Belly Casting

I want to purchase my belly cast/mold kit in the next week or so.  I have looked at so many of them over and over.  Wondering if any of you who have done belly casts before might have suggestions on which brand to purchase???

30 Week Appointment and a Long Weekend

Last Friday morning (Jul 16th) was our 30 week midwife appointment.  For a simple appointment, with no other 'procedures' scheduled, it took a long time.  I spent just over 90 minutes in the office...but we got a lot accomplished.

In short, all is well with the Bean.  I have gained 21 pounds since my first appointment at 9 weeks (about 28 pounds over pre-pregnancy weight according to my bathroom scale).  My blood pressure is still really low, which is fantastic news for someone with chronic hypertension!  Beana's heart rate was in the high 130s, and several times during counting, Jellybean had very noticeable heart rate accelerations.  Again, a very good thing.  Belly measurement was right on target.  We reviewed the report from the last Maternal Fetal Medicine appointment (since I saw MFM after midwifing last time, instead of before), and she confirmed that Bean is measuring in the 61st percentile.  Again...very reassuring, since we were starting on the downward slope to IUGR at this point with Gracie. 

So, as things stand now, I am scheduled to see MFM again on July 29th, as well as the new midwife.  We have added a non-stress test to the string of appointments for that day.  After that, I will go twice a week for non-stress tests; one of those appointments each week will also include an ultrasound and a midwife check.   These appointments are scheduled out through August 20th, with the anticipation that I will see MFM again on August 26th, unless they decide otherwise next week.

After the appointment, we hit the road for Beana's first trip to NYC.  We visited with friends from college and did some 'touristy' things in the city...we did a Yankee game, the Rockefeller Center observation deck, the Brooklyn Bridge, Little Italy, the Bodies Exhibit  (This exhibit is set up in various cities across the country...if you have the chance to catch it anywhere, I highly recommend it!  I will put a disclaimer here for all BLM and BLD...there is a section of the display that is nothing but pregnancy related.  Jeff and I both had to use the bathroom about half way through, and we had to go through the rest of the exhibit still in front of us to get there.  We turned a corner and stopped dead in our tracks, as we found ourselves face to face with a non-living baby on display in front of us.  Not something we were expecting to see.  When we finally got back to that room on our way through the remainder of the exhibit, we were both able to go through all of it without too much problem...but I know that it is not something that every BLM or BLD would want to walk into unexpectedly.  Despite this unexpected part of the exhibit, I recommend the exhibit as a whole!).  When I was pregnant with Gracie, Jeff and I somehow managed to not have our picture taken together, so we never really had a 'family' photo; we also managed to not do one together after she was born.  So I made sure that we got a 'family' photo of the two of us with Beana while we were being touristy.

So now down to the nitty gritty.  I know that some of you reading here have already been through the rainbow baby process, and that several of you are walking this road with me right now.  But I have to say that this is one of the most difficult things that I have ever done.  It goes without saying that going through L&D to give birth to a dead baby is hard, and it goes without saying that burying your child is hard, but not everyone expects this process to be as difficult as it is.  Some days aren't bad...they are normal days.  I have thoughts about Gracie, but I don't link them to this pregnancy.  Some days are a little rougher, and dead baby thoughts creep in amongst the pregnancy thoughts every chance they get. 

Some days I feel like I cannot get it together...  I am eating well, but my diet was impeccable with Gracie, and I wanted it to be the same this time around.  I feel like this baby is sucking the life right out of me; I am sleeping more soundly at night than I did with Gracie (Gracie practiced for her Stomp audition at night; Beana thankfully does her practicing during the day), yet I am still exhausted.  Some nights I skip dinner and go to bed as soon as I get home...skipping dinner is not helping physically or mentally.  I am behind on my Hypnobabies home study - I wanted to be all the way through it by now so I could be working on the self-hypnosis.  I am going to need all the practice I can get for the self-hypnosis, as relaxation and anything even remotely related is not something that comes easily for me.  There are things that we did not have ready for Gracie, as we thought we had a few more weeks.  I am getting to the point that I feel like I should have that stuff ready to go now, but I keep procrastinating.  My list keeps getting longer and longer...car seat and stroller (which we have had for almost 15 months, yet the box is still unopened) rewashing blankets and other non-clothing items that are on the shelves under the changing table, purchasing some cloth diapering stuff, purchasing some of the other 'essential' baby gear that we have not gotten yet, packing a hospital bag...you get the point.  Part of the problem is just old fashioned procrastination.  I think a bigger part of the problem is not wanting to jinx myself, and I honestly think another large part of the problem is that my brain does not fully comprehend that pregnancy is supposed to end with actually bringing a baby home.  


But, all of this aside, we are moving forward one day at a time.  We are trying to live in the good right now and hoping that it is enough to balance everything out from one day to the next...and we are very much looking forward to the day in the not-so-distant-future that we bring our daughter home to love and raise...

A Smattering of Thoughts

(I found myself typing and typing this afternoon, only to get to the end and realize how long this post was.  There aren't too many of you reading here at this point, and I don't expect many of you to get all the way through this post.  It just really helped to get it all out somewhere...it's been sitting on my chest, and that isn't overly productive for me.  If you don't make it all the way through, make sure to check out the pic at the bottom...it's kind of amusing.)

Lost Baby Emotions Mingling with Rainbow Emotions

If you have been to Gracie's blog in the last couple of days, you know that I had a pretty lousy week.  I cannot pin the lousy week on any one thing, but I am pretty sure that 'Jellybean emotions' were a contributing factor.  Hormones and 'Jellybean emotions' seem to have started on an upswing in recent weeks - I can't wait to see how much they start to fluctuate in the coming weeks. 

I have found myself intentionally trying to avoid conversation about Jellybean and this pregnancy as a whole, which is getting harder to do as I get larger.  I am in the middle of the first round of summer services for most of my school caseload, which comes after a several-week-long break from school/services.  The very nice teachers and aides that I see on a weekly basis during the year all ask the same questions when I go into their rooms.  I know that they mean well, but answering the same questions over and over gets a little overwhelming sometimes....  How are you feeling?  (Same as a few weeks ago.  Tired, but otherwise fine...)  How are you handling this heat?  (Probably the same as everyone else...wonderfully, as long as I stay in the A/C.)  How is everything looking with the baby?  (Okay at this point...)  Oh, that's fantastic!!  (Yes, it is fantastic, but things looked fine at this point with Gracie, so we are just taking things one day at a time.)  Do we know what it is yet?  (Yep...it's still a baby...but if you're asking about gender, it's another girl.)    I feel ungrateful for not wanting to answer their questions, but I just really don't want to talk about it anymore.  Sometimes I feel like if I cut everyone off from all information, I won't have to talk about anything if something goes wrong. I know that that is completely backwards logic, because there will be a million questions from everyone if something goes wrong again, regardless of how much people did or didn't know along the way.

I also need a haircut - possibly a whole new do - and some highlights in the worst way imaginable.  For some reason, the salon is one place that I have been avoiding like it's my job.  Probably because I just don't want to talk, and that's pretty much what goes on when you go to get your hair done - lots of talking.  I have been to my regular salon once since Gracie died.  I went in, sat down and the first words out of my stylist's mouth were "So, I hope you brought pictures!!"  She had no idea, and I didn't expect her to know; once we were over the hump, it was fine.  But I know that if I walk in there now with a pregnant belly there will be more obligatory question and answer time.  A friend's step-daughter just opened a salon here in town, and I went there once a few months ago, but it doesn't matter where you go, you still have to chat...otherwise it's even more awkward. :-/

A few times a week I drive past a memorial (headstone) retailer in the next town over.  For the last month or so they have had a beautiful stone sitting in front of their showroom that continues to catch my eye.  It is a very pretty angel kneeling next to a heart.  I look at it every time I drive past it, and I have actually caught myself thinking that if we need another stone, that this is the one I would like to have.  Holy shit!!!  I have already picked out a marker!  I really must figure out how to do this rest of this pregnancy without my subconscious planning for the worst case scenario.  I will not need a marker - I am going to bring home a very live Jellybean!!!  I will NOT need a marker this time!!  Go away thoughts!!!

At some point, before we are done having children, I will figure out how to balance all of these thoughts and emotions...

Life Out of Control

I think that another part of my problem this week was the fact that my life feels like it is spinning faster and faster out of control.  More accurately, I just really feel like I have no control over anything going on around me and I can't seem to make anything stand still.  

Despite the fact that I have been making a concerted effort to slow my schedule down, it just seems to get busier and busier...and I seem to get 'behinder and behinder'.  :-/   When we were pregnant with Gracie, everything was centered around the pregnancy.  I mean everything.  Birthing class, sleep, food prep, lots of 'prenatal exercise and stretching'...you name it, we did it the name of pregnancy.  What a difference a year makes.  I don't have any other clinicians working for me until next month, so it's up to me to get it all done in the office...Jeff is working a part time job that adds 20-30 hours a week to his schedule...  Now I feel like I cannot find any time to sleep, I can't find time to cook, we cannot find time to set aside to do our HypnobabiesKegel exercises a day. 

The food thing actually goes quite a bit further than not finding time to cook.  A few years ago I decided that it was time to start cutting some of the junk from our diets and giving some serious thought to the long term consequences of the food on our plates.  Jeff has been wonderfully supportive with this.  Admittedly, it is not something that he would do on his own, but he acknowledges and agrees with the need to do it, and he has been much better with it than I though he would.  It was a long, arduous process, but we transitioned from pseudohealthy eating to actual healthy eating.  (I will, however, admit that I still think that potato chips and french fries should be a their own food group.)  We live in a rural area, where lots of people choose to live with their heads either buried in the sand or shoved up their asses; many of them choose to be uneducated about the things going on around them (and I'm not talking formal education) and do things just because that's how they've always been done.  The choices and decisions that we started making about food and nutrition are not considered to be in the popular majority around here.  Because of this, some of our options were limited and we took quite a bit of grief for the changes that we implemented; people did not understand or care about why we were making these changes, and it made it difficult sometimes.  But we did it, and felt worlds better as a result. 

Over the last year, stress and time constraints have taken a front seat and our natural/organic eating has started to slide.  Jeff has really fallen off of the wagon, especially when eating without me.  It is sometimes a matter of circumstance, sometimes a matter of just not caring about anything anymore.  Funny how the spark in life can be snuffed out for so long by one life changing event....    :-(     It's not the end of the world, by any means, but I feel like all of the effort we put into it has gone down the drain.  It's something that will have positive health benefits for both of us, as well as our children, and that is important to me.  We are trying to get turned around and headed in the right direction again, but lack of parallel thinking on the part of our families (and others around us) has made this difficult; they invite us for dinner and/or bring us food, to which we cannot really say no, but it's not what we would be putting on our plates if we were doing the cooking.  For now, I continue to look for ways to explain our choice(s) about food to the family in a way they will understand and respect, I am trying to get our food selection/purchasing back under control, and I am trying to ignore my constant compulsive twitching as we work to get this back on track.  :-)  

Childbirth, the Marvels of Modern Medicine, and Sheep

I think another reason for my meltdown this week revolves around modern medicine.  There are lots of ways to look at it, I suppose.  Technology and the expansion of medical knowledge is supposed to make life better...'better living through chemistry' as they say...but I definitely don't buy into the theory that all advancements and developing trends in medicine can be viewed as advancements.  Again, a thought that falls outside of the mainstream, which buys me more grief from many people around me. 

We are firm believers that, while modern medicine can offer amazing things to the minority of women who truly need medical support to get through pregnancy and/or childbirth, for the most part women can give birth to healthy babies without significant medical intervention (they have been doing it for centuries).  We believe that many women don't do enough to educate themselves about pregnancy and childbirth and do not make their own decisions, and in the end, many allow themselves to be turned into 'sheep' by the medical community.  This said, when we were pregnant with Gracie, Jeff and I decided early on that we wanted a natural pregnancy and birthing process.  Very specifically, we were not interested in induction, labor augmentation or pain medication/epidural.  This is not a decision that we made lightly; it was made after much research, reading, thought and discussion.  Definitely not a mainstream decision, and definitely a decision that bought us quite a bit of grief from a lot of people.  Luckily, the midwife who delivered Gracie (luck of the draw with that) was quite supportive of our plan; the other midwives were not overly exuberant about the fact that we had a birth plan and that we were vocal about not wanting medication.  Unfortunately, in the end it did not matter. 

Now that we are getting closer to Jellybean's arrival, we have begun to review and revamp our game plan.  Not a fun process.  Every decision makes my brain jump back and forth from one side of the field to the other.  Overall, the plan is still natural child birth.  People continue to question this, and now they apparently feel that they are justified in telling us that we are nuts, simply because Gracie died.  The fact that we prepared for natural childbirth did not kill her; she died before labor was ever induced.  We have been told by our midwife that it is not likely that they will 'let' me go beyond my due date with Jellybean.  This bothers me, primarily because Gracie also did not 'overbake'.  

But here's the catch with the whole plan... I still believe that I can give birth to a healthy baby without all of the bells and whistles, but I am scared to death to do so.  I am so petrified of lightning striking twice.  So far, I have gone against my beliefs and agreed to ultrasounds every 4 weeks since 20 weeks.  I am not really in a position to decline the ultrasounds until we can see for sure that Jellybean is growing appropriately and not showing any indication of IUGR.  At our midwife appointment this week we will lay out a game plan with the midwife for the next 10 weeks.  We will decide about the frequency of NST and regular (level 1) ultrasounds (as part of the biophysical profile testing).  Part of me wants to consider scheduling an induction if this baby doesn't come on her own by a certain point, but the rest of me is so totally opposed to it.  There (hopefully) is plenty of time for me to hash all of this out with myself and have further discussion with at least our primary midwife about this.  For now, though, my brain keeps going back and forth about all of it.  I guess only time will tell...until then, the sheep costume is out of the package and hanging in the closet.  :-(

Last, But Not Least

I will end on a funny note, well a funny picture.  Our nephew just graduated from high school and has enlisted in the Navy.  He will leave for basic training in Chicago on 7/21.  Last night was graduation/going away party. Although my husband and his brothers never need an excuse to drink beer, the party gave them a fantastic excuse to get together and guzzle.  Toward the end of the evening, they decided that we (myself included) should hike up our shirts and compare belly size.  So here is the first public Jellybean belly pick.

Just a Random Post

Two posts in two days...not something that is likely to happen on Jellybean's blog until she arrives safe and sound...or at least that is the plan.  But, I just posted on Gracie's blog and wanted to pop over here for a moment.  I want to wish you all a good holiday weekend...I hope that is is safe and enjoyable for you all. 

I am not sure if it's connected to the very loud noise of last night's fireworks that woke her from her nap or something else, but for the last 11 hours Beana has apparently been quite unhappy with the arrangement of things in her living quarters (a.k.a. my uterus).  I am pretty sure that she has been moving furniture or ripping out walls or something of the like.  I was starting to wonder if the velocity of her movement was going to pick up any time soon, as everything has been pretty gentle and mild.  She has arrived.  :-)    But that's not really what I wanted to post about...I just posted it since I was here.  :-)

I had another very random run-in with the "Are you over it yet?" lady today.  There is no question for anyone who knows me that I am definitely pregnant, yet she felt compelled to ask if we were expecting again.  Then she felt the need to reach out and rub my belly without permission.  I wanted to punch her.  She asked how things were going and then proceeded to assure me that if we were getting 'extra monitoring and special treatment' that we would undoubtedly have a different outcome this time.  Again...wanted to punch her.  Thought about educating her about this entire rainbow process and the general lack of guarantees in life, but decided that I really wanted to not be talking to her and all of this would just extend the conversation. Thankfully, she was on a mission and the conversation was limited to less than 5 minutes...but she made sure to assure me that she would be watching my husband's FB announcements for good pregnancy news and our birth announcement.  Something for us to look forward to.  :-/

When I was pregnant with Gracie, I am pretty sure that no one touched my belly without permission.  This lady is the 2nd person to do it in the last 24 hours...and the other person was a complete stranger.  I just simply cannot imagine walking up to someone I have never seen or met before and laying hands on their belly.  Weird.

28 Weeks

Thursday was my 28 week appointment for Beana.  It was a pretty busy day.  I had to return a 24 hour urine collection, do my 1-hour glucose test and some other blood work, see the midwife, do another level II ultrasound and see the MFM doc.  All of this on the 11 month anniversary of the day that her big sister made her perfectly silent entrance into the world....


The midwife that I saw on Thursday is the one who delivered Gracie.  I am quite comfortable with her, and I am able to have pretty frank conversation with her at this point.  This is the first appointment that Jeff has missed, and she asked how he has been doing.  More or less, he's still a train wreck...simply waiting for the other shoe to fall.  We talked about how we weren't really ready emotionally for this pregnancy, which is a pretty accurate summation.  Unfortunately, we waited so long to start our family that we don't have much time to wait at this point if we still want to have three living children....so forward we trudge, ready or not.  I can only hope and pray that this baby brings a tiny speck of hope, peace and healing for us. 



Everything is looking great as this point.  Here are some details:

• Fasting blood glucose was perfect; 1 hour glucose results not in before I left, but not expected to show anything surprising.
• Iron levels are fantastic
• No protein detected in my urine dip in the office and protein in the 24 hour collection was in the normal range
• Remainder of the blood work looked good - this included kidney panels, liver panels and some other random stuff that they look at a little later in pregnancy.
• Blood pressure is still good
• Belly measurements were exactly where they should be for 28 weeks
• Beana's heart rate was measured at 140 in the morning and 138 in the afternoon.
• Estimated weight of the Bean was 2 lbs, 11 oz.  This means she has doubled in size from her last estimate 4 weeks ago (1 lb, 5 oz.).  This estimated weight puts her in the 61st percentile for growth/weight.  Although it's just an estimate, it's very exciting stuff for us since she was in the 39th percentile a month ago!!!!
• Blood flow through the umbilical cord was "excellent", size and health of the placenta appeared to be "excellent" and the volume of amniotic fluid was "excellent".  Cord flow and placental size/health are again big things for us at this point.

We have been going back and forth between two due dates; it was decided that 9/23 will be our official estimated due date.  We will have another midwife appointment on Friday morning, July 16th, at which point we will finalize the plan for non-stress testing and ultrasounds beginning at 32 weeks.  We will be taking Bean on her first trip to NYC after this appointment.  :-)    Our next appointment with the Maternal Fetal Medicine docs is Thursday, July 29th.

I have been trying to discuss names with the hubby, but he's not overly interested in names at this point.  Part of that waiting for the other shoe to fall thing, I think.  I have thrown probably 300-350 names at him, and gotten 'maybe' for only 8 names...so this baby might be a year old before we can call her anything other than Beana.  Nothing else new to report at this stage of the game....for now, no news is good news. 

24 Week Update

Miss Beana has been dancing up a storm over the last few weeks.  She is on the move 24/7, which is more than I could ever say for Gracie, who slept for 6-8 hours a day with very little movement during those hours.  Some days I feel like she is literally sucking the life out of me; I am just absolutely exhausted.  I know that some of it is just because I have been going non-stop at work, which will be slowing to a normal pace by the end of this week; but I can't help but wonder if some of it is because Beana is actually growing as she should be and physically requiring more from me than Gracie did...since we now know that she was not really keeping up in terms of growth.  Regardless of the reason, it has forced me into taking weekend naps in an attempt to catch up with what I am not getting during the week.  I am loving the weekend naps on the weekend, but not so much during the week when I think about what I could/should have gotten done during the time that I was napping.

We had our 24 week appointment on Thursday, which included another level 2 ultrasound, a visit with one of the MFM docs and a visit with one of the midwives in our OB practice.  The ultrasound was, again, an amazing experience.  Beana was having a little dance party during the entire ultrasound - it was weird to feel her moving and watch it at the same time on the screen and see which body part it was that I was feeling.  She was in a head down position at 20 weeks and she was still that way on Thursday!  Yippee!!  The ultrasound wasn't quite as detailed as the 20 week ultrasound, but we still saw pretty much every structure of Beana's body.  We were also able to see the placenta pretty well, as well as blood flow through the umbilical cord.  Placental size and health and cord flow were two of the things that I was most concerned about (in addition to cardiac structure and function), and both looked really good on Thursday.  Heart structure and function is still looking good, too.

 Although you can't see her face, this is a shot of her arms up in front of her face.  It's similar to a few ultrasound photos that we have of Gracie.

You can see her heart with such clarity here...

Overall, Beana is measuring in the 39th percentile for growth - she was estimated to be 1 pound, 5 ounces.  I am not real crazy about the 39th percentile, since Gracie was only in the 30th percentile at 32 weeks, but as long as she holds steady in her growth and stays at or above the 39th percentile, all is well.  (I forgot to ask where she measured during the 20 week ultrasound.)  After our first go-round with IUGR not being diagnosed until postpartum, I am just a little nervous.   

The MFM doc basically came right out and said that everything looked good.  Jeff was surprised by this, because he was expecting him to give us the same line that the other doc gave us 4 weeks ago..."Nothing of concern seen at this point."  He said that if everything continues at it is now, we will have additional ultrasounds at 28 and 32 weeks, and then start weekly biophysical profiles (ultrasound and non-stress test combo).  We will also have a second NST each week since that information is considered to be valid only for 3-4 days. 

Nothing exciting during our midwife appointment.  My blood pressure was just a little higher than I hoped it would be, but it was certainly not high enough to cause concern.  I have gained a total of about 22-23 pounds so far, which is good.  Fundal height measurement was 24 cm...right where it should be.  Heart rate was 145 beats per minute.  We discussed a few other business matters...

The day of our next scheduled appointments will be quite eventful...I will be returning a 24-hour urine collection jug, doing the 1 hour glucose test, receiving my Rho.gam injection, having an ultrasound, seeing the MFM doc and seeing the midwife.  We decided to ask how much pressure we are likely to receive for induction as we get closer to our due date - in all honesty, if things are looking good, I have no desire at all to induce early.  Her response was that much of those recommendations would come from MFM, but as long as there were no concerns from us or from the medical team, it shouldn't be much of an issue.  But, she did say that it's not overly likely that they will 'let' me go past my EDD.

We also discussed with her that we feel like our medical team is getting a touch too big for our liking.  I am all about the 'two heads are better than one' thing, but I also believe that twenty heads are not necessarily better than two.  I'm not entirely sure that our midwife completely agreed or understood where we were coming from, but I explained that we sometimes wonder if Gracie's backslide in growth percentile would have drawn more attention if there had been less than 9 people (not including nurses) involved in our last 5 appointments before she died, which were a combo of NST, ultrasounds and office appointments.  Most of those 9 people were the result of circumstance and random luck, rather than intentional scheduling, but I still can't help but wonder if the drop from the 30th percentile to the 19th percentile in a 3 week period would have drawn more attention if it had instead been a consistent 3 or 4 or 5 sets of eyes reviewing my chart repeatedly.  (Our practice like to make sure that you see each midwife at least once for familiarity's sake, and that you see one of the docs at least once during each pregnancy...that is a potential of 7 people to see during each pregnancy, now that they have hired a 4th midwife.  I like the convenience of the MFM group coming to our OB's office, which saves us from travel and/or going to a hospital that we don't really want to go to - but because they rotate and we don't always see the same doc.  In addition to all of the docs and midwives, there will be a combination of at least 3 different people doing ultrasounds - 2 that travel with the MFM group and one that works in our OB's office.  Hence the feeling that our medical team is getting a little too large...)  Long story short, we will be working to limit the number of different providers that we see over the next couple of months in an attempt to maintain some continuity.  Although this might requires some repetitive travel to the hospital/office a few days a week instead of scheduling everything on one day, in the long run, I think it will be worth it in terms of my own sanity. For now, we will be sticking with docs who travel with the MFM group and the midwife pool from our OB's office.  Since we are seeing MFM on a regular basis, and we are already familiar with the docs in our OB group, there won't be a need to see any of our local OB docs for the 'obligatory' visit during this pregnancy.  Hopefully it works out when push comes to shove once we start scheduling weekly appointments beyond 32 weeks...

In closing, I want to send out my deepest sympathy to Courtney and her husband, who just sent a third angel to heaven. 

Sending out congratulations to Franchesca, Bree, Alison and Tina...who are all loving up their new rainbow babies!!

And last, but certainly not least, sending out warm, fuzzy thoughts to the other mamas out there walking this rainbow journey with me.... Dawn, Katy, Heather, Megan, Lareina, Holly, Lori and one last mommy who has not yet announced her new pregnancy in blogland.  Sending out the best vibes in the world to Kerry and her family who will hopefully welcome their rainbow on Wednesday, June 9th.   

Where We Are

In an attempt to keep friends and family updated on our pregnancy with Beana, we created a friends and family blog.  Because my baby loss blog is private and unknown to most of our friends and family, we decided to make a different blog about Beana that is completely separate from this one.  I wrote this entry to post there and thought that I would also post it here.  It is long, so save it for when you are suffering from insomnia.  :-)


I have been writing this post over the last few weeks, filling in bits and pieces here and there when the thoughts are clear.  I have written it because almost everyone we encounter these days wants to know how things are going and how we are doing.  They are such pure, innocent and well-intended questions, but it is soooo difficult for us to answer in one or two words at this point.  While some of this post is about our pregnancy with Jellybean and how it has been changed by Gracie's death, much of it is about our grieving and healing process since Gracie's death.   It is written from Susan's perspective, although much of it is applicable to pretty much both of us.  Although we have been relatively open about some aspects of our grief and healing over the last 9 months, there is much that we have not really disclosed or openly shared with others.  There are many questions that, for various reasons, people are afraid to ask.  So here are some answers in black and white.  It is meant to inform, not to offend...so please don't take anything that is said here personally.  This has been a very emotional process for us, and our emotions are still pretty raw...and sometimes raw emotions lead to blunt statements.  As we have moved through the early phases of Jellybean's pregnancy, there has been a surge of new and old emotions, and I am sure that the surging will continue.  But, in the meantime, here is a snapshot of where we are.....
 
First of all, I feel the need to extend heart felt thanks to those who have been there for us over the last 9 months.  Although many of you usually feel like you don't know the 'right' thing to say or do, you have nonetheless been there to offer support and love when it has been needed most.  Unfortunately, you are in the minority.  As we have come to learn, many of the people in our lives feel compelled to say or do something, but because they don't know the 'right' thing to say or do, they generally say and do nothing.  I say this not to make people feel bad, but to let those people know that they are not alone in their reactions.  I was in the same situation when friends of ours suffered a full term loss a few years ago - I desperately wanted to say or do something for them, but I simply could not relate to or understand the impact of what they were going through, and consequently said and did nothing to offer much support.  Now, more than ever, I feel like such a schmuck for that, but it has helped me to understand why people might react the way that they do.  The random (even if they are sometimes a little awkward) words of encouragement and acts of kindness and love are appreciated...please keep them coming if you feel so compelled, even if you are not sure they are 'right.'  You might be very surprised by how appreciated your gestures really are. (I have been surprised to learn that there are some people who are so profoundly affected by death in general, or who have been so profoundly affected by Gracie's death for one reason or another that they just cannot face it or address it.  If a time comes that this changes, you know where to find us.)

During a random conversation about 6 months ago, I told someone that what I was hoping for was not pity from other people, but sympathy.  The looks of pity were starting to get old at that point, but I was also having some frustrations in conveying my grieving process to others.  I said that I completely understand that everyone suffers the loss of a loved one at some point in life, and I am no different.  I acknowledged that I am certainly not the first person to lose a child or suffer stillbirth, and that our loss did not make us 'special' in that regard.  I also said something to the effect that no matter how much you think you are prepared to deal with death, when it comes, it just rocks you and in the long run it's very hard to be 100% okay with it.  She agreed with me, but then told me that she had lost her husband, an adult child and a toddler grandchild within a span of several years (I was unaware of any except the husband) - the last was about 5 years ago.  The loss of her husband was expected after extended illness; the loss of her son and grandchild were unexpected (and not connected to each other).  She told me openly that while she mourned the loss of her husband a long time (and still does), that she was prepared for it and relatively at peace with it, primarily because he was no longer suffering.  She said that the unexpected nature of death is a completely unique circumstance that can and will rock anyone that it touches.  She said that unquestionably, the unexpected death of her grandchild was harder to accept than even the unexpected death of her adult son.  It was an interesting conversation, full of insight and perspective...it gave me hope with regard to my own grief and made me feel a little better about the lengthy process that was still ahead of me.  It's a conversation that I will remember and appreciate for the rest of my days.

Unfortunately, we have encountered a some folks over the last several month who have had a different opinion about our loss... people who openly downplay the lasting effects of Gracie's death.  While this is not (thankfully) something that we run into on a regular basis, it is pretty bothersome when we encounter it.  Just as an example, a few months ago someone asked me if I didn't think it was creepy that I carried pictures of a dead baby with me.  Shortly after that, I was asked by someone else if I was "over" "the baby thing."  While the source of this particular question definitely must be taken into consideration, I was still floored.  I was shocked that anyone would have the gall to ask if I was "over it", and I was even more astounded that Gracie was being referred to as "the baby thing."   We think about and miss Gracie every day.  This will never change.  Her loss and her absence is something we will never, ever get over.  For the most part, the pain has dulled a little bit since August, but we will never get over it...and in our eyes there is no reason to get over it.  She was our child - our first born child.  She grew inside of me to a very viable age, and then she died.  Something was taken from us that can and will never be replaced.  Some people give the appearance of downplaying it because they don't know how else to address it - this does not bother us.  On the other hand, some people downplay it because she was stillborn; in all reality there is no difference between death coming 25 hours before her birth or death coming 25 hours after her birth - in the end I carried her for 36 weeks and in the end she is dead.

I have been told that we cannot live in the past forever.  (Most of this ties in with the people who view Gracie's death as something relatively insignificant in the overall scheme of life.)  These comments always leave me wondering and pondering, and I always come back to the same basic thought.  To the world you are just one person, but to one person you just might be the world.   There is no question about it - Gracie had become our world, and we were prepared for her to be our entire world forever (at least until she had to share the spotlight with a younger sibling - hopefully all parents out there can relate to this).  Then our world was turned upside down.  Everything had shattered...lightning had struck...we had hit the impossible odds...however you want to say it...  Ultimately, every expectant parents' worst fear was suddenly our reality, no matter how hard we wished otherwise. It was our reality.  So, based on this, we have an opinion on the whole living in the past thing.  We are not living in the past.  We are living within our reality, which spans past, present and future.  This reality started on July 31, 2009 and will continue until the days that we die.  We will forever live in the reality that one of our children will always be missing when we are gathered around the dinner table or Christmas tree.  We will forever live in the reality that our first born will never be here on August 1st to celebrate her birthday.  We will forever live in the reality that her siblings will only know that she existed because we will tell them so ... not because they live with her, know her and love her.  And, until we are done having children, we will live in the very real fear of lightning striking twice.  Sure, reality will get a little easier as the years pass, but it will always be reality - not the past.

All of that said, I can say that for the most part, we are 'okay.'  We have survived.  We have continued to put one foot in front of the other. So many people have commented on how strong we are.  Thank you for giving us this credit, but we want people to understand that there is a stark difference between strength and survival.  What we have demonstrated is our ability to function in work and survival modes - it is not something that we consider to be strength.  In the early days there was one decision to make: stay in bed and let this literally kill us or get out of bed, go on with life and grieve while we do it.   We have continued to get up every morning and go to bed every night.  The rest is simply a matter of survival, not strength.  There is a song that includes the lyrics "This is...How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life and you survive..."  It can't really be summed up any better than that.  That said, there are days that are much easier than most and there are days that are much harder than most.  There are still days that we wish the rest of the world could/would come to a complete standstill with us; instead we stand still and watch everything moving and spinning around us as if all is right in the world and nothing had ever gone wrong.  Some days require little effort to get through, but there are days that a complete meltdown is just around the corner.  Meltdowns generally come without reason, and many times without warning; they can be brief or they can last for several days.  They are fewer and further between, but the intensity is certainly no less.  

We continue to grieve every day because all we have left after 36 weeks (8 months) of pregnancy are a few pictures and small mementos.  We grieve every day for what we will never experience with Gracie...we will never see her roll over, sit up, stand up, walk, talk, go to school, fall in love, get her driver’s license...all of the things that you look forward to when you become parent.  We grieve because we never saw her open her eyes…because she never took a breathe…because she never felt our touch on her hands, back, belly or face…because we never had the opportunity to discover her personality other than what was evident while I carried her.  We grieve because we believe that Gracie could be here with us.  Please do not interpret this to mean that we place blame on anyone (our OB providers included) or anything for this, because we do not.  It was a culmination of very unfortunate circumstances.  Regardless of the reason, we grieve...forever.

This entire experience, as anyone might imagine, has impacted our view(s) on the world...in many, many ways......  I have a hard time accepting that “everything happens for a reason” (even though I am a believer that everything does happen for a reason) with regard to Gracie.  I have a hard time listening to people say that it was all part of God’s plan, and that she must have been needed more somewhere else - we needed her here just as much.  I have a hard time listening when people say that she is in Heaven with this person or that person – those are the people that were supposed to prevent this from happening in the first place.  I have a hard time accepting that Jeff, Gracie and I were destined for this long before Gracie was even a thought. I just do.

I also have a hard time with the fact that baby death is almost taboo.  No question about it, it's an unpleasant thing to think or talk about.  I have heard several comments over the last 8 or 9 months about 'unnecessarily freaking out' expectant parents by talking about it or educating about it.  Believe me, I get that.  I get it 100%, and to a degree I am on board with that mindset.  However I can say, with no hesitation, that I wish it was something that had been thrown in our faces during pregnancy.  I would have rather been a little freaked out by valid information than been blindsided like we were.  Because we have friends who lived this nightmare 2 1/2 years before Gracie's death, we had a very rough idea what would happen once we got the confirmation that Gracie's heart was no longer beating.  When I say a very rough idea, I mean we knew - before we even got to the doctor's office for confirmation - that labor would be induced and I would give birth to our dead baby girl.  Aside from that, we were completely blindsided.  After it happened to our friends, I should have known more about it, but I lived in the land of make believe - it wouldn't happen to us.  In the end, I wish we had known more about what is possible with every pregnancy.  I really, really do. 

Other people’s pregnancies and babies are generally a very weird thing for me at this point…and to a degree, this pregnancy with Jellybean is also a weird thing.  I would never wish this fate on anyone for any reason...and I am happy every time someone takes home a happy, healthy baby...but sometimes the ugly green envy creeps up.  My mind wonders why that girl and that girl...and that girl, who obviously can't even take care of herself, can go home from the hospital with living babies and I cannot.  The envy creeps up when I see someone with a pregnant belly...and then I remember that I have no idea what she has been through to get to this point, and no one knows what horrible unforeseen events might lie ahead of her.  Friends of ours are expecting a baby in June.  Somehow, my subconscious managed to push this info all the way into the back of my memory banks, and I actually 'forgot' for about a month and a half that they were expecting.  (Sorry, guys.)  When I realized this, I was mortified...absolutely mortified.  I felt like the most selfish, self-centered and self-absorbed person on the face of the earth.  After discussing it with a few other 'baby loss moms', I realized that I wasn't alone and that it was something that I really didn't have much control over. Still, it's pretty mortifying to me that this even happened.

I am horribly afraid for other pregnant couples, even those that we don't know.  I see them becoming more and more excited as they get closer and closer to their due dates, and the fear I feel is incredible.  I remember being in that same happy, excited and naive place as we crossed the 8 month mark, and having no idea what was only a few days around the corner.  I am so, so fearful that others will unexpectedly stumble upon the same fate and find themselves as the newest members of this awful club.   It is something that I cannot explain beyond this, but I ask everyone who reads this to understand and remember that no one is immune.  It happens...more often than anyone wants to admit...and often without warning.  It can shatter worlds and leave you feeling more alone in a crowded room than you could ever imagine.  I hope that our experience is the closest that any of you get to understanding this heartache. Please - talk to us or read more about stillbirth if you want to be at all proactive.  We will share our story with anyone who wants to know. 

With all of this said, I arrive at our pregnancy with Jellybean.  Suffice it to say that we are very excited, but totally petrified. It is easy to say that we have no reason to expect the same outcome with this pregnancy, but we really had no reason to expect that anything would happen to Gracie.  I want desperately to go back to the naive people that we were a year ago and enjoy every minute of this pregnancy with nothing but carefree delight.  We went through our pregnancy with Gracie knowing that babies could die, but lived each day with the mindset that it couldn't and wouldn't happen to us.  Life is different now, and we almost expect each day with Jellybean to bring disaster.  On some levels, it's almost easier to expect that disaster will strike with the hope that if it does, it won't be quite as devastating since we are expecting it.  Bad plan?  Yep.  Realistic?  Nope.  Does it help us to get through each day just a little easier?  Yep.  Speaking for myself, I am doing everything I can to do to not lose all enjoyable moments of this pregnancy to fear.  I look forward to feeling Beana move every day...I look forward to our next ultrasound and seeing her moving around...I look forward to watching my belly grow.  But with each passing moment, I am still afraid. 

We have learned in recent weeks that Jellybean is a girl.  This brings with it bittersweet emotions.  We were so ready to bring home a little girl in August...especially Jeff.  When we initially learned that Gracie was a girl I saw a some of the glimmer disappear from his eyes for a brief time, since he was really wishing for a boy initially.  It didn't take long for him to adjust to the idea of having a little girl, and he was so ready to bring home (and spoil, despite what he says) his little princess.  Having another little girl will certainly allow him to do just that, but it will be so much different than it would have been with Gracie.  We will always look at little Beana and wonder.  We will wonder how much of Gracie really lives in her...how many similarities or differences there really are that we will never be able to see.  For a long time I will look at her and think about all of the things that we missed with our beautiful first born.  She will wear the clothes that we bought for Gracie.  She will sleep in the bassinet that was ready for Gracie.  We will love her with all of our heart for who and what she is, but it will be a little bittersweet for a while.

Earlier in our pregnancy we learned that there is a higher than average possibility that Beana may have Down Syndrome.  While it is certainly not something that we sit around and hope for, if she does have Down Syndrome, it will certainly not be the end of the world.  This is something that we have gotten a lot of feedback about from the people around us, and I want to sound off a little bit.  Again, it's not meant to offend, just meant to express my opinion.  The odds of anyone randomly ending up with a dead baby are roughly 0.625%.  We ended up with a dead baby.  ~  The possibility/probability of Gracie having Down Syndrome based on the first trimester screen was 1:47 - this means that if you lined me up with 46 other women, there is about a 90% chance that I would be the one whose baby was born with Down Syndrome.  I completely understand that this is a screen, not a diagnostic test, and I completely understand that there can easily be false 'positives' with the screen.  I also understand that there are cases of Down Syndrome that this screen will not detect.  All of that said, the professional assumption at this point, based on the medical information available for review, is that Gracie very likely had Down Syndrome.  ~  Based on the first trimester screen, Beana's odds of having Down Syndrome are 1:39.  Everything that applied to the 1:47 probability applies to the 1:39 probability.  Does that mean that Beana will definitely have Down Syndrome?  No.  Do I understand that?  Absolutely.  Do I need people to point this out to me every time it's discussed?  Not really - being reminded that it's only a screen and not a concrete diagnosis doesn't help me feel any differently or more confident about the situation.  Why?  Because, as much as I would love to be an optimist at this point, I must be a realist.  We are 2 for 2 with regard to hitting the very slim and unlikely odds.  There is also a very good possibility that, if Beana has Down Syndrome, all of these events are connected to each other - not just random coincidence.  If that is the case, it is going to have a significant impact on further expansion of our family.  So, while it is certainly easier for me to assume that Down Syndrome 'won't happen to us', in my eyes it is not realistic to do so since we do have seats on the 'it did happen to us' wagon.  I would rather expect the 'worst' and hope for the 'best'  Some will say that I am going glass half empty on this one, and that is fine - everyone is entitled to an opinion.  With the way life has gone over the last year, I simply need to go with the realism over optimism on this one. (We are encouraged by the fact that there were no obvious markers for Down Syndrome seen on the the latest ultrasound, but we also know that many kids are born with Down Syndrome after showing no markers on ultrasound.  Right now, we simply take comfort in knowing that there are no obvious heart defects!)

As we prepare for Beana's arrival, I will spend (and have already spent) many hours thinking about all that lies ahead of us with regard to medical intervention.  I will put endless thought into weighing the fact that women have been having babies for centuries without medical intervention against all of the marvels of modern medicine against Gracie's demise.  We are firm believers that, while modern medicine offers such amazing things to those in the minority that need help getting through pregnancy and/or childbirth, for the most part women can give birth to healthy babies without significant medical intervention.  I believe that many women don't do enough to educate themselves about pregnancy and childbirth and do not make their own decisions, and in the end, many allow themselves to be turned into 'sheep' by the medical community.  We are now in the aforementioned minority and it sucks...and to be quite honest, I am sometimes pretty much still in denial about being part of that minority.  I still believe that I can give birth to a healthy baby without all of the bells and whistles, but I am scared to death to do so.  I am so petrified of lightning striking twice that I have purchased the sheep costume.  It's still in the package, but it's definitely here.  (And I am pretty sure that Jeff has also purchased one.)  So, while we will prepare again for Beana to arrive via a natural and unmedicated birth, we will also think every day about the fact that bringing home a living baby may require us to abandon our plan, as well as our medical standards and values...this really seems like a no-brainer, and it will be a no-brainer if it comes down to it.  But that doesn't mean that we will feel any better about abandoning our values...it just means that in wanting so desperately to bring a living baby home, there were chances that we weren't willing to take.

So there you have it (if you made it this far).  Whether you consider our 'position(s)' to be right, wrong or indifferent, this is where we are.  Perhaps it is nothing new to some of you, perhaps it is more than some of you wanted to know, perhaps it simply gives a clearer picture.  Regardless, there it is.