Regrets

When I think of L (also known as Q - see this post for an explanation of names), my mind frequently wanders to the regrets I have related to her birth and the very brief time we had with her.  As many of you know, there is no way to prepare for the decisions you are asked to make in rapid succession when you know you are giving birth to a stillborn baby.  There are so many decisions and each is more torturous than the next.  

I delivered L vaginally while on more morphine than I can even imagine. I couldn't have an epidural because of my blood clot and I don't feel like the morphine helped the pain all that much, but it did make me feel completely separate from my body.  I remember feeling like I had floated up above my body and was watching what was happening from above -- I couldn't possibly be going through this myself.  For the record, I hated this feeling and wish I hadn't taken any drugs and just experienced the birth.  It is easy to say that now, but my mind doesn't handle narcotics well and I hate the way they make me feel.

R and I have never really spoken about L's delivery.  We certainly talk about her, but we mention that night mostly in generalities, so perhaps my recollection is wrong.  In my mind, L came into the world in silence (both hers and ours).  It was the middle of the night and the room felt eerie.  A doctor arrived and out she came.  The nurse asked if I wanted to hold her and I did, but not yet.  My OB arrived shortly thereafter, L was given a bath, and my OB asked us if we were ready.  R was in the bed with me and I took tiny L into my arms.  She weighed only a pound, but she looked like... well, she looked like a very small baby.  Her eyes were closed. I remember her hands seemed disproportionately large, but I loved her tiny fingers and held each one, marveling at how very much she looked like the sweet girl I had imagined growing in my belly.

We each held her and kissed her tiny forehead.  But I was still totally out of it from the meds, it was the middle of the night, and honestly the whole experience is a total blur for me.  Eventually my OB returned and took L away.  The next morning I awoke and headed to surgery.  I remember wanting desperately to have another chance to hold L once I felt aware of what was going on, but she was gone and there was never another offer to bring her back. That said, I never asked.  Admittedly, there was a lot going on with my surgery and being in the ICU, but I never asked to hold her again.  It both breaks my heart that the only time I had with her I was not myself, not cognizant of my surroundings and it makes me feel like I didn't do her justice.  I didn't spend the time with her that she deserved and that I so desperately wanted.  Why didn't we bathe her?  Why didn't I memorize every inch of her tiny body?  Why didn't I hug her and hold her for as long as I wanted to?  Was it fear and a shortcoming in my personality?  What kind of Mom does this make me?  

I have so many regrets about that brief time we had with L.  I think about it often and search in my mind for details from the night she was born to no avail.  I know there is no playbook for handling grief and loss, but I wish I had handled it differently...

(I'm feeling very sad today and this week generally, for no apparent reason.  Sigh.)

Happy Friday & Proverbs 13:12

Our dear friends have been longing for a baby for years.   Two weeks ago, they received the incredible news that the birth mom of a little girl had chosen them to adopt her baby and suddenly they are parents.  Their news made me so emotional and has filled my heart with such joy these past two weeks.  We were discussing how, although our situations are quite different, there is just something to becoming a parent after so much longing and sadness and despair and hope (and lack thereof) (and I say this with the disclaimer of not knowing what it is like to be a parent without those feelings and they probably feel just as strongly about their kiddos - anyway).  My friend's wife wrote me a note and included this proverb, which sums up how I feel so succinctly.  Happy Friday, friends.

Proverbs 13:12

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life."

On Wanting a Second Baby (with infertility and after loss)

I had trouble even coming up with a title for this post.  I want to say "after infertility and loss" in the parenthetical, but we all know that once you are infertile, you are always infertile... even if you have a child and even if said pregnancy came about without any medical intervention.

See... I'm rambling already!

I ran my first marathon in 3 years yesterday and it was fine.  I had a decent race (for me) considering that I did one long run and very little running-specific training.  After my clot, I was told I might never run again (residual clot can mean lifelong problems with numbness, tingling, swelling, etc.).  I feel fortunate that isn't the case for me, and yesterday reminded me that I am strong and I spent a lot of time thinking about how grateful I am to be healthy right now.  I also spent miles 16 through 26 feeling so very sad that I was running through the streets of Austin, Texas while my husband and daughter were at home. There were waves of overwhelming guilt and longing to be home and with them that I just could not keep at bay.  It made me question whether training for a race is something I want to prioritize right now -- I was basically hyperventilating and trying not to start sobbing.  I think a lot of the feelings were real -- I was traveling for work 2 weeks ago and then away this weekend and I miss B (and my husband) like crazy -- and some of it was hormonal and some was exhaustion.  But man... it caught me off-guard and has left me feeling very conflicted about what it is that I want going forward (from the perspective of my personal goals and athletic endeavors, which were previously very important to me).  Walking through our door last night to this face was the best feeling...

That is all along introduction into what I really wanted to write about, which is that I am constantly thinking about another baby these days.  Getting a marathon under my belt this year was a goal and now that that is done, I know getting pregnant will increasingly be on my mind.  R and I talked this week and decided that, for now, we aren't going to pursue IVF.  I would go back to my RE in a heartbeat, but R was seriously traumatized by everything that happened when we lost L. For me, all I could think about was that my baby died.  My little L was gone.  But for R, he almost lost me and for now he is so happy that I'm healthy and happy and that we have B and that things are calm for us medically right now.  The idea of all the drugs and hormones and increased clotting risk, etc. is more than he wants at this time.  I also hesitate with being busy at work to add RE appointments into my schedule, knowing they would detract from quality time with B that is already so limited for me.And I am okay with that... for now.  We agreed to revisit in a few months or if either of us changed our mind in the interim.  To be clear, we would both love to have a second child, but R isn't convinced we should go through multiple rounds of IVF to have a second child.

Going forward, I'll resume taking my supplements and vitamins, track ovulation and we'll make an effort to give ourselves a shot at getting pregnant on our own each month.  With what we know about my fertility struggles, the odds are SO low of that happening.  On one hand, I've been pregnant twice after being told by CCRM (and others) that I would *never* have a baby that was genetically mine.  But on the other hand, I've been pregnant twice... and the odds of it happening again are SO low.  And then this line of thinking queues feelings of guilt... because we have amazing, joyful baby B and how can I be so greedy as to want another baby?

Do any of you have any super-secret getting pregnant tricks for me?  :)  Anyone else in a similar position and have thoughts?  I don't want to have any regrets, which is why we'll revisit the RE conversation in a few months.

A dear friend who had her first baby just a week before B was born just told me she is 7 weeks pregnant again and the jealousy that I'm feeling caught me totally by surprise and, frankly, makes me disappointed in myself.  Obviously her pregnancy has nothing to do with me, but it is JUST SO EASY FOR HER AND THAT IS INFURIATING.  I'm so jealous.  I find myself staring at pregnant women and wishing for their bump... and these reactions have confirmed what I already know, which is that I do want another baby...

[This is an incredibly disjointed post.  Apologies.]

13 Months! (and random thoughts)

Where did the month of January go?  I'm big on resolutions and goal-setting and last night I finally made time to write my resolutions for 2016.  Better late than never, right?  After reading Better Than Before (which I love and highly recommend), I am trying to set quantifiable and measurable goals and have a mix of personal, professional, fitness, and emotional health-type resolutions.  We'll see.  Even when I don't keep all of my resolutions, I find them to be helpful reminders of what is important to me throughout the year.  Plus, I love looking back at them (I have paper copies back to high school and have kept them electronically since 2006). 

Enjoying a warm winter day at the park (in pigtails!)

I've been all over the place with posts I have wanted to write, so I'm going to stick to a bullet-point list so I can get it all down:

• I read this quote and it really resonated with me: “Here is a little secret about grief, catastrophe, loss, suffering: you are exactly the same after as before.  Only more so."  I'm not certain that I agree, but it made me think a lot about who I was before we lost Q and who I am now.  Perhaps the ways in which I have changed aren't really changes, but just that I feel and experience those feelings and behaviors in different ways?  Incidentally, this quote was from "After Birth," which I loathed.  I haven't read a book that made me so angry in such a long time.  The protagonist spent most of the book lamenting how terrible the birth of her son was (she had to have a c-section, it didn't go as planned, blah blah blah...) and it was so irritating.  
• In trying to find the title of "After Birth," I looked at my GoodReads list of books read for 2016 and realized that I seem to be on a grief-death kick.  I also read "The Opposite of Loneliness" (the author died just days after her graduation from Yale) and "When Breath Becomes Air".  I'd recommend both of those.  The latter is intense (the author writes it while dying of lung cancer), but so, so good.  And "The Opposite of Loneliness" is similarly heartbreaking... the author writes of her hopes and dreams, about how she'll be in the future as a parent, etc.  And all of that was taken away.  Both were a reminder of even when things are bad, how much worse they could be.  I know that no one wants to hear "It could be worse," but sometimes it is helpful to have a little perspective.
• Oh, did you come here for news about Baby B being a TODDLER and 13 months old?  Well, fine!  B is... amazing!  She is walking all over the place, babbling (mostly) unintelligibly, smiling, laughing, reading, loving her stuffed animals, and generally causing trouble in the best way possible.  I write this in every post, but she is such a joy.  When I get home from work, we often sit in the study (effectively her play room at this point) and she sits in my lap and looks at her books (she flips the pages super fast and doesn't let me read to her).  I snuggle her and smell her head and kiss her cheeks and generally just smother her with love.  Sometimes it just is too much and I get super emotional... I feel overwhelmed by how much I love her.
• I am running a marathon on February 14th. I feel under-prepared but I know I just need to get back out there and get it done.  We'll see how that goes.
• My thoughts are still often with getting pregnant again.  I think that is a subject for another post, but you all are probably sick of hearing about it.  
• I stopped nursing.  I thought I would be very sad about this, but it was okay -- it was time for us.  B loves milk and I was tired of pumping at work.   The only thing I miss about it now is the snuggle time and the ease of nursing vs. having to prepare a bottle.

I'll leave you with a few more photos.  Thanks to those of you who are still reading.  One of my resolutions is to blog more frequently, so we'll see if I can stick to that.  The bar is set pretty low...

Good morning!

With my favorite girl before a day of skiing with my husband
(she was unfazed by the ski resort daycare, which was awesome).

2 Years

What a week.  Christmas!  The New Year!  Baby B is ONE!  And it is the second anniversary of losing Q (Baby L).  We had a gorgeous white Christmas and B was overwhelmed but loved the ornaments, the paper, the gifts, the music, etc.  We both took B's birthday off of work, took her swimming and out to lunch, and did all of her favorite activities.  It's been such a nice stretch of spending time as a family and having a lot of fun, but lurking in the background are the memories of little Q.  My mind flashes back to scenes from the hospital much more often these days and I find myself hugging Blythe extra hard, rocking her longer, holding her while she sleeps, and constantly thinking of Q and B. 

I'm reminded both of how much we have lost and how lucky we are to be where we are today.  It's unfathomable to me what this anniversary would be like without B in my arms.  This is my not-so-little one-year-old on Christmas enjoying the fresh snow.

I try to remind myself to be grateful and happy when I instead find myself feeling envious of another friend's second or third baby pregnancy announcement.  I know I should always focus on what I have, which is the most wonderful gift I've ever been given. 

Thinking of you today, Quinn, and missing you like I do every day.

Happy Birthday, B!

Happiest birthday to our Baby B!  How is it possible that you are one already?  We could not love you more.

Someone loves playing with balloons and eating berry shortcake.

11 Months and Hawaii!

Whoa.  Where did the last few months go?  Summer ended and everyone seemed to remember they had a job and all of a sudden my work flow picked up and, frankly, got totally out of control!  I haven't made time for much outside of spending time with family, work (including lots of travel), exercising (occasionally), and sleep.  And let's be honest... most of my time outside of work is spent with this nugget:

I cannot believe she'll be 11 months old this week.  Apparently I am supposed to start thinking about her first birthday?  Where did the last year go?  Does anyone have any first birthday party tips?  I swore when I was pregnant that we'd always celebrate her birthday so she wouldn't resent the fact that it is sandwiched between Christmas and the New Year, but now I'm wondering what we should do.  Perhaps it is time to get on Pinterest so I can be reminded of my party planning inadequacy!

We've been doing a lot of traveling lately, both for work and pleasure.  I had work trips to Washington, D.C. and Boston and now we are in Hawaii for 2 weeks for vacation.  A break from work and "regular" life could not have come at a better time.  I haven't been checking e-mail or text messagand I feel so refreshed and refocused, which was much needed.  And I've spent a lot of time thinking about just how much we have to be thankful for this year... which is easy to do when I'm playing in the sand with the sweetest little girl.  I've been reading Better than Before (Gretchen Rubin and I seem to be on the same wave length) and trying to stick to good habits and quash bad ones, which includes blogging more frequently and running regularly (I signed up for the Austin Marathon in February so I better).  Does anyone else enjoy Gretchen's books or podcast?

So, as we kick off the holiday season later this week with Thanksgiving, I want those of you who read to know I am thankful for you and your support and your willingness to share and listen.  And if any of you have taken a red-eye with an 11-month-old baby, I'd love to hear any advice you have.  While this vacation has been absolutely amazing, I am dreading the flight home...