October 15

Kathlyn Joy Davis, July 30, 2009, and my 2nd little cherry on top, carried lovingly under my heart until April 14, 2010. Missing my babies today on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day, October 15, and every day.


This is where I'll be tonight...





for my wonderful friends who have allowed me to be weak, made me strong, cried with me, and made me smile.




Love to all the babies gone before us.. it's just too unbearable to even describe how it feels and so terrible how often it happens.

We will see them again..

little pink birdie

i'm so in love.

it's a girl. a sister. a daughter. a healthy baby with every organ of the right shape and size working as it should. she has a name, but we aren't sharing it yet. asking will not make me share it any faster. i will share when i am
ready <3 if you're curious, the boy's name would have been shane william davis. i still love it and hope i guess to use it later :)


i am so in love with this baby. i was thinking on the way home from the scan how much i really do. it's amazing to feel that strong love for kathlyn a second time. i never doubted that i would love all my children the same; i've heard a lot of people wonder how they could love more children as much as the first. i have never felt this before. such a strong love for two individuals at once. i love them both so much.



it doesnt come without guilt and ambivalence though. i never got to love my little cherry with this intensity. i loved her, i loved the idea of her, and i wanted her as badly as i want the other two, but i never got to see her looking and moving like a real baby. i never knew her. it feels so sad and unfair. but i truly believe i will know her someday.. all beause of the Glory of God. it's also very scary to love my lady-bird this much.. i can probably never reach a place where i'm convinced this isn't just too good to be true. will i really get to take her home? i just blindly assumed i would take kathlyn home. i can't do that now. this time with my new daughter is so beyond precious.



Please God, please let me take this one home, and I will raise her to know You. Thank you for my children. I know they are Yours, but I love them so much.



I prayed that same prayer when I was pregnant with Kathlyn. If it's possible, I might be more devastated if I lose this baby. I shiver at the thought; it is hard to imagine there is a "worse" than what i've already been through.



i walked into a store today, and this little baby just kathlyn's age, unmistakably looked right at me and said "baby!" i heard her parents later say that she was 15 months. kathlyn would be 14 right now. i wonder if it was a coincidence.. but whatever it is that made her say that, i know kathlyn is ALWAYS right by me.



yesterday i had a less pleasant encounter in a store. i was looking at the most darling pink puppy outfit (pink puppies, cherries, birdies, love them :) and this woman walked into the store, speaking quite loudly on her cell phone as she walked. rude, if you ask me. no one really needs to hear your conversation in the confines of this tiny mall store. here's what i heard:



"yea, i'm in gymboree. i know, it's so tempting to be in here, they just have the CUTEST stuff for girls. i'm always in trouble since i have two. can you believe that? ME.. i cant believe i have TWO girls, i spend so much money, i guess that was God's punishment to me for not being good, to have two girls."



you have GOT to be kidding me.



THIS is my example of "clueless". people who have no freaking idea what they have, what they take for granted, and what idiotic and selfish things come out of their mouths. i would give my four limbs to have my two girls, my three girls, whatever, just to have ALL my children present with me so i can overspend on clothes. your PUNISHMENT?! really?! if 2 girls is punishment, what word describes when one of your girls dies and you only have one left?



i remember another sad mommy, who lost her first baby, writing about when she was pushing her child on a swing and there were 2 mothers talking about "how hard it is to have two children". she had to walk away. it's MUCH harder to have two children, but only get to raise one of them... than it is to chase around two at once.



i couldnt walk away though. i had to buy the pink puppy outfit. along with a purple lambie outfit. for my baby girl.

worry

I dont know if this is because of tomorrow specifically, but I've had a lot of worries this week. The only reason I say it's not totally about tomorrow is that I've always had these worries. they're just manifesting all at once right now.



round ligament pain, decreased kicking, not kicking at all, deli meat, fish, hot dogs, soft cheese, soft serve ice cream, listeriosis, artificial sugar, refined sugar, caffeine, not enough water, not enough folic acid, too much vitamin A, constipation from too much iron, anemia from not enough iron, toxins in plastic, styrofoam, sleeping on your back, not sleeping enough, gingivitis, bleeding gums, anti-depressants, infection exposure at work. all these worries. in additon, worry itself is a problem.



but on top of that, what about the laundry list of things that could actually be wrong tomorrow?



i know - worrying about things doesnt help or change whether they will happen or not. because what about all that could be right and perfect tomorrow...



the raw truth is, kathlyn had nothing of those things wrong. nothing. makes it very difficult to rest easy or to feel safe. a healthy report tomorrow will be such a blessing.. but it wont make the worry stop.



i'm trying.. i'm really really tryng.



last night i had to put down the grief and pregnancy books and picked up a parody. it's called "what to expect when you're expected" and it's written from the point of view of a fetus, to a fetus.



hah.



the first line of the book was a preface from the stork, and it starts "first of all, fuck you" and i burst out laughing in the store. i knew this dark humor would be just what i needed in times like these. the traditional pregnancy magazines and books have proven to be too much for me (remember the line "these body blunders (like weight gain, leg cramps, other annoying ailments of pregnancy) will go away, but thankfully, the baby is here to stay!") - just can't read that anymore.



there's a part where the fetus is saying that Mommy will need lots of new clothes, and that she can either lose weight and need yet *another* set of new clothes after you're born, or choose to remain 40 pounds heavier for the rest of her life and keep wearing maternity clothes. and how Daddy will especially love shopping with her Sundays in the fall.



my personal favorites though -

"Should Mommy give up coffee for me? -

This is a matter of some controversy.. some studies have shown no link between caffeine and pregnancy.. so the consesus is that you're in no danger of Mom's coffee drinking, as long as it's in moderation (under forty cups a day). Frankly, this is one indulgence you might want to cut Mommy some slack on. She's already given up booze, marijuana, and horse tranquilizers for you, so it's a lot to expect of her to give up all chemical enhancement whatsoever. Yes, the caffeine may keep you up all night, but what, like you've gotta work tomorrow?"


hahah, that's so wrong. but it makes me laugh.

(click images to enlarge)


obviuosly my anxiety isn't "baseless", as it isn't for any of us bereaved mothers, but somehow, the dark humor of laughing at myself and my urges to call the office every day, helps just a little.. since I know I'm totally guilty of all of that. i bring pens and notepads to each appointment and i've brought printed articles too. he also talks of "anxiety as a more creative approach to useless worry" and taking a months-long tour through the "american museum of things that could theoretically happen but are extremely unlikely."

right.

whatever gets me through though.. prayer, my supporters, sick humor, or total denial of the horror that pregnancy can turn into (aka "hope").. i'll get thru it somehow. oh, and of course, with the help of unsolicited advice from clueless passer-bys, too.




8 more hours..


excerpts and photo from What to Expect When You're Expected by David Javerbaum

I Will Carry You

I am going to see Angie Smith speak tonight, author of "I Will Carry You", the story of sweet Audrey Caroline. Her husband and his band, Selah, will also be there ♥

I Will Carry You by Selah

Scouting For Hope

round ligament pain

Boring pregnancy details here. But I meant to be documenting more of it.. so here's a little update.

I woke up this afternoon with terrible abdominal pain... so bad that I had to call out of work. It was in my upper and lower stomach area so I didnt know if this was GI related or uterine. It was difficult to walk, which really sucks when you think you're going to vomit. (I never did though, thank goodness). So I went back to sleep hoping it would go away.

14 hours later, it hasn't. It isn't GI related, and the pain has lessened in my upper stomach. Eating doesn't change anything, and fluids have only helped with the matching headache I had. I did take a hot bath (semi-hot, since you're not really allowed) and that helped. After talking to one of my maternity nurse friends and being reassured by the doppler a whopping 5 times in 10 hours, I have self diagnosed this as round ligament pain. Usually I feel that when I change positions after sitting or laying for a long time, but this is constant. It feels like muscular tightness rather than cramping. Who's had a pregnancy after a c-section? was your round ligament pain worse? do you think it's because the muscle is sore? or does the 2nd pregnancy just result in faster growth, so therefore worse RLP?

I dont like it at all. The baby's heart rate has been up slightly.. not much... but I would think the all day pain and maybe the hot water (after the bath was the fastest) has affected my poor little bird :( I'd rather know it's high than wonder if it's there at all. If I didn't have my doppler, I'd definitely have been in triage last night.


I cant miss work again tonight.. I dont have very much paid time off and every hour that I miss basically translates to less time of guaranteed maternity leave. I guess I'm just gonna be moving slowly at work if/when I go, because although right now the pain is steady, it still causes those worse twinges if I move too much.

I wish pain could just be pain, a nusiance, and not be horrifying worry.

I'm sorry baby.. I dont mean to stress. I hope this pain just means that your nest is growing bigger for a healthier you!

Six days until anatomy scan!

doppler

for those of you in the "doppler is a bad idea" camp, i had a needless scare just now. couldn't find the heartbeat. turns out, my bladder was in the way. the instant i came out of the bathroom and put the wand on my stomach, there it was, 141. daddy even heard it from the other room. we laughed.. my poor squished organs. we love you baby bird!

8 more days until we find out the health status and gender of our birdie!

dreams

.i dreamed of kathlyn last night. this is about the 4th or the 5th time i've dreamed of her. each time, she has been dead, or alive but i knew she was about to die. my brain wont allow, even for a second of my unconscious, for my heart to think she's alive. my brain knows my heart would shatter once again to have to wake back up from that. so even in my dreams, she's still dead. despite that, the feel of her 7 pounds in my arms was a temporary cure for my grief. i wish i could hold her like that every night.



the details of the dream are too strange to share. all my dreams lately are very strange; i guess those are "pregnancy dreams". but in the dream, even though she was dead, she cried, stretched, and spit up. it's not really that strange that she spit up, because the whole time i was holding her in real life on july 30, i was afraid her meconium would expel (what a thing to be thinking of when bonding for the one and only time with your daughter).



i heard her cry... i have never, ever heard that before, not for real, not in my imagination or my dreams. and, i saw her eyes. since i never saw them in real life, my dreams have never showed them to me. my dreams have even teased me before, where i was about to see her eyes and at the last second she closes them. but there they were... such a shining, sparkly, icy blue. they were amazing. i put a new diaper on her. and a pair of green and pink kitty cat pajamas. and swaddled her in a pink, white, and yellow flower blanket. and held her. i remember thinking in my real conscious (i knew i was dreaming) what a gift it was to hear those cries, see her stretch and get an idea of her body movements, see her eyes, and dress her.. things i never got to do. and i just wanted to hold her to my chest, heart to heart, baby blue eyes on my shoulder, and never let go.



i close my eyes.. only for a moment and the moment's gone..