National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day

Dear Joey-

 

Today is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day.  They ask that we light a candle for you as a way to honor your life. So we did just that.

Tonight Daddy and I lit this candle in your memory and also in memory of your friends Jack, Leah and Hope.  

 

There is not a minute that goes by that I don’t think of you. I hope you are being good up there and watching out for us, we both know Daddy and I could use a little extra help sometimes ;)

 

I miss you so much, especially this Fall season.  I had my first glass of cider a few weeks ago and it made me cry. Remember how (strangely enough) that was the only thing I could hold down for six weeks? Remember how I ate concord grapes every day for a week until I threw up? I ate a whole bushel of them today and thought of you every time I popped one in my mouth. Remember how I was so excited when Daddy got me an OSU shirt and when I put it on you were showing through? Remember how one year ago today we got to see you for the first time dancing around on the ultrasound?

 

I hope you remember every moment we had together because I will treasure every single one for the rest of my life.

I love you Joey.

With me every step of the way.

Please say a prayer today for all of the babies gone to soon and the families that miss them more than ever.

Tattoos

Tattoos. You either love them or hate them.  If you hate them that’s totally fine, I won’t be offended (although, I hope you aren’t someone that immediately passes judgment when you see a person with tattoos).

I love them.

Sure, you have the people that don’t necessarily make the best judgment when getting tattoos. But to me, tattoos tell a story. It may just be a butterfly on someone’s ankle to you, but to that person it could be a memorial tattoo because at their daughter’s funeral there was a beautiful butterfly circling the gravesite. Or, maybe they got it for no reason other than they liked it! Either way, tattoos commemorate a special time, place or person in someone’s life.

I have two tattoos. The first I got with two of my best friends from high school, the summer after my freshman year of college. About four years ago, my best friend and I went together and got new ones. Actually, I added on to my first one. It's in a place you can’t see (unless I decide to moon you) so most people don’t know I have it!  To look at these, you would see a butterfly and a flower, but to me they represent friendship and love.
 

Here is my newest one:

This was taken right after, so it is a little blurry still.

I. LOVE. IT.  It makes me so happy. It is an exact replica of Joey’s footprints. People may look at this and wonder why I got it. Well here is why:

Most people get to bring their children home. They get to spend every day for the rest of their lives looking at their children, holding them, touching them and talking to them. With Joey, I don’t get that. If I want to look at him, I have to open his scrapbook and flip through the pages. Short of taking his scrapbook everywhere I go, if I want to be reminded of him (and I am not at home), I can’t.
 

Having his footprints on my foot allows me to be reminded of him whenever I want. I can rub it and it’s like I am actually touching his sweet tiny toes. It has probably been the most healing part of the last few months. I got the idea the moment I saw his footprints on the paper, when we were still in the hospital.  Even then, only hours after saying goodbye to him, I smiled looking at those precious little feet. In fact, I think it was the first time Rik and I had smiled in over a week. 

I decided not to get it in the midst of my grieving because I didn’t want to regret it. Tattoos are kind of forever. Well, unless you want to pay a ton of money and go through the painful removal process. I said that if after six months I still wanted it, I was getting it. Fast forward seven months and I wanted it more than ever.

After a short 30 minutes with Rik by my side, Joey (and his footprints) will take every step with me for the rest of my life!

I'm Baack!

I’m baack! I know, I know it has been months since you have heard from me. Well, the wait is over. I am back a stronger, healthier and happier person.

I looked back through my old posts and wow, I was in a really bad place.  Venting here really helped me heal and process my thoughts, but it got to a point where I needed a break from it all…the stress, the sadness, the bitterness, the truth.  

Over the past months I have adjusted to my new reality. I am doing great. I will not lie, there is not a minute that goes by that I don’t think of Joey and all of the missed memories, but I don’t get breathtakingly sad when I think of him anymore.  Instead, I picture his sweet face and tiny toes and smile.

There was a time when I did not think I would ever feel “normal” again. I was so sad and angry at everyone and everything. I would be upset when people didn’t talk about Joey, even though I didn’t want to talk about him. I hated when people treated me normal but was upset when they didn’t.  People kept telling me that I needed to get better and think about the future, it was infuriating. People just didn’t get it. The thought of our future without Joey was heartbreaking.

All of it was exhausting.

There was not one specific moment that I remember being “better,” rather I healed a little each day. I had to hit rock bottom before I could begin climbing the ladder back to a healthy, happier me. That day was Mother’s Day. It was the worst day that I had had since leaving the hospital. I woke up crying and went to bed crying. I had hives all day from being so upset. Rik had to literally pick me up off the floor of our bedroom and put me into bed. I woke up the next day and decided that I couldn’t live like that one more day. It wasn’t fair to me and it wasn’t fair to Rik.

It has been a slow process, but I am getting there.  The guilt and bitterness is gone and I feel 100 pounds lighter.  There will always be a Joey sized hole in my heart but sadness and anger doesn’t define me anymore.

Thank you to my family and friends for your continued patience, love and support!

Joey's Memorial Garden

Ok, so I have talked about my friends before.  I have raved about how they are the best and so on. Today, I want to share with you just how wonderful they really are.

On Joey’s due date we received this beautiful gift:

They went together and got Rik and I this beautiful granite memorial stone and forget-me-not plants to create a garden for him. They know how much I love having my gardens and they thought this would be perfect. I could not agree more. As soon as I saw it, I had the perfect place to put it.

Welcome to Joey’s Memorial Garden:

It is stunning and brings me so much peace. I love everything about it.

 When reading about the plants, I learned that they will bloom every year in the spring. This means that every year around Joey's due date, I will have blooming blue forget-me-not's to admire. How perfect is that?

This group of women is the most thoughtful, loving, caring group in the world. We have been through sorority pledging, college parties, graduations, break-ups, marriages, divorces, pregnancies and miscarriages. We have celebrated the best of best times and cried together during the worst of worst times.

This is the same group of women who presented me with a donation, in Joey’s honor, to the March of Dimes at his funeral.

I am so blessed to have each and every one of them in my life.

 I love you guys!

His Due Date

This weekend was the hardest weekend, emotionally, since losing Joey. I remember when I found out my due date was the weekend of Mother’s Day, thinking it couldn’t be more perfect. I would (probably) be snuggling my brand new baby for my first Mother’s Day. Our moms would be celebrating their Mother’s Day as brand new grandmas. It would be perfect.

This weekend was not perfect. It was not spent with the smells of a new baby or the cries of joy and relief. Rather, it was spent with a quivering lip, wet cheeks and puffy eyes. Now of course we both have wonderful moms that we had to celebrate, but having this holiday the day after my due date seemed cruel.  

I spent the day remembering our short time with him.  Remembering the first time I felt him kick and the way he bounced around during our ultrasounds. Remembering the way he looked after he was born and the way his tiny body felt in my arms. The way his daddy held and admired him. The indescribable amount of love that overwhelmed me when I first saw him.   

Not only did I lose Joey but I lost the future that I planned with him. I was only pregnant for five months, but I planned every second of our baby’s life in those five months. I spent every waking (and sleeping) moment thinking of our baby and our future.  I had his room designed. I had ideas of what he would look like. I imagined his first words, first steps, first birthdays and first days of school. I pictured looking out the window and watching Rik teach him how to throw a football. I had our life planned with this sweet baby.

I am not supposed to be seeing his name in stone but unfortunately God had other plans for us.

There will (hopefully) be more babies in our future, ones that we will get to bring home, cherish and never take for granted. But Joey will always be in my heart. He will always be my first baby. He taught me more about life in those few months than I had learned in my previous 27 years. He is the one that allowed me to feel a mother’s love and the overwhelming need to protect. He is the one that showed me what life is really about. It’s not about the stuff it’s about the love that is in your heart.

<3 JSM

Don't Ask

It is 7:57 am and my make-up has already been cried away.

Over the past few days I have had three people on different occasions ask when my husband and I were going to start having children. Little did they know the answer they were going to receive. I am sure they asked the question out of genuineness and were only trying to make conversation.

But I struggled with how to answer this question? Should I be honest and say, “actually we have already started and we now have an angel baby.” Do I say, “We are working on it.” Or, my gut response “Mind your own f’ing business, when did my sex life become an appropriate topic of your conversation?” Do I simply shrug it off and do a polite laugh with no answer?

I realized that I have to be honest. I owe it to Joey. So, I responded with, “we had a baby but he is already an angel,” and then my eyes welled with tears. I am certain they were not expecting this, but they asked so I answered.

I am sure I have asked this question in the past. Now, I realize how insensitive it is.

Do me a favor; please do not ask people when they are going to start having children. You don’t know their story. Such a simple question could send a person into tears for the rest of the day.

If you have to ask the question, you are not close enough to the person to need to know the answer.

The Start of THAT Month

Dear May-

Today you make your appearance.

In the past, you have always been an exciting month for me.

You bring my birthday.You bring the start of summer and the end of school. You allow the sun to start making its appearance more regularly and the flowers and trees to bloom. The rainy, dreariness of winter and spring makes is much anticipated exit. You bring The Crawl for Cancer (an awesome fundraising event that we do every year) and Memorial Day.

You are a month of new beginnings.  

This year, I was especially looking forward to your arrival.  You were supposed to bring all sorts of new joy into our lives. You were supposed to bring the birth of our son and the start of a new chapter in our lives.

I know I will one day enjoy you again but this year I am ready for you to be over. I want the last milestone of my pregnancy to be over. Just seeing your date on my calendar, as I flipped the page this morning, sent me into tears and made me feel like I was punched in the stomach with the force of the Hulk.

The end of you does not mean that I will be over the loss of Joey, but I will finally be able to start looking toward the future without the constant milestones hanging over me.

I will not wake up every Saturday morning and think about what week in my pregnancy I would have been and count how many weeks it would have been until we met our son. I will no longer have this dark cloud hanging over me as the May 12 date approaches.

May, you have always been good to me, but can you hurry up and be over already? I am almost out of energy and tears to deal with you.

The Battle

I have realized that healing from the loss of Joey is going to be a process that will probably take the rest of my life. Yesterday, a great friend said to me, “it’s ok to never move on from losing Joey.” It was exactly what I needed to hear. I know I will never move on from losing him, but to have someone reassure me that it's okay means so much.

I have always been one to put a lot of pressure on myself. This fault of mine (the only one, I assure you!) is causing a war inside of me. I am applying this pressure to find my new “normal” self and move past the grief. Part of me is really trying to heal and be a strong person. No one likes (or knows how to deal with) the sad person who is self-absorbed in grief, including me. 

The other part of me says, absolutely no way, I am a mess. I need to be sad and angry, I lost a baby that I loved and wanted more than anything. He was a product of my husband's and my love. He was ours.

Every day is a new battle. However, just like true wars, the battle will one day end and I will wake up and not spend my day fighting. The scar from my wound will still be there, but the war will have ended.

In the meantime, I will fight. Some days I will be strong, others I will melt with tears. It’s all part of my new "normal."

17 Weeks

Dear Joey-

Today, 17 weeks since I delivered you silently, I miss you more than ever.

Love,

Mom

I AM THE FACE OF LOSS

I stumbled across this website, Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope.  This is a place where women write their stories of losing a baby (I have not been brave enough to post my story yet). It is so incredibly sad to read these stories.  These women understand my pain, unfortunately.  Talking to and reading about women who have experienced this kind of pain helps me to know that I am not crazy. I am, in fact, normal for feeling every ounce of sadness and pain that I do.

There is a stunning statistic, over 2,000 women lose their baby every single day. One out of four women will experience pregnancy loss in their lifetime. Many people are unaware that it happens so often because we don’t talk about it. Pregnancy loss is not a common topic. After experiencing it, I have a theory for why it is such a taboo topic: Women who have experienced it are afraid of making those around them uncomfortable by talking about it and their family and friends are afraid to upset them by talking about it.  

Prior to two years ago, I only knew of one person that had suffered a miscarriage or pregnancy loss.  However, over the past two years, I have had five friends suffer from a miscarriage/loss. When it happens to someone you love and then to you, those statistics become all too real.

This website started a campaign called “I AM THE FACE.” The goal of the I AM THE FACE campaign is to spread awareness of pregnancy/infant loss, and raise support for those who are affected by it. The women that started this are helping families all around the world and it’s truly amazing. I encourage you to donate $1 to this campaign here, to help support all of their efforts.  I did, because this website has helped me more than anything over the past 13 weeks.

This site offers so much support and information. I have spent countless hours on it. The women who have posted to this site offer their advice and tips for surviving the grief.

Things I have learned through this site:

-It’s ok to still feel so much pain.

-It’s ok to feel sadness when I see pregnant women and babies.

-It’s ok to dread every Saturday morning for the next 7 weeks. (Saturday’s are when I began a new week of my pregnancy and no matter where we were, it began with Rik and I lying in bed and reading about the advancements of our baby and my body that would take place over the next week.)

-It’s ok to dread May 12th.

-It’s ok to allow myself to feel everything. Happy, sad, angry, helpless, bitter…

-It’s ok to want to talk freely about Joey without feeling like I am making everyone uncomfortable.

-It’s ok to want more than anything to hold my baby one more time.

-It's ok to feel like I am never going to be my "normal" self again.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I told you that I had a terrible to start to my weekend, however it ended being a good weekend. I spent all weekend hanging out with my husband. It was a weekend full of laughs and love.

We did the usual household chores and grocery shopping (I don’t think anyone can have as much fun grocery shopping as we do!), we spent time talking, we watched movies and played games. Yes, we played Wheel of Fortune, The Price is Right and Guitar Hero for hours on Saturday! 

Call us dorks, but we had so much fun, just the two of us.

I adore this man. He is so much more than my husband. He is my best friend, he is my rock. When I feel overwhelmed and crazy, he keeps me sane. He makes me laugh when I want to cry. He makes me feel safe and loved.

This Valentine's Day is different. Something changed this weekend, I changed. I realized that life is precious and short and unpredictable. We have been through so much over the past eight weeks. I will certainly never truly heal from what has happened. But feeling so sad and angry all the time is only hurting me. I don’t like the sad, miserable me.

This weekend reminded me of what it feels like to be happy. Rik reminded of what life is about. It's about love and happiness.

Joey is a blessing. In his short life he taught me so much. I am a better person because of him. I have been forced to reach to depths of my heart and soul that I didn’t know existed. I have a new appreciation for life. I am stronger than I (or anyone) ever imagined. All of this is because of him.

I am blessed in every aspect of life. I have a wonderful husband. I have wonderful family and friends. I have a good job. I have good health and a safe, warm home. I have so many things in life that other people would give anything to have.  

We have a son. He is our guardian angel that will get me through the dark times and help us celebrate the happy times.

I am a lucky, lucky woman.

Happy Valentine's Day!! 
XOXOXO

Today I want to make a sign that says, "We lost our baby boy, so please don't ask me how my baby is doing."

Three days in a row, I have started my day to this question.

Thank God it's Friday.

Five Weeks

It has been five weeks today.  Five weeks full of exhaustion, tears, heartache and smiles. Smiles, because I picture my little man with his daddy’s nose and flintstone toes, and it warms my heart.

They say time heals all wounds. I don’t think this wound will ever heal. Instead, the pain will turn into a scar. It is part of me now. Joey is a part of me forever.

The days are slowly getting easier. I am thankful for the days that I don’t cry, the days that I think of him and smile instead.  

Our appointment with the doctor went well. They did not find any chromosome/genetic problems. This means the odds of something like this happening to another baby are very, very small. This is supposed to make me happy. It does, I suppose. The odds appear to be in our favor.

But the odds have failed us before. They can’t explain why it happened to Joey.  If they can’t explain why it happened, how can they assure us that it won’t happen again? And why did it happen this time?

I realize I have to quit asking this question. I am never going to have an answer to why. I need to accept that it happened and feel grateful that they don’t think it will happen again.

The doctor really put it into perspective, she said “look at it this way, I could be telling you that you have a 50% or 75% chance of this happening again.”  This is absolutely true and my heart breaks for the couples that get this kind of news. It is bad enough to lose a baby, but then to get results like that would be devastating.

Our news was as good as it gets for our situation. For this I am grateful.

Things You Should Never have to Do

Planning Joey’s funeral was one of the hardest things that we have had to do. (It seems like that has been a theme lately.)

Driving into work this morning, I was reflecting on our weekend and thinking about all the things that a mother and father should never have to do:

      -        Plan a funeral for your baby, instead of a baptism.

-        Meet with a priest to discuss the “appropriate” readings and psalms for your baby that died in the womb or before baptism.

-        Plan a wake.

-        Shop for a dress to wear to your baby’s funeral.

-        Make a scrapbook for your baby that you didn’t get to bring home.

-        Buy an urn for your baby.

-        Receive sympathy cards for your baby’s birth instead of congratulations cards.

-        Meet with doctors to find out if the problems your baby had was a result of something that you did, a chromosome disorder, or a “random occurrence.”

Speaking of, please say a prayer for us. We meet with the doctor today to go over Joey’s autopsy and chromosome testing results, as well as the results of our blood work.

My Angel

Joey’s funeral was Saturday. Wow, was it a really hard day. It was a funeral for my baby, not a baptism.

I am so very blessed to have the amazing friends and family that I have. I (we) would not have gotten through the day without the love and support of every single person that was there. Feeling the warmth of their smiles was exactly what we needed to survive.

Sitting in that pew and looking at Joey and his beautiful urn, on display for all to see, gave me a sense of peace.  Joey is an angel.

For reasons I will never understand, he was not meant for this world. This realization does not make dealing with his loss any easier, but it helps me recognize that we are going to be ok. Joey brought me so much joy for the 20 weeks that I had with him.

They were the best five months of my life.

Stunning

A dear friend recommended this website for parents who have lost children. This women takes requests and writes your child's name in the sand at sunset. The images are beautiful.

We put in a request for Joey, and I received the email that she wrote it yesterday. Words can't describe what I feel when I look at this beautiful picture.

http://namesinthesand.blogspot.com/2012/01/joseph-scott-menchen.html 

The woman who runs this website gives me hope. She took something as horrible as losing her baby and turned it into a way to help people around the world with their grief and suffering. What an amazing woman she is.

I look at this photo and know that Joey is ok. He is the light in every sunrise and sunset. He is riding the clouds above. He is safe.

To Joey

They say there is a reason
They say that time will heal
But neither time nor reason
Will change the way we feel
For no-one knows the heartache
That lies behind our smiles
No-one knows how many times
We have broken down and cried
We want to tell you something
So there won't be any doubt
Your so wonderful to think of
But so hard to live without

If we could visit heaven
Even for a day
Maybe for one moment
Our pain would go away
We’d put our arms around you
And whisper words so true
That living life without you
Sure is hell to do
No matter how we spend our days
No matter what we do
No morning dawns or evening falls
When we don’t think of you

Time spent with you
Was so very precious
Even if only for a very short time
I hold a special memory
Close inside this heart of mine
To us you were very special
Much more than words can say
We still love you little angel
And we’ll remember you every day

My Story

I have jumped on the blogging bandwagon, headfirst. I have never had the urge or desire to blog before. Prior to the week of December 19, 2011, I had a normal life with nothing extraordinary that I felt I needed to share with the world, or that I felt the world would be interested in hearing.

But, my world changed forever and I need people to know that. If you have ever experienced something horrible, you know that there is a period where you want everyone to know your story, but you don’t want to have to tell them. In fact, you dread telling them. You want there to be this magical way of sending out your horrific news to everyone without opening your mouth or having your family have to open theirs. You want people to know your story, understand it and for a brief second feel your pain. I say that loosely, I would never EVER want anyone to experience the kind of pain that we have, but you want people to understand that you have this inordinate amount of pain looming in your mind and body, that you cannot escape.

My husband and I found out that we were expecting our first bundle of joy in the summer of 2011. We were overjoyed, excited and terrified! We were looking forward to the future and starting our family. We had no idea what the next few months would bring.

 

Monday, December 19th was the gender ultrasound, the one where we would see our growing baby and discover if we were welcoming a baby boy or baby girl. However, it was not the joyous occasion we expected. Shortly after the tech began she told us that she needed to bring the doctor in and I knew immediately, whatever they were about to tell us what not good. We found out that the life we had been planning with this beautiful baby boy was not going to be. Words cannot describe the pain and heartache that we felt. We were devastated.

On Thursday, December 22, 2011 we walked into the hospital knowing that we were going to have to walk out without our baby boy. Our family was there almost immediately, for this I will be forever grateful. Our family is, without a doubt, the best and most loving family two people could ask for. I am so blessed to come from an amazing family and to have married into an equally amazing family.

After about 22 hours of labor, Joseph Scott was born an Angel Baby at 5:16 pm on December 23, 2011. He weighed 12.5 ounces and was 9.5 inches long.

The first time I saw my beautiful baby boy, I realized what life is about. He was absolutely perfect. He was beautiful. He was an Angel that would never suffer or feel the pain that life, all too often, brings.

Rik, Joey and I were a family in that hospital room. Those moments, I will treasure with every breath that I take for the rest of my life.

Saying Goodbye

Rik and I spent that night and the following morning with Joey. But then, the dreaded moment came. The moment when they asked if they could take him for the autopsy, the moment that I had been dreading since I first laid eyes on him, the moment that I had to say goodbye.

How was I going to find the strength to say goodbye, knowing that would be the last time I ever got to see my son? I looked at him as long as I could. I studied every feature on his tiny little face, held his tiny hands and feet and kissed his sweet face over and over.

I couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t. I repeated over and over “How can this be happening? This isn’t fair? Why don’t we get to take our baby home? What did we do wrong?”

It was Christmas Eve and we weren’t celebrating. We were mourning the loss of our son and trying to understand what had happened over the past few days. We were discharged from the hospital at 6:30 pm on Saturday, December 24. We had to walk out of the hospital without our Joey.

The days and months that followed were the worst of my life. You can never understand how devastating it is to lose a baby until you experience it.

 

I have moved mountains of grief since that day. I will never be the same person that I was before we lost Joey. I have learned that no matter how “planned” your life is, it can be turned upside down in an instant.

Through all of the pain and grief, I came back to one thing for comfort, Joey’s footprints. He had his Daddy’s flintstone toes. They were so tiny and so perfect.

 

My baby boy’s footprints are forever engraved in my heart (and now on my foot).