Distractions

I've been trying to keep myself distracted lately. Dave and I are still working through Friends, and our next plan is to watch The Borgias, which he got me for my birthday.

Most days I can keep my you-know-what together. Other days (mostly nights) I can get on what feels like the verge of a full blown panic attack.

Like the other night. I woke up at 3 am, convinced baby boy was gone. He had hardly moved the day before, so the panic had been building. I laid there for about an hour, going through all the scenarios in my head, steeling myself for the worst.

I decided to get out of bed and use the Doppler. The dogs came with me into the living room, I put the wand on my belly, and heard what I thought was his heartbeat.

I went back to bed and tried to will myself back to sleep. It didn't happen. I started to wonder if maybe the sound I heard was the placenta, or my blood flow, or worse, my heartbeat. I started Googling these sounds to try and figure out if I heard his heartbeat.

Suffice to say that I didn't go back to sleep until 7 am, only to wake back up at 8 am. Bleh.

SO I am trying to keep myself distracted. I'm sort of decorating the house we just moved into, although we don't have a lot of extra money, so that's a little limited. Another thing I've been doing is trying new recipes.

In the past couple of weeks, I've made

-chicken enchilada casserole
-Thai marinated steak salad (this one was delicious, I could eat it every day)
-dijon mustard chicken
-french toast
-BBQ chicken in the slow cooker
-spaghetti and meat sauce


I also eat a lot of this (though with turkey bacon):

It seems like it's all this kid wants to eat.

Other than that, my wonderful husband and sweet doggies Quatro and Bing try to keep me distracted too. Quatro (the little black and white one) has been my buddy for a long time. 

Bing is the sweetest dog I've ever known. He's a little shy with strangers, but all he wants is love and affection all the time. His body has some genetic issues which have made him a little more high maintenance than the average dog, but by the time we realized that about him, we already loved him, so sending him back to the breeder just wasn't an option.

Bing is also special to me because he came into our lives the same month Georgiana did--July 2010.  We bought him the week before I found out I was pregnant, though it's very likely he and Georgie actually did show up in our lives during the same weekend, maybe even the same day! I've always called him Georgie's dog. I know he would have been a great companion to her. He used to lay in her nursery after she died, when even I couldn't go in. It just broke my heart. We also got both of their names from the same book, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (Bing is short for Bingley). He's connected to her. 

Living with sweet dogs like this tends to make me agree with C.S. Lewis's proposition that dogs also go to heaven. It seems to me that God made dogs just for us humans, and I love the thought of all of us together in heaven one day, with Georgie running and playing with her Bingley dog. 

So here are a couple of examples of what these sweet dogs have been doing lately to keep me distracted. The top video is an example of a nightly occurrence with these two. It's pretty hilarious, and it doesn't just happen in our bedroom. They chase each other all over the house. 

Enjoy!

And the second one, taken last night...

A Few of My Favorite Things

Today just felt hard. I'm frustrated and tired, and the end of May feels forever away.

This morning, I checked baby boy's heartbeat. All was well. My plan was to post the video, but of course by the end of the day I'd convinced myself something was wrong and I shouldn't post it.

I've now checked the heartbeat again.

Okay. Still there.

Still there. Still there.

And I really love this picture:

The Space of a Year

So much has been happening with me and Dave since I last posted.

In the middle of December, we moved into a new house! We are loving it. It is our first true home and I am just loving it. There are many things to do. (1) Get some new furniture; (2) Curtains; (3) Picture project for my hallway walls. It's a cozy, beautiful place, and it houses our little family of us and two dogs quite well.

Our Christmas had hard moments. My worst day was about 3 days after Christmas. Go figure. Christmas was hard too. I woke up that morning and just felt...flat and sad.  The anticipation I had always felt waking up on Christmas morning was gone. Who knows if it will come back? Probably with Georgiana's siblings. I hold onto to the hope of those future times during these quiet and often deeply sad days.

A little rainbow crept into our lives in September, unbeknownst to us. God knitted him inside of me and started a growing little life and a heartbeat. I found out, quite to my surprise, during an October OB visit where I was going to talk to the doc about "trying again." When the doctor told me, I had such a freakout that I (1) forgot to make my co-pay; (2) forgot that I had valet'd my car at the hospital; and (3) convinced myself, after leaving the doctor's office, that they obviously had taken the wrong urine sample and told me the wrong news. Never mind that I was 12 days overdue. So I immediately drove to Walgreens, bought a pregnancy test, used it in the Walgreens bathroom, and stared in shock as the word "Pregnant" popped up on the screen. I now had physical proof in hand.

We have slowly told the world. We are due at the beginning of June, but will schedule a c-section at the end of May. It's been hard. It's been wonderful. We have hope. And we have fear. And the two fight each other, in my heart and soul, every day. Some days feel impossible. Other days I am given more rest for my mind. Early in December, I contracted a horrible stomach flu that landed me in the ER, terrified. After telling the doctor our history, he ordered us an ultrasound and there on the screen was our dancing baby, looking like he was having a great time and not concerned at all about what was happening with us. It was kind of like a "chill out, mom!" kind of moment. Even I laughed, as sick and freaked out as I was.

So far, so good. We have made it past 2 good blood tests, a low progesterone scare, spotting (yes, I nearly lost my mind that week), and just the general panic that comes this time around. I broke down and bought a fetal doppler. The sound of his heartbeat is enough to sustain me for the day, usually. Baby is looking good, always active, always moving around like he is just loving life. I say he, and there is an indication he might be a he, but we'll find out for sure this Friday.

Hope remains. And blessings too. We are once again given a blessing from God that we do not deserve, and we pray pray pray that He lets us keep this one until old old age. The thought of having a little brother of Georgiana's fills me with a cautious joy. I know she had a hand in it. And I love and desperately miss my beautiful little saint in heaven.

I ask you all for prayers for this little one, for God's grace and protection. I am so happy (and terrified) to share the news with you all.

Here I am with my 18 week baby bump with Georgiana's beautiful Christmas tree we put up this year. All I can say is that I sustained Etsy this year with my ornament purchases for this lovely little tree. During a melancholy Christmas season, this tree made me happy. I'll post more on it later.

Mourning Clothes

Well, it's been awhile.

It's not that I haven't had things to say, it just seems to take a lot of energy to express them sometimes. So I think of an entire post in my head, and then by the time I want to type it, my motivation is gone.

I face this Christmas with an odd mix of anticipation and intense sadness. I've seen some Christmas lights, heard some Christmas songs, and seen some decorations, and they make me sad. But I also still love them. So it appears that my ridiculous love for Christmas is still there, despite the heartbreak I feel at facing this first Christmas without my baby girl.

I have decided to do a tree for Georgiana. My plan is to do this every year I am still on this earth to honor our girl. I bought a white one, with pink lights, and pretty much just bought any ornament that I felt had some connection to her for me. Some were obvious picks--owls and butterflies in the colors of her nursery. Others I'm not really sure why I chose them--a hot pink deer? Who knows, but it made me think of her. My husband and I both love animals. We think she would have grown up loving them too. Maybe that's why. I really felt in so many ways that I knew her, that I knew what she would have been like. I'll post pictures of her tree soon.

So onto the title of this post. Mourning clothes. I have always admired the way traditional Jews mourn their loved ones. They truly shut their houses down to grieve, to create "a time to mourn." After Georgie died, I had maternity clothes and a few items I had bought to wear after (presumably) we were all home from the hospital. I couldn't bear to look at any of it, let alone put it on my grieving, defeated body.

Our wonderful families did many things for us in those first few weeks, and one of those things was my grandmother going to the mall to buy me some soft, stretchy items, that also had some fashion, to wear in those horrible days following the most horrible day/night of my life.

I have worn them ever since. Not all the time, but most of them have become a regular part of my wardrobe. Many times, especially in the last couple of months, I have thought to myself that I should let them go, that it's actually not doing me any good to keep wearing them.

I finally decided this weekend that I'm going to box them up before Christmas and give them away. In a sense, the mourning clothes are at an end for me. I have started to realize that the mourning really does not end. It lessens and begins to live alongside other things, like tiny glimmers of hope and life moving on, and the intense, fierce love that remains inside of me for my daughter. But the clothes, and their connection to that time, need to be boxed up and given to someone else, for my sake. Hopefully I'll get a few new items for Christmas.

The same goes for most of my maternity clothes from my time with Georgie. I have about 3 items I'd like to keep with her things, and the rest I've decided need to go to someone who needs them more than me. I will never wear them again, even with future babies, and they really aren't doing any good in a box.

Now, onto something beautiful and precious to me: Georgiana's birth announcement.

I struggled a lot with this the last few months, whether or not to do an announcement. I wasn't sure how to do it that wouldn't be overwhelmingly sad. I didn't know if it was fair to send that kind of announcement, uninvited, to people. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, I would have done this anyway, if she had lived. It became very important to me to have one for her, but it was a very very tough decision for me.

A wonderful friend of mine offered to make them. I have known she and her husband for several years now, and they are both so special to Dave and me. She was so excited when she found out Dave and I were going to have Georgiana. She has mourned with me, and has loved me and been such an incredible friend throughout this whole, awful year. She is a very talented graphic designer, artist, and she made these for me, and refused to let me pay her.

She has a great company that I'll tell you all about soon when she gets her website going. It is very special to me because she has a baby shower invitation based off the one she created for Georgiana's shower. All the proceeds from any purchase of that invitation will go to Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. I know that will really hit home for so many of you BLMs, how she has reached out and made our grief and what is important to us part of her business.

I want you all to see this, because many of you won't receive one in the mail. So without further ado, a true piece of heavenly grace:

Can't Sleep

It seems to be a fairly common phenomenon amongst most BLMs that sleep can be an elusive thing.

When we were leaving the hospital after we lost Georgiana, the medical staff gave me sleeping pills. I took them religiously starting that night, so overwhelmed with grief and fear I didn't even think about it.

Cue to seven months forward, when I decided to get off the Ambien. I had a couple of really bad nights (i.e. less than one hour of sleep), and have had a couple of good ones (i.e., more than six hours of sleep).

Tonight is not so good.

I've been up since 2:30 am and finally just decided to come out here to the den and write. The dogs are snoozing next to me on the couch.

I have thought many times about what C.S. Lewis wrote at the beginning of his book, A Grief Observed. He wrote, "no one told me that grief felt so like fear."

It's odd to think about unless you've gone through it, but it's true. Grief, in its worst moments, really does feel like fear, that horrible panicky fluttering that hits your chest when you realize something has gone horribly wrong. I began to feel it when the doctor told us that fateful night at the hospital that she couldn't find a heartbeat. When I was 38 weeks pregnant. It was impossible. I couldn't even fathom it.

And the fear settled in.

Most days, I pray fervently for God to lift it from my heart and mind. Many days He does. Other days, I feel it much more strongly.

I decided a few days ago to start a Novena. For those of you who are not Catholic, a Novena is a special nine-day prayer in the Catholic church where you ask for a special intention or special graces from God. I never thought much of Novenas until right after Georgiana died, when we were back in our overwhelmingly empty and quiet house and I felt absolutely attacked by evil and despair. These two things, I have come to realize, are very real and tangible, the seen and unseen, right?

In those early early days, I started a Novena. I focused on St. Joseph, the protector of the Holy Family. I prayed for St. Joseph to help protect us, and to protect our entire family. I prayed for more children, I prayed for my child in heaven, I prayed for the two of us left here on earth--her mommy and daddy.

After a few days of the Novena, much of evil feeling that was in our house lifted. In its wake was a wrenching sadness, but some of the fear I felt had left.

Since then, I've been a fan of Novenas.

So I began another one a few days ago.  I have started praying as well to St. Lucy. For some reason, I feel a lot of connection between her and our Georgiana. To me, St. Lucy's story represents the difference between physical sight and spiritual sight.  During her martyrdom, she lost her eyes.  Even with no physical sight, she led others to Jesus because of her faith, because of her true sight.

This battle between what is real and what we see is so intense in us mamas who have lost our babies. It's easy to get sucked into the idea that our children have died, they are buried in the ground. It is so easy to feel despair on those worst of days when the rest of our lives feels like forever.

I have to remind myself, though, that although all those things are real, they are not necessarily true, at least in the grand scheme of things.

Don't worry, I'm not under some mistaken illusion that my daughter did not die. No, that part became very real to me very quickly after everything happened. What I mean is that our faith teaches us to look beyond this earthly life, and death, to look beyond the grave.

I think of the line in Corinthians--"oh death, where is thy victory?"  I never understood the magnitude of those words until I lost my child.  If you let it, death will conquer you. Every dark thought that comes up will seep through your soul and make you feel despair.

This is when I think on St. Lucy, a saint whose name means light, who, despite having no physical sight, saw to the true reality, to what was waiting for all of us who love Him and have faith.

What is true is that my child's body is in the grave, but she is not there. She is with Jesus, in a far better place than I can ever imagine. My mother-in-law said to me early on to think on what a beautiful life my daughter led--from the safety of my womb to the glory of heaven. Not too shabby, when I think about it that way. That, I am thankful for. I miss her here on earth, but I am thankful for that.

Now, safety of the womb? That's a whole different post...

I pray for light in the darkness, that my all too human heart, that misses my daughter terribly every minute of every day, will align more closely with the truth, that my daughter is alive and well with Jesus. I pray that I feel some of that joy, and not so much of the sorrow, and sadness, and yes, fear, that hits me.

I pray that for you all too.

It's now 4:21 a.m. Time to watch some useless TV and hopefully pass out on the couch until I have to get up for work.

Pray

For all of you who might still check my blog (even though I've barely posted in over a month, we'll get to that later) I'm asking you all to please send a prayer up to God with my intention attached it. Trust me that this is something important to pray for.

I'll post more later. Much love.

Beautiful

This was read at a funeral I attended the other day. A great man who had lived a long life and whose life was captured in poetry and song. At the end of the service, I felt as if I knew him well, even though I only know his wife.

Simply beautiful to me. Captures day-to-day living perfectly right now.

"Heavy," by Mary Oliver

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
"It's not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -
books, bricks, grief -
it's all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down."
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled -
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?