Planting new life...

I’ve not been great about keeping up with writing this week; it’s been a really emotionally exhausting week. Nick & I spent yesterday morning planting Lily’s tree, we’re happy with how it turned out and look forward to seeing it grow over the years. It seemed a fitting way to honor her life, by planting new life in our little corner of the world in the hopes it will live on for many years. A symbolic remembrance that she will always be a part of our home and that in some ways her short life will continue to live on in various forms in this world.

Lily's Tree ~ Crimson Frost Birch

Last night was a neighborhood Halloween party. I had some very mixed emotions about going and had a bit of an emotional breakdown before getting ready for the event. This being the start of the Holiday season, it is a painful reminder of the piece of my heart that is broken and the person who is missing in our lives. I can’t help but think Lily should be here with us wearing some adorable little Halloween onesie, and I should be reveling in my new sleep deprived life. So I had my mini-meltdown and then, because it meant a lot to Nick, I put on my brave face and we went to the party.

In preparation for our first FET with donor embryos, I’ll be starting the first injection this evening. The first injections are Lupron, and we’ll be continuing those nightly for a little while. I’ll take my last BCP’s next Saturday and then our first baseline ultrasound and blood work will be November 10th or 11th. I’ve been slowly taking myself off my much loved caffeine (aka coffee) in preparation. I know there is so little that’s in my control in this journey, but it makes me feel a bit better to manage the little things I can in hopes that it will improve my chances of success.

As I mentioned previously, the thought of being pregnant again brings with it a lot of mixed emotions. One emotion that I know will always be there, but which I’m trying not to allow too much room or control over me, is fear. A friend who recently finished cancer treatment started selling these bracelets as a fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and I purchased one earlier this week. I love the quote, and it is a reminder to me when I start to feel the fear to instead focus on the strength & hope I possess, and to continue forward allowing these pieces of myself to win out over the fear.

Courage, strength, and hope possess my soul... I will stand firmly and without fear.
-Goethe

***Update: I know several of you have asked where you can purchase the bracelet above. I contacted the designer and here is a link to the bracelet on her website if you'd like to order one directly***

Due date and kindness beyond measure...

Today is a day I have felt a mixture of emotions towards… it is my daughter’s due date. A date holding so much weight and symbolism. A date around which we should have been welcoming her into this world instead of sitting silently remembering what should have been. It has been a date that I’ve anxiously awaited, on one hand with the desire to move past it, and on the other hand with sadness that it is one more step farther away from her.

It really is remarkable how some people just get it, how they know how to reach out to you in a gesture of love and compassion that you didn’t realize you needed until you received it, and then you feel such a sense of nourishment to your soul.

First, on Friday three of my co-workers and close friends gave us a thoughtful gift card to a local garden center allowing us to purchase something in honor of Lily. That same day we received a card that my aunt had made a donation in honor of Lily to Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. We received many beautiful, thoughtful, loving cards from close friends and family reminding us that they have not forgotten, that they continue to think of us and Lily, and that they recognize the significance that this day holds for us.

Then Saturday we received a package from an address we didn’t recognize and we were instantly intrigued as to what may lie within. And as we opened the thoughtful card and gift I was struck with the love that so obviously went into this box; it brought me to tears. Trinity, who has become a very dear blog friend, sent this beautiful handmade ornament which has two precious little footprints and Lily’s initials on one side and then the inscription “There is no foot so small it cannot leave an imprint on this Earth” on the other side. As if this wasn’t enough, she and her husband also made a donation to the March of Dimes in honor of Lily.

Then yesterday a local BLM who has become an amazing support and friend over these past couple of months stopped by and gave us this beautiful piece of artwork. It was a piece she lovingly created in memory of Lily, something we will always cherish for the love in which it was created and the memory of our daughter which it invokes.

Today we received beautiful flowers and a gorgeous orchid from some of our family. We spent the day together reflecting on all that has happened over the past year and the person that is missing from our family. We went to the garden center with the gift from our friends and purchased a beautiful Crimson Frost Birch tree; the tree caught my eye, and then while reading the descriptive card attached, one of the features listed was that the tree attracts butterflies. Nick has already started calling it “Lily’s tree” and can’t wait to get it home to plant it.

So although today is difficult, a reminder of what should have been, the sadness has been softened a bit due to the immense kindness all of you have shown us. Thank you for remembering, for helping to carry us when the grief was too much, and for walking beside us on this journey.

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."~ Lao Tzu

October ICLW and updates…

To those of you stopping by for ICLW, welcome! And those of you who are wondering “what the heck is ICLW,” here is a quick run down. ICLW stands for International Comment Leaving Week, but if you say it aloud, doesn’t it sounds like “I come; [but] leave [as a] we”? And that’s sort of the point. Blogging is a conversation, and comments should be honored and encouraged. So by all means join the conversation!

A quick synopsis of our journey to this point…my husband & I discovered at the end of last year IVF was our only chance at conceiving a biological child, so in January of this past year we underwent our first round of treatment. We were incredibly lucky to get our first ever BFP with that first round of treatment. We enjoyed a blessedly uneventful pregnancy until 23wks into my pregnancy when, sadly, I went into preterm labor as a result of an asymptomatic infection. Our beautiful daughter Lillian Grace was born and passed from this world shortly after. After a lot of soul searching regarding our options (along with some pretty random divine intervention), we are now in the process of pursuing an open embryo adoption with the most incredible donor family. It’s been a pretty crazy year to say the least! This coming Monday, the 25th, also marks Lily’s due date, a day as you can imagine that will be filled with emotion; more to follow on that later.

Thankfully checked off some more of the checklist leading up to our embryo adoption FET in December this morning. My RE completed the mock transfer, a transvaginal ultrasound, and one last required sonohystogram this morning, plus the required blood work! Everything went smoothly and there was only one small concern in that she noticed a follicle/cyst measuring about 16mm on one of my ovaries. She felt this was nothing to be concerned about in regards to affecting our FET, but said the donor family’s clinic may decide they’d like another ultrasound to ensure we’re a go for transfer closer to the time. And since donor clinic is running the show we’ll wait to see what they would like once they review the results from today. Getting closer and closer to this all being a reality very soon! We’ve also completed our adoption home study and the contract with the attorney, so really at this point just a matter of whether another ultrasound will be needed and then we’ll start the drug protocol once we’re closer to our tentative FET of December 2nd!

A mixture of emotions fill us as we move closer to the FET; on one hand I’m so excited to be hopefully pregnant again soon, and on the other hand being pregnant again is terrifying for obvious reasons. These are a couple of quotes that I’ve taken comfort in and that have renewed my hope, and honestly after everything we’ve experienced in this past year I’m more confident than ever that we can handle whatever comes our way. Hope they bring a little encouragement and hope your way as well!

“To grow, to be reborn, one must remain vulnerable--open to love but also hideously open to the possibility of more suffering.” ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”  ~Anais Nin

Lastly, please show some love to my very dear real life friend Tiffany who I mentioned in my last couple blog posts. She & her husband got the news today that their son’s death is being ruled a result of SIDS. This has been an unimaginably difficult week for them, and although knowing the truth is good, it is also difficult to hear and adds to the finality of all that has happened to forever alter their lives.

We will remember...

We spent the past weekend traveling to Alabama to be with our friends as they grieve the loss of their son. It’s so hard to accept this heartbreaking loss. They are some of the kindest people we know and have been so supportive to us during our loss, and to see them now in so much pain is difficult. We felt honored to have the opportunity to be with them and try to return some of the love and support they have shown us, but I still feel it’s hardly enough. The memorial service was heartbreaking; the father gave the most beautiful, touching eulogy. It was such a tribute to the incredible love that they so obviously have for their son. Seeing the anguish and pain my friend was experiencing as she tried to walk into the church for her son’s funeral will be forever etched into my mind. To know there is nothing I can do to take away that pain is extremely hard. As we drove back yesterday I felt so torn and cried feeling so helpless, wishing that I wasn’t so far away and could be more available to her in what I know will be a difficult journey in the coming days.

It’s hard to fathom how quickly life can change and how unexpectedly death can take from us those who we love most. Our friends just had pictures taken with their beautiful son a couple of days before his death. You can see so much love evident in those pictures and can’t help but think how unfair it is that he was taken from such loving parents.

This is a poem another friend shared at a local Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness event; it seems fitting to the grief and loss my friend and I have suffered this past year. We will never forget the children that were taken from us, the hole that they have left behind in our lives, and the piece of our hearts that will forever be broken in their absence.

Tragedy & heartbreak...

Today my heart aches for my dear friend Tiffany and her family; her beautiful little boy Julius passed away this afternoon after only 4 ½ months on this earth, most likely as a result of SIDS. She called me just after I was leaving work this afternoon. I had to pull my car over because as you can imagine the tears where blinding my vision and I couldn’t think clearly enough to continue. She was one of my closest friends when we lived in the South, and she has by far been the most incredible support of anyone we know that hadn’t experienced a similar loss. She has sent me cards at least twice a month since losing Lily, she sent me that beautiful necklace a couple months ago, she has called me often, and just cried with me about all we had lost. And then today after walking in the door of my house following her phone call I see a package from the Botanical Garden in the town we used to live in with a beautiful card that said a butterfly was released in memory of Lily by Tiffany’s family. I feel at a complete loss. I hate that I’m not there in the same city able to be there for her in a more physical way. We’re planning to travel there once we know the details of when and where the funeral will be. I can’t believe that this has happened to a close friend in real life; it seems so unreal. I can’t help but think when are we ever safe?

She has had a *blog* documenting her pregnancy and now his growth, she posted an adorable picture of him just this morning. I’m asking you all to do the only thing I can do for her right now, please flood her with prayers and love.

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love.” ~Washington Irving

**Update:  First of all thank you so much to all of you who stopped by Tiffany's blog and left kind words of love and support. Thank you for thinking of her & her husband and keeping them in your thoughts and prayers as they navigate this unimaginable grief. Sadly, she had to make her blog invite only this afternoon after someone left a cruel comment. Unthinkable that someone could do such a heartless thing to such an incredibly kind person grieving for their child. If you'd like to leave a comment on my blog I'll be sure it gets to her, we'll be traveling to the South in the coming days to be with them for the funeral. So while I'm away please continue to keep her, her husband, and their families close in prayer.

Goodness...

Overall I think this has been one of the best weekends we’ve had since losing Lily. Started out on Friday when I came home from work and my mom surprised me with a donation to Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep in honor of Lily. We got a beautiful card in the mail which was such a nice way to be reminded of all the ripple effects her life continues to have and the way that she is inspiring positive impacts in this world. Then Friday night my husband got an incredibly kind e-mail from his mom reminding us of our strengths and all of the incredible support we are surrounded by, which helped to ease my fears and bring some peace to the anxiety I was feeling about the next day.

Then Saturday we got to come face to face with our donor family, it was wonderful! We had a great time getting to know each other and showed them around town a bit, what little there is to show in Kansas:) We got lots of awesome cuddle time & love in with their daughter, she has an amazing little personality and got along brilliantly with our dogs. She found them to be quite entertaining and we had the joy of hearing the sound of her adorable belly laughs as she watched them. It was the sound of what this house is missing and what hopefully it will hold again in the coming year.

After talking with the donor family’s clinic this week, we are planning for transfer to occur the beginning of December. We continue to be in awe that everything is falling into place perfectly. Before they left last night, the donor mother gave me the necklace she wore throughout her treatment cycle; she said she wanted to pass on the good fortune it had brought her, and that she often held tight to it during the ups and downs of their IVF cycle. It is a circle that has the word hope written in script over & over again, a reminder of what to hold to in the coming months. I added it to the chain that I wear Lily’s rings on and I will continue the tradition just as she did of wearing it until our treatment is complete, and hopefully that same good fortune will bless us. I believe it already has by bringing them into our lives, as many of you commented with my last post I am reminded that there really is so much goodness left in this world.

Lastly, this morning as I caught up on the bloggers I follow I, was over joyed to see that my good friend at Find Joy Now has brought her son home. She has been an incredible support to me throughout these past few months, and I hope you’ll join me in celebrating with her today that her long awaited child is finally in her arms.

Anticipation...

This weekend our donor family will be flying into town to visit us, as you can imagine we are so excited and anxious for this visit. The donor mother and I exchanged e-mails earlier this week, and she assured me they’re feeling the anticipation and nervousness as well. Every time I picture in my mind meeting them I tear up, thinking of what an incredible journey this has already been emotionally for all of us and how much of a connection I already feel to this family I’ve never met. It is intense to think about what an amazing gift they are providing us with. In such a random way our paths crossed, and now our lives will likely forever be linked. What a wild ride this past year has been, and as we sit on the verge of this next journey I look to the future with anticipation and hope that the coming year will be better than the last.

Some of you may have remembered me mentioning an excellent article that was in last months Glamour magazine titled “The Baby I Lost and the Life She Gave Me”, thank you to Rachel who commented with the link to the article online, since I didn't know it was up on the Glamour site! I should mention that in the magazine the article did not have "Recovering After a Miscarriage" as part of it's title, this is obviously a miscategorization of Dr. White's loss. The article was incredibly well written and gave me chills reading it, as well as tears for the author’s loss. I was so moved by the article I e-mailed Glamour to tell them how much I appreciated them writing an article on infant loss and much to my surprise this month part of my e-mail was printed in the “You Said It” readers comments section!

Those of you amazing ladies who have given me blog awards lately, thank you so much! Sorry I’ve been terrible at keeping up with them, I’ll try to catch up this next week, but please know how much each of you means to me.

Remnants of loss….

I’ve been reading An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken, and she so perfectly describes life after the loss of a child; not the tied up pretty kind of sentimental things people want to hear, but the dark and ugly, honest stuff. I completely related to one portion I was reading tonight in which she talked about how “when tragedy has struck you dumb, you should be given a stack of cards that explain it for you”. The author uses the example of her card saying “My first child was stillborn.” She goes on to explain how much easier this would be both for her and other people, how she’d like for people to know, but it’s hard to say and it’s hard for them to hear, but maybe not so difficult to read. I can’t stop thinking about how lovely something like this would be. I can’t tell you how often social situations can be uncomfortable when people don’t know what happened and how much easier it would be if they did. She explains that even now after she’s had a second child, a healthy beautiful boy, she still doesn’t know how to answer the question, “is this your first child?”

Talking with another BLM tonight, I realized it’s part of the package for all of us, but none of us knows how exactly to handle these situations, these questions and conversation starters that appear so normal and commonplace to the rest of the world but are landmines to those who have lost their babies. Now when we attend parties, I avoid those with babies and tense when women start discussing their children or pregnancy because I know, inevitably, if I don’t somehow excuse myself from the group, the questions will come my way and it’s such an impossible answer to give. Do I answer honestly, thus making the rest of the group uncomfortable, or do I deny my daughter by answering no, thus leaving me with a sense of guilt and sadness.

I wanted to share an excellent article written from the male perspective on loss. Sadly, there were many parts of his story that were eerily familiar; I continue to be surprised at how much sadness exists in this world and thankful that somehow there is still hope.

With all the sadness and uncertainty that I continue to be reminded of in this world, I try to accept that there are many things which are out of my control. As the Serenity Prayer so perfectly says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”