Holiday Season

Since the 2015 holiday season has begun this quote has become the theme of our lives: Life was so different this time last year...

While I became pregnant in May of 2014, I didn't start showing or feeling the baby move consistently until late September.  So my memories as a mommy-to-be of "this time last year" really started to become strong as Halloween approached.  For a parent of infant loss, holidays are the kind of days that start to foster anxiety well before the day is here because they elicit the "what should be" feelings.

Halloween of 2014 was the weekend Heath and I spent in North Carolina for our Babymoon which is the new-age term for the final vacation a couple spends together before their lives are forever changed and locked down by the responsibilities of having a baby to care for.   The irony of spending a babymoon together became extremely painful for me to relive this year. On our babymoon, I was 24 weeks pregnant, officially past the halfway point and we had seen a beautiful, healthy baby on the anatomy scan at week 20 with a worry-free follow-up ultrasound planned for week 28.

 We were blissfully and naively excited to spend this alone time together over Halloween 2014. As expected, 2015 halloween broke my heart to think back to that couple that was making plans and dreaming about our new life that was about to start as a family of 3, to be daydreaming back then about how we would spend halloween together the next year as a family, showing off our cute little baby dressed up for his or her first trick-or-treating.

 I couldn't bear to spend Halloween at home this year because I couldn't stand to open the door for happy families and perfect children being reminded every time the doorbell rang that we weren't out there walking our baby around door-to-door.  There really isn't anywhere reasonable to hide from trick-or-treating so "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and I decided to go along with our dear friends as their bigger kids trick-or-treated.  I managed pretty well with the support of our dear friends that have compassion for the pain holidays cause us.

Then comes November.  November is my birthday.  We spent my 32nd birthday excitedly driving home to Wisconsin last year.  I was 27 weeks pregnant and thrilled to spend time with my family celebrating our expectant baby with our first baby shower on November 22.  My mom and sisters (with the help of my aunts and cousins) threw us the most gorgeous baby shower for our baby whose gender we did not yet know.  The theme was celebrating the Prince or Princess the Kings were expecting.  It was a very long time before I could stomach looking at my baby shower pictures again.  It was too painful to relive the idea of all these people gathered in loving support of our expanding family-to-be, to review all of these precious gifts that people spent their time and money on to help us gather the supplies needed to raise a baby.  To relive the gifts that, all too much, we would never get to use with our baby-to-be.  In reliving memories of Millie, I eventually did open the folder with the babyshower pictures and was able to go through them about 2 months ago.  As expected, I found it so hard to watch my baby-to-be celebrated with so many gifts that she would never get to use, to look at the glowing smile on my face as I obliviously celebrated our future life changes.  But then I came across one picture--one single picture--that caught my breath in my throat, caused my heart to pound in my chest and tears to swell in my eyes.

This is the picture that stopped me in my tracks:

This onsie.  This soft fleece, warm onsie.  This onsie that has the moon and stars printed all over it.  This onsie that I chose to put my daughter in when her failing heart was causing her days to get long and rough.  This onsie I chose because it was so warm and cozy to comfort my sick baby girl.  This onsie I chose to put her back in after her very first bath because she was so comfortable and warm in it.

This is the onsie my daughter would be wearing when she was wrapped up cozily in her daddy's arms and took her very last breath.  This is the onsie she was wearing while I cuddled her for hours and hours more after her last breath was taken but before the funeral director came to our home.  This is the onsie our daughter was wearing when she was placed in a carseat and then carried to the hearse in our driveway by her pawpaw Jerry.  This is the onsie Heath and I would go to retrieve from the funeral home 1 week after we buried our daughter.

This is the onsie that still lies in the pack-n-play that is still set-up in our bedroom.  This is the onsie that I could bury my face in to smell my daughter's sweet scent for a few more days after it came home but now I can only look at to remember just how tiny my baby was.  This is the onsie with the moon and the stars on it that my daughter was wearing when she left this earthly world and joined her place in the heavenly sky.

perhaps they are not stars in the sky, but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy --eskimo saying

I don't know who gifted us this onsie but it breaks my heart to think that there was a day when that person bought this sweet little gift for our baby-to-be and never in a million years could have predicted that this is the outfit the baby-to-be would one day pass away in.  This is why my breath caught in my throat when I came across the picture of myself smiling and holding up the stars and moons fleece onsie.  If only that girl in the picture would have known that she was holding up the onsie her daughter would take her last earthly breath in.

So this is the season we are in now--the what I didn't know 1 year ago.  The dreams and plans that I had, as that girl one year ago, are nothing like what I could have imagined for the next year celebrating this 2015 holiday season.  

December 1st was one year ago that we had the 28 week follow-up ultrasound where it was discovered that our baby's heart was enlarging.  December 12 will be 1 year ago that I was admitted to the hospital and the doctors started preparing for an early delivery.  December 13 is 1 year ago when we learned we were having a girl and named our daughter after the strongest women we know. December 16 will be 1 year ago when we learned about her vascular malformation and potential brain damage. And everyday going forward will be some sort of 1 year ago memory.   The memory of a couple that 1 year ago was catapulted into parenthood before our baby was born as we started preparing for a very different future with a baby that was known to be sick, for a baby that had to have serious decisions made about almost every single day of our last 9 weeks of pregnancy.

As we approach Christmas this year, I mostly feel numb about the holiday I have traditionally loved and cherished so much.  My Grandma Shirley is the main reason why I have always loved Christmas so much, so there is some comfort in knowing Millie gets to celebrate the birth of Jesus with our Lord and my Grandma (as well as Heath's mawmaw Alma who Heath also connects deeply with Christmas traditions).  However, I have been struggling in this season. I have felt lost figuring out how to honor the Christmas traditions that I have always loved and how to continue to incorporate our daughter whose 1st Christmas will be spent in heaven instead of in our arms.

I have been able to set out some decorations, including a stocking for our special baby girl.

Today is the morning after which St. Nick would have visited our baby girl to fill her stocking with Christmas treats.  This is a holiday I traditionally grew up celebrating with my sisters and this morning Millie's stocking is glaringly empty.  Sure I could filled her stocking with gifts that St. Nick would have brought her if she were still here but that just doesn't work for me.  

 
So I have thought long and hard about what would warm our hearts as we celebrate Christmas with our daughter in heaven and as we quickly prepare our hearts to celebrate her first birthday one short month thereafter.  

This Christmas season, it would warm our hearts if we could fill her stocking this year.  I don't necessarily want to fill it with gifts she'll never get to experience.  Instead, we would be honored to fill her stocking with letters.  Letters from you, those of you who chose to write to Millie about whatever fills your heart.  Maybe it's memories of her you hold near and dear to your heart, maybe it is things in everyday life that remind you of her, maybe it is the way she has touched your life, maybe it is something she inspired you to do differently this past year, maybe it is something you have done in honor of her.  If you feel compelled to share, we would be honored to fill Millie's stocking with letters from you.  Then as her 1st birthday and 23 days of life are celebrated and relived in our memories we will be able to further celebrate her time here on earth and how she continues to fill our hearts by reading your letters.

I will then create a scrapbook of sorts and/or compiled post to share the ways in which Millie has touched the lives of others, to show how her time here on Earth has been of purpose.

If you are interested in contributing and need our address please email me at lissawied@gmail.com.  If a letter is not your thing but you are inspired in a different way to express Millie's impact on your life then please share in whatever way moves you.

Heath and I are beyond Thankful for the gift of Millie, for becoming parents, for the love and support of so many family and friends in our lives.  We are so blessed in way too many ways to even begin to cover but love, faith and relationships are at the top of that list.

Merry Christmas to you and your family with extra blessings from heaven this holiday season

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

October

Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Month

 It is a bittersweet time of year to have our situation highlighted around the world in order to bring awareness to a very devastating and sad statistic.  Almost everyone, everywhere is battling some sort of fight within their family. When we read about those situations and the statistics that exist we feel empathy for those people but continue to feel grateful because "that doesn't happen to my family, that just happens to others"

And I guess that's how we were.  I've heard of stillborn babies but I felt like it only really happened in generations before mine, that our constant medical advances had surely minimized this risk. Staggeringly, today 1 in 160 births in America are stillborn.  It feels like that will only happen to others but that is not a small statistic and in my journey I have learned just how many families this truly affects.

In reading books about how to encourage a healthy pregnancy the authors always reassured me that majority of women deliver perfectly healthy babies through uneventful deliveries and that I should not be bothered with worrying.  Heath and I are healthy individuals with healthy family histories so I bought into the comfort of the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of healthy babies are born every year.  Those rare occasions of sick babies only happens to others. Until we weren't that situation and our baby was indeed quite sick.  But even in the midst of our preparation for bringing a very sick baby into this world, we never imagined the possibility that we would lose her.  We had so much faith in modern medicine and it's ability to protect her and provide her with a bright future.  It wasn't until we joined this 'Bereaved Parents Society' that I learned just how real the risk of delivering a very sick baby, a terminally ill baby, is.

In my heart I believe that we were given the gift of time, of 23 days, with Millie because of modern medicine.  If it weren't for our extraordinary care I don't think Millie's illnesses would have been known and that she would have likely passed inside of me or very quickly after birth because her condition would have continued to worsen unnoticed.  I am so incredibly grateful that our daughter was not born still and that we have the memories of her first breath, of her diaper changes, of her sweet little cry, of her blinking big eyes, of her gorgeous smile, of her soft dark hair, of her warm cuddly body, of her grasping fingers, of her wriggling toes, of her outfit changes, of her warm bath, of her sleepless nights, of her last breath.

Nonetheless, pregnancy and infant loss doesn't just happen to others.  It has unfortunately affected our family twice as Millie is now playing with her second cousin, Cooper, up in heaven.  Cooper is my cousin Kristin's son, he passed away at 5 months old from SIDS 5 years ago.  Our modern medicine NEEDS to make more progress in understanding how to prevent stillbirth, prematurity, SIDS and infant and childhood illnesses.  Therefore I am grateful for the month of October as a platform to bring awareness to our community and to allow bereaved parents the opportunity to speak up about the grief they continue to live with on a daily basis.

 

Pregnancy and Infant Awareness Month is highlighted on October 15th with the Wave of Light

 

Heath and I happened to be traveling to Wisconsin during the Wave of Light so we were unable to participate by boy did our family and friends honor Millie that night. 

 Our hearts were so warmed by the outpouring of love and support
that kept coming through as we drove through the Midwest...

Even though our daughter is not physically present we still care about her and love her just as any other parent cherishes their living children.  Therefore, you just can't imagine how much it means to have our daughter grace your thoughts and for you to share that with us.

Here are some other ways Millie's memory was shared throughout the month of October...

My friend, Maria Elena Gutierrez, the mother of brilliant, Aby, lit a candle for each baby at Landon's Legacy on the night of October 15.

My friend, Tiffany Breininger, is the founder of the Queen B Project in honor of her beautiful daughter, Emma.  She has honored all of our Landon's Legacy babies, as well as other babies lost too soon, with this beautiful tribute located in Wildwood Park in Harrisburg, PA.

Another friend of mine, Emma VandenBrink, has expanded her personal blog about skin care to discuss her loss journey following her full-term, still birth loss of her precious son, Reid.  I was honored enough to be featured in the launch of the part of her blog that features stories from other parents living through pregnancy and infant loss.  Please explore her site and Sincerely, Mama to gain even more insight about the world we now live in.

My cousin, Scott, married Rosie on Oct 17 and it was here at their wedding that we were gifted with the sweetest remembrance of our daughter, as well as her great-grandparents, Paul and Shirley, and her cousin, Cooper.

Finally, Heath and I were invited over to Oxford, Alabama to an event, Light Up the Sky, by our sister-in-law, Jenine.  Here we were joined by Millie's aunt Jenine, Mawmaw Rita and Pawpaw Jerry to share her story, her life, her pictures and then release a lantern in the honor of her and all babies lost too soon.  It was a beautiful way to connect with other families experiencing the joy & pain we endure every single day.

Thank you again for always honoring our loss and never minimizing the impact that Millie Clara has in this world

October

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

Heath and I are now the face of both.  We have lost a pregnancy at 14 weeks and we have lost our daughter at 23 days old.  Never in my life could I have imagined being a part of this pregnancy and infant loss society but here we are and we are not giving up.

I'm a bit nervous to even share as much personal information as I'm about to share but I feel that it is important to help give a voice to this frightening reality for not just us, but for many other parents and couples wanting to become parents.

Heath and I were lucky enough to get pregnant even when we weren't really trying.  Shortly after getting married we bought a house and decided it was time to start trying for a family but then my sister announced her wedding and I did not want to risk being forced to miss her special event so we put trying on hold.  Heath and I decided not to prevent the chance of becoming parents but we weren't going to specifically try until a delivery date would be well after my sister's wedding date.

Well good thing we weren't preventing because we did become pregnant in December 2013.  It wasn't until New Year's Day that I realized how late I was and that we should take a pregnancy test.  We were both completely shocked when it turned out to be positive.  We were very excited but soon learned that I would be 38 weeks pregnant for Jenny's wedding making it just about impossible for us to attend but we would cross that bridge as it got closer.

In the meantime we only shared with our best friends who were also expecting within days of our baby.  We otherwise kept the pregnancy a secret because we knew miscarriage was not uncommon in the first 12 weeks and we didn't want to shoulder a loss with the whole public.  As the pregnancy progressed well we decided that we would share with my family when we went home for my sister's baby shower, we would be 13 weeks pregnant.  I ordered this precious onesie as a gift for my nephew-to-be that had a big deer and a baby deer on it with the words "i'm going to be a big cousin in Sept 2014".  We were going to surprise the family by having my sister open this gift.  Unfortunately we never got the chance to because we learned at our 12 week ultrasound that our baby had a large cystic hygroma.  I remember Heath crumpling on the floor of the doctor's office when she gave us this devastating news and the referral to a perinatologist for a plan for our baby.  We called immediately to share this unbelievable news with our families and they began the process of grieving with us as we learned that it was unlikely our baby would survive and/or would suffer serious health complications.  Two weeks later we were not going to become parents.  It was extremely painful and difficult to face this world that had no idea what tremendous loss we had just experienced.  We tried to find comfort in knowing that this baby did not have to suffer for long and that we would not go through the even greater pain of losing a full term baby.  We tried to find blessing in the safety of my health and the ability to try for more children.  We never learned the baby's gender and therefore did not name our first baby.  We grieved the loss of our baby in the privacy of our own home and with our immediate family but we looked forward to being able to start trying again after the doctor gave us the go ahead.  

We were so blessed to become pregnant three months after we lost our first baby and were nervous with every doctor's visit we went to.  We were lucky enough to be given the courtesy of perinatology care with our second baby and were so relieved to learn that everything looked great at the 12 week ultrasound and blood testing.  Those first 12 weeks were very nerve-wracking but we survived quietly worrying together while only sharing the news with our parents.  Again we didn't want the whole world to know if we went through a similar loss again.  But statistics were in our favor and we believed in the statistics that we were likely to have a normal, healthy baby.  We finally shared the news with the rest of our families and friends after the 12 week appointment looked so good.  We lived in naive joy and celebration for 4 more months before we learned that there was an abnormality during our baby's ultrasound.  Heath and I literally couldn't believe it and almost didn't want to go to the recommended follow-up appointments.  We were wanting to choose to believe that it was a mistake or positioning distortion on the ultrasound.  But our education told us we had to follow-up with the cardiology appointment.  When the pediatric cardiologist agreed that there was an abnormailty in our baby's heart but it may be a non-issue or a simple post-birth treatment then we felt relieved.  We know plenty of babies develop health issues early in life and this little heart issue would be our baby's "thing" and we would manage it well.  But it wasn't so simple and our series of following doctors visits soon revealed that we had much more serious health issues to worry about for our unborn baby.  Yet again we thought we would just manage like so many other parents of sick children do and we never once considered the fact that death could occur in today's era of modern medicine.  

But here we are today, the parents of pregnancy and infant loss.   Here we are trying yet again.  Trying to find hope again after two years of pure pain, joy, fear, happiness, sadness, blessing and loss.

Now we spend every month wondering, hoping, worrying, crying, fearing and praying while we are trying.

Month after month we have to put our hope and our faith in the Lord that we will someday parent a healthy child here on earth.  We yet again embark on a journey that we have no control over and where we put all of our emotions out on the line with no guarantee that we will get what we hope and pray for.

But I have learned that if we are blessed enough to become pregnant again that we will have to find a way to put our fears aside long enough to celebrate every moment that we get to cherish with a growing baby inside of me. 

My hope is that Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month gives parents a voice to the fears and pain they may have endured in their own personal journey.  I hope that it releases us from the fear of sharing our losses publicly so that we may honor the life of the child we carried for however long we have been blessed. I hope that in sharing your story, you not only honor your child but also help to reach others that may be struggling through their own journey of pain.  However, I hope you never know the pain that comes with difficulty becoming pregnant, with early pregnancy loss, with late pregnancy loss, with infant loss or with child loss.  If you have living children then I hope that you hug your children tight and never forget just how blessed you have been.  Keep those of us that have experienced loss in your prayers and find ways to offer support and hope if you can. I hope this month reminds all parents to be grateful for the opportunity they have been given to parent, however long they are blessed to parent their child or children.

 

Heath and I love and miss our babies with every breath that we take.

The Dance

The Dance

Facebook has this sentimental feature where it reminds you of memories past.  Today it reminded me that 1 year ago Heath and I were at the Garth Brooks concert.  I think I may have blogged about the concert last year after we went but I really, really enjoyed myself at this concert.  More than I possibly could have imagined.

This concert is also particularly special because it was the first time that I could say for sure that the funny feeling in my belly was my baby moving.

My baby wasn't doing any old moving though, she was dancing right along with me to Mr. Garth Brooks himself.  I was in pure joy, truly taking in the moments, feeling many reminiscent flashbacks to my high school days and feeling so lucky that my life's path had lead me to Atlanta.  To this city where 5 years later I would get to see Garth Brooks in concert for the first time in the same Atlanta arena where I went on my first date with my southern country husband.  I couldn't contain my happiness as we were dancing to the music while we were blissfully pregnant with our first child.

 

Looking back on the memory of
The dance we shared 'neath the stars above
For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known that you'd ever say goodbye

How could these two naive and blissful expectant parents have ever known that exactly 5 months and 2 days later we would be playing The Dance at our daughter's funeral.

Looking back on that wonderfully joyous memory from one year ago today,

And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain
But I'd have had to miss the dance 

 The very next day we got to see our baby girl for what should have been the last time before we got to meet her in person.  Here is our baby girl on Sept 22, 2014 before we knew she was a girl and when we learned that her brain had a choroid plexus cyst.  A cyst that we were told would definitely resolve itself but as a courtesy the doctor would see us again for an ultrasound in 8 more weeks to double check that it cleared up.  The courtesy ultrasound would be the one that in deed confirmed the resolution of the cyst but also found her enlarging heart and set in motion the rest of our days with her.

Holding you I held everything
For a moment wasn't I a king

6 Months In Heaven

August 19, 2015 marks 6 months without Millie in our arms.  It's hard to believe our sweet girl has been in heaven for 6 whole months now. August 19, 2015 was quickly becoming a point of anxiety looming in my future as I was becoming sad thinking about just how long it had been since we got to hold Millie in our arms.  

One of my main sources of sanity continues to come from my close communication with the mamas from my Landon's Legacy retreat.  It is a refuge I can turn to when my emotions start to get the better of me.  As my anxiety was slowly building, my friend, Darcy, had posted about this event called The Day of Hope and wondered if any other mamas were participating.  I wasn't familiar but learned that...

August 19th is about coming together as a whole community to openly speak about these children and celebrating their short lives. Each year thousands of people around the globe take part in The Day Of Hope by hanging up prayer flags in honour of their babies and children that have died.

I initially felt overwhelmed by the idea of having to be creative in the midst of my surmounting grief but I mentioned the project to Heath and he was actually quite interested.  With Heath's interest I began to feel more inspired as this Day of Hope fell on the 6 month anniversary of the day Millie became whole again in Heaven.  I shared the information with some family members thinking it might be helpful for them in their journey as well. What followed was the most amazing and uplifting show of support, care and true, deep love for Millie... 

Heath's Aunt Jane, Cousin Rhonda and Step-mom Rita at work on prayer flags

This gorgeous prayer flag is set against the Gulf of Mexico, created with love by family while on vacation

The most beautiful flags in honor of Millie Clara King by
Millie's Mawmaw Rita, cousin Rhonda, great aunt Jane and Pawpaw Jerry

~love~

Magical Mawmaw

Proud Pawpaw

Creative aunties at work...

Aunty Mooie loves Millie Moo

Aunty Laura loves her niece Mills

Aunty Jenny made with love from great-grandma Shirley Clara's craft supplies

With love from Gramma Jean

Tears and love for Millie from Ganmaw Linda

I cannot even begin to tell you how much my heart swelled as these unique, creative and beautiful prayer flags were posted and texted to me throughout the day.  It felt so incredible to see our daughter honored and loved by so many family members.  I mean we know how much Millie's family loves and misses her but seeing these prayer flags meant more than you could possibly understand.  These flags made my heart swell throughout Aug 19th like the Grinch's does on Christmas day.

And in the process of dealing with our grief Heath and I made our prayer flags...

Millie Clara King~You are my Angel, my Darling, my Star & my LOVE will find you wherever you are

 Thank you to every single person that holds Millie Clara in your thoughts, memories and hearts.  You just can't possibly know how much it means to two grieving parents that no longer get to hold their daughter in our arms but will forever hold her in our hearts.