Butterfly Mommies

http://butterflymommies.blogspot.com/
This site is a collection of networking blogging butterfly mommies.
You will find a list of their blogs. Each has been categorized by gestational time of loss, but you will find the grieving process for them all are remarkably similar. If you would like to submit a blog to be added here,
please contact the site hosts kristie@anchoredbyhope.com or katy@anchoredbyhope.com.

I found this blog link and so I clicked the link and liked what I saw. This site helps bereaved parents keep in contact and lets us get to know each other a little better and the stories of our sweet angels. So here is the story of my sweet angel's.

For as long as I could remember, when someone asked me when Ty and I would start trying to have a baby, my answer was always the same; I'd laugh and say, "No time soon, that's for sure!" But on March 2nd, 2009 we were shocked to find out that we were expecting our first miracle. Our due date was October 12, 2009. It took me awhile to adjust to the idea of being pregnant but I quickly was hit with the realization as soon as the morning sickness reared its ugly head and I was left wondering why they don't call it all day sickness!

I did all of the things all of us expecting mommies do. I poured over What to expect books and would spend hours in the baby section of stores imagining what baby seat or crib bedding you would have. The weeks turned to months and at 4 months I could feel our baby doing the waltz in my tummy. At six months I was home sick from work when I saw and felt your kung foo moves from the outside. I was so happy at that moment! It was becoming so real to me! I was still petrified at the idea of me being a mom but as the time went on, I was getting more and more excited.

At our 19 week appointment we had found out the babies gender, boy. We still hadn't named him yet but on the way home from my 27 week appointment we settled on the name Bryston Ray. The appointment that day went so well, my OB even called my pregnancy a "Textbook Pregnancy," He said that Bryston was as healthy as they came and I was thrilled. A week later, on July 21st, I started to bleed heavily. We rushed out the ER at 11:45pm that night only to hear those awful words, I'm not getting a heartbeat. They transferred us by ambulance to Creighton University Hospital in Omaha, NE where I labored for 56 hours to deliver my precious son stillborn at 28 weeks gestation due to a placental abruption on July 24th, 2009.

I'll never forget the moment they placed Bryston in arms for the first time. It was the absolute best and worst moment of my life. I couldn't believe how perfect and tiny he was. His looks were such a mixture of Ty and I that couldn't tell who he looked like more. I remember pleading with God, "Please just let him wake up! Let me hear his cry and see his eyes! Please God, I will do anything! Just give me this one small thing!" I watched my husband pick him up and I thought that this tiny baby was what we had been missing all this time and hadn't even known it yet, and now, now what? I felt the unfairness of it all and I was so angry and devastated that God would allow us this tiny miracle and then let it be snatched away.

Leaving that hospital empty handed had to be the cruelest joke the universe had ever played. They wheeled me down the halls past the open doors of beaming new parents and their live newborn babies and I had to keep my eyes glued to the floor. Surely they knew how unfair this was and would hold their babies just a little tighter that night. As I waited in the lobby for my husband to pull the truck around I had to root myself to that spot because if I looked back, even for just a second, I would have gone tearing back down that hall screaming for my son. How I didn't do that, I'll never know.

We went home and I spent days in bed. All I could manage to do was cry and sleep. While I slept my parents planted a memory garden for Bryston and a few days later I had to be re-admitted to Creighton for my off the charts blood pressure. A week later we took a road trip to Alabama to see my sister. I just had to get away from it all but I couldn't enjoy the trip. The entire time I was home I was wishing to be anywhere but there in my new reality but even there all I could do was wish that I was home and nearer to Brytson and his memory. I took my entire maternity leave to grieve and beyond. Retuning to my regular life post Bryston took everything out of me. But as the months wore on I found myself returning bit by bit to who I had use to be. Don't get me wrong, I'll never be that person again, but I was able to get out of bed and go on with life and function even with him memory clouding my vision at each step.

Then on Halloween 2009 I took one of those at home pregnancy tests. It was a faint positive so I figured that meant that I was not pregnant. But on November 11th, I retested and it was a certainty. My OB had me on 2 week visits just to ease my mind about this pregnancy. I had ultrasounds at each visit so that was a pure joy for me! I didn't even mind the all the bloodwork, well kind of! On the day of my 7th week visit we had a terrible snowstorm that dumped 18 plus inches in our area so I canceled my appointment that day and rescheduled it for December 22nd, which was to be my 10 week appointment. That was the soonest they could fit me in. On December 19th I began to spot. I called my OB who assured me that it was most likely contact bleeding and not to worry unless the bleeding increased. Which it did in the following days. They fit me in on December 21st where I again heard those ugly words, I'm sorry, I'm not getting a heartbeat. We were so early in this pregnancy, I had dubbed this babies nickname, Peanut.

Apparently shortly after my 7 week visit my sweet Peanut passed due to a fetal heart defect. Had I gone to that appointment instead of canceling due to the weather, we would have found out then. I chose to miscarry naturally as to avoid the dreaded D&C procedure. I succeeded in that but that in itself had some hard emotional bearings on me. I was so sure that Peanut would be my girl. I pictured my sweet rainbow baby in headbands and nothing but pink. We were too early to tell the sex but I am choosing to believe she was my one and only baby girl. I had such a short time with her but I had already lived out a lifetime with her in my head.

The loss of Peanut stirred up all those to familiar feelings of loss and anger. I am still coming to grips with how much my life has changed over the coarse of a year. People wonder how I can go on and how I don't just shrivel up and die under all this sorrow, and I guess so do I. I don't have any of those answers. I'm still figuring it out. Each day holds something new for me and I am still hopeful that one day soon, I will hold those dreams in my arms and not have to say goodbye in the same breath as hello.



A Lament for My Babies

I never got to hear you laugh
you never saw me cry
didnt get a chance to say "Hello"
you never said "Goodbye"
I didn't think that I could feel
so sad, lost and forlorn.
I never knew God chose his Angels
before some of them were born.
Your life was short yet special
I shared it all exclusively
I felt you breathe, I felt you kick.
You were alive inside of me.
Every baby is an Angel
and every angel is divine
God needed one in heaven
He came down and took mine
And although we are not together
we're not really apart
for you'll always occupy a space
deep within my heart.
Time has begun to ease my pain
It's only some days now I cry.
When I wish I could have said "Hello"
and heard you say "Goodbye"
~Author Unknown~