About

---Meet Beluga Whale and Luca Star---

Beluga Whale is our way of including our little ones in our pictures, day to day adventures and travel. She represents Elisa (stillborn January 2015) who was our 'little baby beluga', and she is holding a star to represent Luca (miscarried August 2013, Luca means light)

The tagline of "Adventures With Baby Beluga" Began when we were still pregnant with Elisa, but knew, due to a poor diagnosis, she would likely not survive to live here with us on earth.  Her first adventure was documented in on of our first posts, Showing Baby Beluga the World

After Elisa was stillborn in late January, Mark and I felt like any picture we took was always missing an important part of our lives, our two girls. We wanted to be able to include Elisa, and Luca in our photos.    My cousin had given us a larger version of the above whale stuffed animal as a gift for Elisa at her gender reveal party.  We searched online to find they also made a mini-version, the perfect size for travel and so began "adventures with baby beluga"

We started this blog to document Beluga's adventures, and our process through grief.  It is in memory of Luca and Elisa but also here to help bring light to the topic of baby loss, in hopes that one day it will not be as taboo as it once was.

 Yes we miss our girls, but we don't post the pictures to show how sad we are, or wallow in our grief, but as part of our healing process and to show that they are as much a part of our family as any future living children will be.

---Our Story---

Our road to parenthood has been very different than we expected it to be when we set out on it years ago

After a year of trying, in June of 2013 were ecstatic to find out we were pregnant. All went well with our first few visits,  baby was growing on target, and had a strong heartbeat. But sadly, we miscarried at 11 weeks.  We lost the baby so early that we didn't know if she was a boy or a girl, but Mark and I both had a strong feeling she was a she.  To us, it was important that we gave her a name, so we could refer to her as something other than our  "miscarriage" or "the baby we lost" so we named her, Luca.  Luca, because it is androgynous name and it means "light".

Losing Luca was one of the hardest things we had been through as a couple.   We didn't think it could get any harder, little did we know what life had in store for us.

After losing Luca it took us another year to get pregnant.  There are many other people who have tried much longer and if you are reading this, our hearts go out to you.  That year was a very hard time for us.  Mourning our loss, but also beginning to wonder if it would ever happen for us, if we would ever get pregnant.

Then in August of 2014, we found out we were pregnant again.  We were overjoyed, but also scared, pregnancy after loss is full of mixed emotion, balancing between hope and fear.

Less than a week after finding out we were pregnant, complications began, I was bleeding and they didn't know why.  I was put on bed rest and was sent in to see the doctor.  They found I had a subcorionic hemorrhage, basically a bleed near the baby.  They said they were somewhat common, and not to worry too much, but I was kept on modified bed rest for the remainder of the first trimester.

At 16 weeks, finally into our second trimester, the hemorrhage was finally gone.  We felt relief that we were in the clear, that maybe everything would be OK.

Only three weeks later at our 19 week anatomy scan, the doctor told us something was wrong.  Our baby girl was nearly three weeks behind her growth targets.  We tried to tell ourselves everything was OK, and that maybe she was just a tiny baby, but we could tell from the doctor's tone, that it wasn't good.  We were referred to a high risk doctor who we were to see the next Monday.

After the longest weekend of our lives, we saw the specialist.  We were told our baby girl had IUGR (Intrauterine Growth Restriction).  The likely cause was that the placenta didn't attach correctly, and so she wasn't getting enough nutrients.  There was nothing they could do to save her.  They told us she had a less than 10% chance of making it to birth, and if she did it would be a very, very early birth.  She needed to make it to 500 grams (or around 28 weeks typically) at which point she would be better out than in, but even if she did make it that far she would have a very low chance of survival being born that early. 

They asked us if we wanted to terminate, but we knew we wanted  to give her her best fighting chance and to have as much time with her as we could possibly could.  So we decided to carry her for as long as she would stay.

I was put on full bed rest and we did our best to enjoy the time we had with her.

This is where Adventures With Baby Beluga started.  Elisa's nickname throughout our pregnancy was out little baby beluga.  After her diagnosis, we wanted to make the best of the time we had with her.  It was hard on many levels.  There was the obvious emotional challenges.  How do you make the best memories and try to enjoy every moment when you know your precious baby will likely die before they are born?  But on a more practical level, we couldn't do any big trips or large gestures, because I was on bed rest.

One day we just decided one of the most important things for us to do with her was take her to Sequim.  I wrote THIS post on our caring bridge page at the time, and we started our new mission of adventures with baby beluga.

Elisa was stillborn in January of 2015, and now this blog is both a dedication to her and Luca through Adventures with Baby Beluga, and also a way for us to journal through grief as we navigate this new world without them.