Max's 3rd Birthday in heaven

We've just celebrated Max's 3rd birthday in heaven and I'm moving in my grief journey....moving on, moving forward, parallel... who knows, but I'm moving.
The last few months has been better in many ways, but also more difficult in others. As I find myself embracing the growth and progress of the other two, even being able to let go a bit, embrace that they do get to enjoy life and trying to let go enough to let them.... to not bubble wrap them... I also find myself seeing Max in other children. I knew so many babies born that same year, right around the time he was... I never used to let myself compare them, I was always reminding myself that he would have been very sick if he'd lived and couldn't have lived so there was no point in going there.... but I can't seem to stop myself now...
Maybe it's because when the grief was just too raw I couldn't even let myself think that, but now that it's mellowed, more bittersweet and not always so intense.... I see him in those kids and sometimes my heart lurches into my throat....and I let myself wonder, daydream really about how a sweet little boy like that might fit into the hole in our family....
Anyways, it's three years since I held him... Smelled his sweet head and kissed his soft cheeks.... and I still think of him everyday, always...I'm pretty sure I will still feel like this, even fifty years from now.
Happy Birthday my sweet boy!

Three little monkeys.... a post I was working on a while ago

It's been a long time since I've written anything. I've been really busy, but also changing...moving along in my grief journey. 
Some days I'm not sure how to live this life, this 'normal' life that I'm supposed to have. To most people it must look like a picture perfect, white picket fence kind of life. And I feel like I'm supposed to live up to that somehow, I'm supposed to be happy, satisfied....the picture of joy and wonder. Why wouldn't I be, after all, we have the perfect family...a boy and a girl. The list could go on about what is just right with my life, but if I wanted to list what isn't just right about my life I could make an equally long list. Mostly I try to focus on what I have to be happy about and mostly I am so very happy. Sometimes though, sometimes I can't help but think about what I'm missing, who I'm missing and how our family is missing him. I wonder how life would be with three kids, I wonder how they all would interact and play together. I want so badly to have that...to have three little monkeys giggling on the floor together.
My husband is always quick to remind me that we wouldn't have gone on to have Madeline if Maxwell would have lived and I know this, I know that we probably never would have had all three of them.... but I did, I did give birth to three beautiful babies and I did hold each of them. And I wanted to raise all three of them, I want to know what our life would have been like in this parallel universe. I want it all.

Happy, healthy rainbow baby!

The D-day ultrasound went off without a hitch! Of course the technician couldn't tell us anything herself but by how quickly she was done scanning, I was pretty reassured that things were ok. The doctor and resident came in a little while later, went over everything again and explained that the baby looked perfect. She even rescanned the diaphragm to show us that everything was in place (I couldn't really make any if it out). Then she asked if we wanted to know the sex, which we did. We wanted to know absolutely everything, if they could tell me hair and eye colour too that would have been great! So she scanned a little more and settled on a picture, then pointed out that those were little girl parts! This picture was as clear as a bell to me. Such good and happy news about our rainbow baby, what a blessing! This mama's full of mixed emotions right now, very bittersweet.

Happy Canada Day!

July first, the eve of the big D-day ultrasound (as I've come to call it) and Happy Canada Day! As we enjoyed the beautiful weather today, hanging laundry on the line and lamenting that this is one of the last times for that with the move coming up, I was also remembering the day we moved in here. July first six years ago, we will move out after having lived here for six years and 15 days - give or take.
I can't help but to think how innocent and naive we were six years ago, those six years have been some of the best and worst of our lives. I think people often say that line, but most likely don't mean it as seriously as we do.
Anyways, we decided to stay close to home and pack and try to stay cool as our way of celebrating Canada Day. I've also been having a really tough time with the rapidly approaching ultrasound. It's been easy enough to put out of my mind, since there was nothing I could do about it, but now....it's driving me crazy. My nerves are very much on edge.
We went to an outdoor pool this evening for a quick dip and while I waited for Oliver and Andrew at the bottom of the water slide I had one of those moments where the grief hits you like a ton of bricks.  I thought, if things go badly tomorrow I know that the world will go on, but now I also know how empty things will feel.  This move to the new house, with the extra bedroom that I've started planning for the baby....it will all happen, but it will feel so...useless and empty. I know that feeling, I know about having to take those steps forward even when it feels like your world is crumbling around you....I know that I will get through it if I have to again, but I pray that God won't send us there again and that He won't put another baby through this.

All you can do is try

Wow, it's March already...time flies. I can't believe how quickly this winter is passing. I was so worried that these would be horribly dark days, I really thought that this would push me over the edge into postpartum depression. I suppose, given my circumstances, it wouldn't be a huge shock if it happened. I do feel depressed sometimes, but nothing like I felt after Oliver was born, thank goodness. I look back now and think it's almost comical that I was such a mess after he was born because I wanted to be happy and I was so immediately in love with him, I had every reason to not be depressed then and absolutely every reason to be depressed now.... Then again, I know that that was a true depression, nothing I did helped and there was no way out. I needed medication and I hated that.
I hate that people start to assume that if I talk about being upset or depressed now, that I might need medication.... I have bad days, it's normal. I'm grieving, that is healthy. I don't want to medicate myself so that I'm numb to the feelings. I do enough myself, just trying to stay so busy so that I don't have too much time to think.
I did decide to go back to school, just one class at a time. I'm going to work towards finishing my education degree. It may take me until I'm forty, but at least I'm doing something. I'm also really enjoying the class I'm taking right now.
I have Oliver in swimming lessons and I'm working two nights a week and Saturdays. I am busy enough that some days I feel like I can't see straight, that's how I like it. Hence the semi monthly entries, if I'm lucky....
Anyways, on top of everything it's time to think about trying again, if we are going to have another baby. While I sometimes feel like after everything we've been through, we could take on the world, then again...maybe not. Maybe I should be happy with what we have and not ask for anything more. Maybe I'm just a coward, maybe I can't do it all. Lord knows, I've been knocked down a few times..... Maybe I'll leave it in His hands.

The other side

After Oliver was born I had a bad experience with postpartum hypertension, I was one of the lucky ones who was caught before I had a stroke or worse but still... it was traumatizing. I didn't really understand how serious it was, but I knew that I couldn't die - I had a new baby and he needed me. This is such a wrong experience to have a birth tied to a life threatening complication. I spent the next few months trying everything to get better, but I have never been able to stop taking the medication for hypertension. I became so focused and obsessed with this that I started having trouble sleeping, I was totally panicked about dying and leaving my baby. There were days on end that I didn't sleep for more than an hour or two. Finally the doctors put me on sleeping pills, which meant I had to quit breast feeding. This was devastating for me and Oliver, he refused the bottle (he was five and half months by then) and we had to rock him to sleep with a soother and sneak the bottle into his mouth once he was asleep. If he wasn't out all the way you had to start all over and if he fell too soundly asleep then he wouldn't drink at all. We both cried for two weeks while my milk dried up, this was our first Christmas.
It took about the same amount of time that it took for my milk to go, for the doctors to figure out that this wasn't just a lack of sleep, but a form of postpartum depression. I kept saying no, I love my baby - we're well bonded, it's not postpartum depression. Apparently not everyone experiences these things the same, mine was anxiety induced. Since then I've learned that a traumatic delivery is common with PD.
Anyways, I remember praying that the Lord not take me because my family really needed me. He couldn't be so cruel as to give me a child and not let me be his mother.
A few months later, things were much settled down and I was feeling great and in the process of weaning off of my medication for PD (suddenly I found myself a druggy, me who never took anything but vitamins, hater of drugs and proud of it). Then I fell off a ladder and shattered my knee, I had to have pins and a plate put in to put Humpty back together again. I wasn't too afraid of dying going into that surgery, I figured if I had made it through all of this - it's gonna take more than a broken leg to get me!
They told me it would take one to two years to fully recover. Six months later I found myself pregnant again and absolutely elated about it! "I'm strong, bring it on. I'll stay healthy and be careful about the weight gain for me knee, we'll get through this.", I thought. I have to say that I was concerned about going through the hypertension issues again and possibly experiencing PD again, but I knew I would do anything for another child.
My pregnancy with Max was uncomplicated, in terms of the hypertension. In fact by the time I was eight weeks pregnant my blood pressure was so low that I had to stop all meds and it stayed that way until after he was born. The day he was diagnosed, after our discussion with the doctor about what to do next, as we were getting ready to leave I said to her, "and I just wanted to get through this pregnancy without having a stroke!".
The day after Max's funeral (our fourth wedding anniversary) I woke up not feeling well, I had been monitoring my BP three times a day as ordered, so I checked it. It was slightly elevated, I knew it would be because I'd been having trouble sleeping and felt....like I had after Oliver. I know they say that you can't feel high blood pressure, but....it's hard to explain. I rested a bit and checked again and it was higher, so I went into the hospital. They were able to get control of it much more quickly than they had with Oliver, again I prayed for the Lord not to take me. I also prayed to my baby because I felt like he was calling me, I told him how sorry I was that I couldn't be with him. That my Oliver needed me more right now, but one day mommy would come to him. Sadly, I was not afraid of dying. I felt totally torn between my children. My mind knew that Oliver needed me more, but it was hard for my heart to understand.
We went home by noon and I went to sleep for a while, feeling terrible because the medication makes your blood pressure drop like a stone. When I woke up I had a fever, so we called the doctor and she sent us back to the hospital. I had a bladder or uterine infection, they never were sure but I spent another day in the hospital on IV antibiotics and I felt like Max was calling me even more. I left myself completely in the doctors hands, I wasn't worried at all. I had learned that we really have no control over life and death and if this is my time, it's my time. I would never want to leave my family here, but what do you do when you have someone you love just as much on the other side? I felt totally indifferent to death and way too young to feel that way.
I have to say that I don't feel so close to the other side anymore, if that makes sense, but I don't think I'll ever be afraid of dying like I used to be. This is not to say that I am suicidal in any way, but I know that other parents who've lost a child will understand.
This is one of those things that you can't just talk to anyone about because they might think you're crazy....