Two Years

The first Sunday School lesson I remember at Charity was about the Ebenezer stone.  Tara talked about what the stone represented and how it seemed not to be a tiny stone, but actually a big rock or boulder.  She told us how it was placed to serve as a reminder of the Lord’s deliverance.  She encouraged us to think of some times that God had delivered us and helped us through a dark time.  She passed out little stones for us to take with us. As I held mine, I thought about the miscarriage I had suffered through the previous month while my husband was a continent away and I’d slept over at my mama’s for support. I thought about my Nanny’s battle with cancer and the wreck that nearly claimed my cousin Brooke’s life when we were 19.  I took that little stone home and put it in my kitchen window.  I’ve looked at it probably a hundred times since that Sunday morning, and I looked at it a good, long time this morning while I was fixing Layla’s breakfast.

My firstborn should’ve been two years old this weekend.  We should have been planning a birthday party to outdo his first birthday party and scolding Nanny for buying too many presents.   I should know what it feels like to run my fingers through sweaty blonde toddler hair after he’s been playing outside with his daddy.  The terrible twos should be wreaking havoc on my house and my nerves.  Two years ago, that’s exactly how I envisioned this weekend would be. Two years and I still don’t understand why things didn’t happen the way we’d imagined them. 

What I do know is that life moved on from that hollow gut, abject misery that was September of 2013.   Slowly but surely the fog lifted.  I kept getting up and getting dressed and getting loved on by my husband and family and friends and one Saturday (I can’t remember which one but I know it was after the 27^th one at least) I stopped counting the weeks since his delivery.   My blogger friend/baby loss mom/ idol Brooke said she cried every day for an entire year after her baby, Eliza, died.  That wasn’t the case for me.  Oh, I cried plenty, mostly on the beautiful back roads to and from West Rowan High School. It wasn’t that I wasn’t sad for a year because I was, it was just that I was so busy with good things.  Good things that did not replace Levi, but softened my sadness and slowly began to replace my mourning with dancing. 

Fourteen months after I delivered Levi, I delivered Layla.  With one glaring exception, my delivery experiences were very similar.  I was induced early on Tuesday morning with Layla.  Dr. Bower delivered them both, Levi at 12:10PM and Layla at 12:16PM.  Skip was on one side and Megan was on the other for both deliveries and Mom was standing just behind Megan crying both times. Oddly enough, I remember a lot more about Levi’s delivery than I do Layla’s.  Maybe it’s because the only memories I have of Levi took place in that delivery room, and Layla makes new, lasting impressions on my memory (and my heart) every single day.  Maybe it’s because Levi’s delivery was my first experience; I’m not sure.  I’m grateful that, given the circumstances, my experience was as positive as it could be. 

And I am more than grateful for the opportunity to be Levi’s sister’s mama.  I don’t imagine that he would’ve been much like Layla.  I don’t know that I would be the same kind of mama I am to her if he hadn’t come first.  I realized a few months ago that I’d only prayed one prayer for Layla since she’s been born.  Every night before I laid her down in her crib, I held her close and I prayed to God that she would out live us.  And that was it.  For the first months of her life, the only request I made on her behalf was not really on her behalf at all, but a totally selfish petition.   While I was pregnant with Levi, I envisioned so many things for his life- what he’d enjoy, who he would act like.  Those things were hard to let go of when we couldn’t bring him home, so I spent my entire pregnancy with Layla trying not to do that and just praying she would survive.   And although I now have many hope and dreams and visions for her life, outliving me still seems like a pretty big priority, which I suppose is normal for all mamas and not just baby loss mamas like me.

For a while after we lost Levi, one of the things that made me the saddest was the feeling that I was forever going to be known as a baby loss mom.  I didn’t feel guilty or responsible for what happened, I just didn’t want to be pitied everywhere I went.  Two years later, I don’t think I am. What I hope I am for those that know me best is an Ebenezer stone of sorts. The Lord delivered us from the darkest days of our lives and put a new song in our hearts.  He loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, and you all know how much I love new clothes.   I hope I never forget to give Him praise for all He’s done for me. 

Timehop

I’ve wanted to write about my love/hate relationship with Timehop for a while now. If you’re not a “timehopper” (a term I just made up), Timehop is an app that shares your previous statuses and/or pictures from exactly 1 year, 2 years, 3 years… as far back as you’ve been a smart phone user.  Sometimes, I wish it gave a little more detail, or that I had given more detail in my posts.  For instance, six years ago today I was, “thankful for Skip’s heart and willingness to love the things that I love just because I love them.”  What on earth could that have been on a Sunday night at 10:12pm six years ago? Five years and a lifetime ago, I completed the Couch to 5K program and ran a 32 minute 5K.  Four years ago, I was drinking dirty bananas at the Hilton Beach Bar in Myrtle Beach. Three years ago, I was at the Summer Slam/VBS finale after letting my summer class at RCCC out early.  I wrote, “I love being in charge,” so some things really never change!  Two years ago I was in Morehead City getting ready to watch Emily get hitched.  I was super tan and adorably pregnant (with Levi).  And last year, I was packing for the beach while an adorable little 10 month old played in my suitcase. 

Looking back, it always amazes me how much things have changed and for the most part, how much better they’ve gotten.  When Skip was loving the things I was loving six years ago, what he was NOT doing was proposing, the one thing I REALLY, REALLY wanted him to be doing.  A year later, I was running those miles to look better in my wedding dress.  When I was taking pictures of my pregnant belly in the inlet at the bridal luncheon, I had no idea that it would be Amoura and not Levi that I’d be taking to the beach the following year.  Sometimes, Timehop memories are hard.  They smack you in the face with unmet expectations and broken dreams you scroll through quickly so you don’t mess up your makeup.  Other times, like last week when 4 years ago I had rolled Nanny’s hair while she sat in her living room chair, the memories are more sweet than bitter and you open the app at least a dozen times just to relive some moments you’d long forgotten.

Time is a funny thing.  When we lost Levi, lots of well meaning people said “time heals all wounds” and while I think “all” is drastic and “heals” is subjective, for the most part, I agree.  I don’t really think you ever fully heal from the death of a child or any person you really love, actually.  I think there will forever be a sting when people ask how many kiddos we have or when naïve moms announce their pregnancies as if it is impossible that anything could go wrong.  Just this week, a woman on my crunchy mom Face.book page shared that her friend had lost a baby at 35.5 weeks pregnant and asked advice on how to be there for her.  I spent a few hours on memory lane reliving the saddest days of my life, so I could write a thoughtful response and hopefully help this friend meet some needs of this baby loss mom.  I got to respond by the glow of a baby monitor and the sound of Layla talking herself to sleep.  Time, in the last year especially, has been very good to me. 

The last six months alone have been a great illustration to me of time’s healing power and God’s divine purpose in only lighting the very next step on our paths for us.  On January 21^st, after 10 months of raising Amoura, we said goodbye to her.  We hadn’t been away from her more than two nights in a row since she came to stay with us and we had no idea when or if we would see her again.  It was three months before Mom and I saw her again and just under six before Skip got to see her.  I’ve already shared some of the details of their visit, so I’ll try not to repeat myself, but what happened is nothing short of a miracle.  It was the gracious work of The Father providing an incredible gift to his children.

I’d tried and succeeded for nearly a year to not develop a relationship with Amoura’s mother, Karria.  But, if I was ever going to have a relationship with Amoura again, I was going to have to mend fences with her mama.  Hate is a strong word, but I think for a while there I really did hate her. She was downright cruel to us on more than one occasion and had done a few things that while they had not really put Amoura in danger, they surely had not put her best interests first either.  For a while I couldn’t even pray about our relationship because I had absolutely nothing to say regarding her that I could say to the Savior; when I thought about the fact that He loves her just as much as he loves me, I didn’t really want to talk to Him anyway.  And then TIME PASSED and my heart healed a little.  All the while, I know others were praying, interceding on my behalf, and God was hearing their prayers.  I started praying for her mama and for something to change.  I sent a little care package in the mail for Amoura and included small gifts for her mama and her soon-to-be-born baby sister. And finally, nearly two months after Amoura left us and over 6 weeks after I’d had any communication with her, I got a text.  The lines of communication were open once again.  It moved slowly from there.  I longed to ask to visit her, but I knew the timing would have to be right and sensed that is wasn’t.  And then, she blew my mind- she’s been doing that on the regular since we met- and asked if we could come visit right after she had the new baby.  She was asking me if I would come see Amoura.  Mom and I went, and it was wonderful, but I longed to have her back in our home, even for a visit.  So when Skip had business in Atlanta a few weeks ago, I cooked up a plan to have him bring them back with him.  And, that’s exactly what happened.  They spent two nights and Karria and I spent plenty of one on one time and shockingly, it was not awkward at all!

If someone had told me six months ago that I would invite her into my home, cook meals for her and spend time just shooting the breeze with her, I would’ve looked closely for the hole in their head.  If there was an app for a year down the road, I would never have believed in June of last year that our time together would’ve happened like it did.  I never would’ve spent the time praying over our relationship, either.  If I had known then what I know now, I probably would’ve coasted through the past six months in eager anticipation.  Forgiveness and “fence-mending” don’t come easy for me.  It’s not really in my character to get chummy with someone who’s hurt me as deeply as she has.  The new relationship that’s forming is inarguable evidence of God working mightily in me.  I’ve gotta believe that He isn’t done using me in Amoura’s life and perhaps he wants to use me in Karria’s life as well. 

So, today, I am thankful for Timehop. Even though it reminds me of the younger/pre-crowsfeet/smile line/skinnier me, it’s also a great reminder that God has numbered my days and designed a perfect plan for every single one of them.

I'm Back

Full disclosure: I was cleaning the sink Saturday night when I decided that I would start writing again.  Cleaning the sink always reminds me of my Nanny.  When I was in college and lived with Ashley and Jenilee on Mallard Ln, Mom and Nanny came to visit us one weekend.  Nanny hadn’t been there 5 minutes before she went to wash her hands in the kitchen and just had a fit over our kitchen sink.  Apparently, it wasn’t very clean.  Apparently, none of us had been taught the proper way to clean a sink. Apparently, the proper way to clean a stainless steel kitchen sink is with a little bit of Comet a whole lot of elbow grease. Before they headed back down the mountain, I had my own little cylinder of Comet and a sink that anyone would’ve eaten out of.  That is just one of countless memories I have of things my Nanny taught me.  And, when I put into practice things I learned from her, I feel as close to her as if she were sitting in my kitchen critiquing my efforts.  So, when I was cleaning Saturday night (because I am just that cool!) I thought about her and lessons I’ve learned from her and how I used to write about things I learned but stopped some time ago when my life got crazy busy and crazy happy and there just wasn’t anytime to breathe much less write for writing’s sake. 

I’ve thought a lot since my last blog (6 months ago) about how I would start writing again and if I would start writing again and how I could bridge the gap between then and now.  And, I can’t.  That’s a whole lotta life to cover in one blog or several.  If I tried, I think it’d take away from where I am now and things have gotten so good that I don’t want to miss a second of now looking back on then (although then wasn’t half bad itself).  There are some popular versions of Shakespeare plays floating around the internet called “60 second Shakespeare.” So, here’s a 60 second version of the last 6 months of our lives.

Christmas with two babies was insanely entertaining and exhausting.  Major drama with Amoura’s mom allowed us to have her on Christmas Day but also got the ball rolling towards her leaving us.  She moved to SC to be with her mom on January 21^st. It’s hard to pick the worst tragedy in one’s life so I’ll call “losing” our first baby girl 16 months after losing our first baby boy a cruel tie in level of difficulty.

Christmas also marked the start of Layla’s colic and for the next 8 weeks, I spent hours a night pacing the floor trying to console a miserable-but so so adorable- baby girl.

In February, after a ridiculous amount of discussion, Skip moved his office out of the house and 2 miles away to a little studio/office of his own.  I was pretty against it, but must admit, it’s been a good change for him and the business.

In March, Layla finally decided the world was a happy place to be and we celebrated with road trips to Georgia and to Lynchburg.  We started cloth diapering and I joined a natural parenting page on FB where the moms never cease to amaze me with their natural remedies and drug free (sometimes at home) births! 

I did two online diet bets between March and early May and by the time Layla hit six months, I was back to pre-Layla (although not pre-Levi) weight and got $28 richer. 

School is rapidly coming to a close and I am preparing to teach 10^th grade next year, a course I’ve never taught that’s full of texts I’ve never read.  I'm oddly excited. 

We’ve started Layla on solid foods using a method called “baby led weaning.”  We skipped the mushy rice cereal and, for the most part, don’t give her purees.  She eats whole, soft foods she can “chew” with her gums.  It’s awesome to watch.  I am still breast feeding, and after a painful start, it’s going well and will hopefully last until after her first birthday.

Possibly the best thing to happen in the last 6 months is that my dear friend Kimberly realized her dream of becoming a mom.  In one of those “I will always remember where I was when I got the news” texts, she sent me a picture of her and baby Quinn and I was almost as happy as I was finding out my own babies were on the way.  Our mom walks and talks have become some of the best hours in my week.    

The next best thing that happened is that after three months without seeing Amoura, we were invited to visit her in SC for the day to welcome home her new baby sister.  She remembered us and for the first time in a long time, I felt whole again.  We are working on our relationship with her mom and are hopeful that we will get to have a steady presence in their lives moving forward.            

That might’ve been a tad more than 60 seconds, but barely scratched the surface of the past 6 months.  I hope to write more about the present.  My blogger friend/baby loss mom hero/idol Brooke says she writes sometimes just so she can remember the mundane, everyday happenings her life.  I wanna do that, too.  I hope I will stick with it. And if I do, I hope you’ll read it. It feels good to be back.

Vignettes

Between settling in and learning to breastfeed and pump and returning to the hospital for another night’s stay and welcoming visitors and learning to hold two babies at once, and figuring out weight watcher points for new mommies, I have been WRITING!  What I ended up with was a bunch of “scraps” of blog posts that somewhat relate.  I’m calling them Vignettes, which only my English teacher friends will appreciate. (A vignette is a “brief description, account, or episode that can be read alone or as a part of a collection for additional meaning") 

Baby A

When we first got Baby A, I wasn’t sure how her mother would feel about my sharing her story.  I knew a lot of fancy/famous bloggers used pseudonyms for their own children, so I thought it best if I used one for her, too.  We called her Baby A a lot when we first got her.  Now she’s got about a million nicknames.  We call her “little bit” and Layla “tiny bit.”  I call her “Mo-Mo” and “girlfriend” a lot while Skip usually sticks to “precious” and “princess.”  More and more everyday, she’s becoming less of a baby and more of a big girl.  When I sat down to write after bringing our newest baby home from the hospital, I realized that as much as she’s learning and changing everyday, and since she is now a big sister, I should probably stop referring to her as Baby A and start calling her by her real name, Amoura. 

Just like That

This morning, I was changing Layla’s diaper and I could hear Skip upstairs through the monitor getting Amoura out of the crib and talking silly with her and telling her how loved she is, and the thought ran through my mind, “we’ve got it all.”  A beautiful, healthy baby girl who has my nose and her daddy’s everything else.  A toddler who gets funnier and smarter every day who ended up saving us in our darkest hour while simultaneously making us look like her heroes.  And just like that, the face of a tiny baby boy popped into my mind and my eyes filled with tears.  Because the truth is had Levi not died, we would’ve “had it all” last September.  What we wouldn’t have is Layla or Amoura.  It’s impossible to reconcile these two facts, and yet they’re my reality.  Had I not been pregnant with Levi last summer, I would’ve never met Amoura’s mom and had he not died, I probably never would’ve met this girl that calls me ma-ma and filled my broken heart with joy.  As much as I would love to have all three of my babies here with me, I will be forever grateful to my first baby, a boy, my Levi, for giving me the gifts of these two precious girls.

Vomit

We’ve never been lazy Saturday morning people.  We are I am a routine person and our Saturday routine involves eating out for breakfast and then running errands until midafternoon.  Since Layla is so new, yesterday was supposed to be a lazy Saturday, like the ones I see glorified in Face.book statuses every weekend.  I got up before Skip and the girls and cooked breakfast and got some cleaning done.  After breakfast, I was snuggling with both girls in the recliner and realized that I hadn’t had my picture made with both of them since we got home.  I asked Skip to take the picture below and before I could even send that beauty out to the masses, Amoura started silently vomiting ALL OVER both of us.  Somehow, Layla managed to avoid getting retched on even though she was tucked in my arms.  Skip hopped up and took Layla, put her in the swing and came back to finish watching the show.  I’ve never seen so much puke in all my life much less coming out of something so small.  She never cried, just looked confused and wanted to snuggle.  I tried to sit still and just let her finish since I had already become the receptacle.  I peeled her clothes off and then mine and started using the wet towels and washcloths Skip fetched us to clean us both off a bit.  I was soaked down to my underpants and smelled terrible, but it was past new girl’s feeding time, so I made do with a “spit bath” and came back to scrub down my recliner and feed her.  Skip held Amoura for an unscheduled morning nap, and by the time she woke up, she was good as new.  What was not good as new was my recliner.  It still smelled strongly of puke.   Before we had a chance to rescrub, we had visitors, so the smell lingered.  When they were gone, Skip took over the cleaning and scrubbed with 409, then vinegar, and we thought the smell was gone.  But after sitting in it for a while longer, Skip decided it was not and I had to agree.  He went to cleaning and digging deeper in the crevices once more and then we decided the smell was really gone that time. Long story a bit shorter, I am sitting in said recliner right now and the smell is not gone and short of throwing the darn thing out, I don’t know what it’s gonna take for it to smell clean again!

Is this your first?

I’ve read a lot about how painful and awkward this question can be for baby loss moms, and although I didn’t get asked too often during my pregnancy, my stay at the hospital is a whole other story.  Before the hospital, the question didn’t really bother me.  Depending on the person asking, I would explain the complicated answer.  At the hospital, however, it struck a nerve every time a new person would ask.  And I felt compelled to explain the last year and a half of our lives to them.  As much as sometimes “yes” would’ve been the easiest answer, I could not silently disregard Levi’s existence anymore than I can Amoura’s.  So, my answer became, “well it’s not my first, it’s kinda actually my third, but hopefully, she’ll be the first living child I’ve given birth to.” Because that is not at all confusing.  I told Skip after one person asked that I had to come up with a better response, but he assured me that the truth, which is what my long, drawn out answer was, was perfect.

There’s a song we sing at church “Christ in Me” that has the line “I would praise you with my life, let my story lift you high” and as I kept repeating our story of baby loss with Levi and baby found with Amoura and our newest little miracle, that line played over and over in my head and heart.  So, as touchy as “is this your first” can be, and as awkward as the people asking often feel when I’m done, I never want to miss the opportunity to say “you won’t believe what our last year has been like, but I’m gonna tell you anyway.”  The God we serve wrote a beautiful love story for our family and although it began with tragedy, He meant it for our good.  He gets the glory for our happiness in this chapter of our lives, and I hope we won’t fail to accept an opportunity to give it to Him.

My Vintage Pearl Necklace.  

Hormones

A few weeks before we had Layla, Megan asked me how I could listen to people talk about our loss and our faith and not cry a river every time.  She said, “What are you thinking about? Cupcakes? Laundry?” Honestly, I am not really sure.  I just know that I hate to cry in public and avoid it if at all possible.  I cannot count the times in the last year that I have cried all the way to work, dried my face in the school parking lot and cheerfully went on about my day.  I am a crier, but Skip is about the only person I don’t mind crying in front of, so I usually do my best to find a time and place when I am alone.  Many of my friends have told me about how weepy they were after they had their babies.  Layla will be two weeks old tomorrow and I can count on one finger how many times I’ve cried.  I was starting to think I was broken, and then last night at 11:30, Amoura started crying upstairs.  I was holding a sleeping newborn and Skip was trying to sleep off a terrible sinus headache.  I gave the baby to him and headed upstairs to calm my big girl. We rocked and I sang and put her back in the crib (which made her cry again) and I was rubbing her back when Skip texted me “Layla is hungry.”  Since I am literally the only one who can remedy this, I had to leave Amoura screaming, all alone in her crib, come back down stairs and feed Layla.  I asked Skip to go take Amoura some Motrin, but before he could get out of our room, I was bawling.  It was the first time I had to choose one girl over the other and it was devastating.  I know Layla NEEDED me and Amoura really just WANTED me, but it broke my heart.  I cried until my eyeballs hurt (they kind of still do) and thought of a thousand (irrational) ways to fix the situation (which was really not a situation at all, but a totally normal, easy to remedy fact of being a parent to more than one child).  I wanted to bring Amoura down to sleep with us.  I wanted to call my mom to come sleep with her.  I wanted to tote Layla up the stairs and hold both of them in the rocker all night.  Ultimately, I just cried and let Skip be the amazing daddy he is. 

After a few more tears from Amoura and a lot more from me, both girls were asleep.  I just lay there and thought about all the love in my heart that was coming out of my eyes.  When I was pregnant with Layla and falling more in love with Amoura each day, I remember thinking early on, “I wonder if I will love this new baby as much as I love this one.”  That probably sounds crazy, but it’s true.  My heart was so full with love for Amoura that I could not imagine loving another baby (especially one I wasn’t super convinced I’d ever take home) as much. As my pregnancy went on without a hitch, I started wondering if I would feel differently about Amoura once “my own” baby came along.  The answer is no.  I don’t.  As an only child, it has always been hard to imagine how parents’ love multiplies and they make room for all their babies in their hearts, and now I know, it just happens.  Ultimately, we know that Layla is our baby and we don’t have to drop her off for visitation or lose sleep at night over one day having to give her up, but my feelings for them are the same.  This parenthood thing is a trip, and I am so thankful are finally on it!