll every go to anyone else's shower ever again, but I have told myself to at least consider it, because a shower for me turned out so much better than I could have guessed. I would have missed out if I had just said no, and it was really a day to celebrate a new little girl in our lives, but also remember and honor our other little girl that's no longer here, and any opportunity where many people remember her is oh so special to me.

Other things...I should probably get started on the nursery. I've collected some things, and have completely infringed upon this.  I'm not ashamed to say that I'm basically copying the big elements of her daughter's nursery.

Am also starting to think that I've bit off more than I can chew on that one. Who knew wallpaper was going to be such a pain? But I've already committed and bought two fabulous (more expensive than I wanted) rolls of wallpaper from Anthropologie.

Now it's time to commit and get going on this business. However, I've waited until I'm almost 35 weeks preggo. Not smart. Not smart, folks. I feel a little deflated and haven't even begun yet.

Also, this baby has forced me and Dave to somehow organize the gazillion books we own in this house. That's a good thing. As painful as ripping off a band-aid, but good. We've had to make hard decisions. Letting go of a good book is like letting go of an old friend.

In other news....I need advice from you mamas out there.

1. How am I supposed to handle a one year old and a newborn while recovering from a c-section? Any good advice or advice for good mixed drinks welcome here, as either will probably help.

2. For those of you that cloth diaper, I need deets. Davey has a redness on his bottom that will not go away. I have tried Nystatin, Monistat, Aveeno baths, granola crunchy disposable dipes like Earth's Best and Huggies Pure and Natural, cloth wipes, you name it. I've let him crawl around with no diaper, and he has, I'm not kidding, actually stood himself just so he can pee while standing. What a little man. It was cute, but still nothing is helping. I think I'm going to have to go cloth on the little boy. Need major advice on this.

This girl is supposed to come July 16. I can hardly wait.