Day 6: Empathy | Capture Your Grief 2016

This is by far the best summary of Empathy I have ever come across

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw

Day 4: Support Circles | Capture Your Grief

Capture Your Grief Day 4 - Support Circles.


For today's post, I send you to my Resources List. This is a compilation of all the websites, books, and support groups that I have found helping on my journey through miscarriage, carrying to term despite a fatal diagnosis and stillbirth.

Day 3: What it Felt Like | Capture Your Grief 2016

This one is a little too hard for me to write about right now, I just don't feel I have the emotional capacity. So I am going to take a little different approach.  I find so many people don't quite understand what stillbirth is, they assume it is the same as a miscarriage (please don't get me wrong, having had a miscarriage, I know they are incredibly hard, emotionally and physically) but they are different. Stillbirth includes labor at a hospital, and all of the things that come along with a full term birth of a healthy take home baby, it's just that instead of taking home a beautiful baby, you are left empty handed and with such much grief.

So here is what stillbirth felt like:

There should be no possible way that you could feel this much emotional pain, when they tell you your baby's heart has stopped.

That there shouldn't be a world where a parent's heart continues to beat after their child's has stopped

A nightmare walking into the labor and delivery department, where everyone is brimming with joy, excited to meet their new addition, when you already know yours is gone

Agony and guilt when you are in anipartum being induced, and you hear the heartbeat monitor of baby of the woman on bedrest in the room next door. Guilt that you just want the noise to stop, knowing full well it is not that woman's fault your baby has died. But agony hearing the sound of a living child's heartbeat amplified, seeming to rub in the fact that you will never hear that sound again from your own beautiful child.

Intense pain as contractions start

Confusion as you go thorough your mind all of the steps you learned in labor and delivery class, but that you never in a million years saw you needed these classes for this

Emptiness and anger as the high risk doctors treat you as a medical experiment, seeming to act differently toward you because they don't have a living child to worry about

Nausea as contractions become Stronger and closer together

Panic as you realize they are now 30 seconds a part, and that this is going to happen soon

Sadness, joy, pride, nearly every emotion possible when your daughter is finally born.

Silence, so much silence when you hear no cry, not that you were expecting it, but it becomes even more real with the silence

Bitterness with the Doctor cuts the cord when you specifically said you wanted your husband to do it, just as if your child had been living

So much joy and so much sadness as you hold your precious daughter, but knowing she is already gone.

Awe and pride at her perfect little body, 10 toes, 10 fingers, her daddy's nose.  

Love, so much love for your beautiful daughter

Like time stands still as you hold her, but like it is simultaneously going too fast knowing this is the only time you have with her

Utter despair as you walk out of the hospital room knowing you will never see or hold your baby girl ever again.  That you walk out of the hospital with no baby to take home

Excruciating pain as your milk comes in, and you become engorged because there is no baby to feed, no way of relief

More anger and despair that your body does not seem to know what has consumed your heart and mind, that your baby is dead.  But the body mocks you by producing more milk for a baby that will never be here.

Shock, disbelief and sorrow as you plan and attend the funeral for your baby girl

Desperation that this must be a horrible nightmare, when you bury your baby 6 feet underground in the cemetery

A haze as you attempt to continue living when your child has died

Day 2: Who They Are | Capture Your Grief 2016

2. WHO THEY ARE | Share about your beautiful children today. Who are they? When were they born? How long did you have them for? What is their name? 

-----

Elisa Josephine, stillborn at 7 months January 2015. She was our "little baby beluga". She had her daddy's nose, ten perfect little toes and ten precious fingers and such a fighting spirit. I could not imagine the grief and pain that came with losing her. She was our hope, our rainbow baby after losing Luca, but she couldn't stay. The little time we had with her at the hospital are some of the hardest but most treasured moments of my life. 

Luca Adriana, miscarried august 2013, she was more of a mystery, here with us for 12 short weeks but forever in our hearts. We don't really know if she was a he or a she because we lost her before we knew, but Mark and I both had a strong feeling she was a girl. We named her Luca Adriana because Luca means light, and Adriana means darkness. So much light and love in the time we had her and so much sadness and darkness in losing her.

 

http://carlymarieprojectheal.com/capture-your-grief-2016

Day 1: Sunrise | Capture Your Grief 2016

Capture Your Grief Day 1: Sunrise

Starting off the first day of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month with a beautiful sunrise. My first thought every morning and last thought every day are my children who are not here. But I try my best to live each day in their honor ❤

Well hello again

It has been quite a while since I have written here.  There are a lot of factors that have gone into that, perhaps due to summer mind - taking a break, partially that our journey through infertility is actually harder for me to write about than my feelings of grief and loss with Elisa and Luca, and most importantly because the ultimate goal of this blog was/is to help me process through my grief, and for the last few months writing hasn't really been what I've wanted to do. So I didn't do it.

Learning to take care of myself you could say is one of the "positives" that have come out of the mess that is child loss.   Of course, like you hear many loss parents say, I would give back any progress to have my children back, but I thank Luca and Elisa every day that if the can't be here, that they have left me with the gift of their love, through self-care. I have learned that grief changed me and will continue to change me. And how I feel or what works for me right now might be completely different than it was two months ago, and again might change in another two months. And that is OK

So over the last few month's I have written.  But now I feel like writing again.

We are coming up on October, pregnancy and infant loss awareness month.  And I look back to the last October when I participated in the "Capture Your Grief Project"  That was an incredibly helpful and healing process for me.  To talk about my babies, but also to have focused prompts on what to write and think about that.

So with that, I plan to be involved again this year.

I can tell you already, I know this year will be different.  Last year I was still very much in the phase of early grief.  The sadness literally engulfed me. I needed to do the project. I NEEDED to talk about my girls and I needed to talk about my pain.

This year I go into it with a different mindset.  Don't get me wrong I still miss Luca and Elisa every day, and I still wish every single moment that things had gone differently, but my grief has changed, and I imagine, if I decide to do this project again next year, it will change again.

So with that, I dust off my blogging, and you can look forward to some more consistent writing from me, at least through the month of October :)


The Capture Your Grief Project will begin October 1. Head over to Carly Marie's Project Heal to see more details

http://carlymarieprojectheal.com/capture-your-grief-2016

University of Washington Pregnancy Loss Study

One in 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage, and one in 160 ends in stillbirth. According to the CDC 24,000 babies are stillborn in the United States every year.

Although some pregnancy losses can be caused by known genetic issues or birth defects, very often, as it was with both of our losses, a cause is unknown,

Along with awareness around pregnancy loss, research is another thing I have become very passionate about.

With that, I wanted to spread the word about a study occurring at The University of Washington. Their goal is to investigate any links in pregnancy loss with the hope of being able to provide answers to couples in the future.

For anyone who is interested in joining the study, please see details below, or reach out to me with any questions:

University of Washington - Division of Medical Genetics: Pregnancy Loss Study

You may be eligible to participate if :

• You have had 2, or more, first trimester losses OR 1 or, more, loss(es) after 12 weeks
• Your most recent loss has occurred after 2010

Participation requirements:

• Take an online survey about your pregnancy losses for data gathering
• One-time review of your medical history (via phone) with research lead
• Provide a DNA sample to the study (blood or saliva).  
• You don't need to be in-state! Kits will be provided and can be mailed, no travel or meetings are necessary.
• It is best if both male and female partners are able to provide a DNA sample, but we know sometimes that is not possible.  If that is not possible, the researchers will request that other family members (grandmother/grandfather of baby) enroll so that a history can be created
• Information will be kept secure for use only in the study
• There is no cost to participate

If you are interested in participating, please contact PregLoss@uw.edu or call 206.685.4530.

Please also feel free to reach out to me directly with any questions.  I have been working directly with the research lead to help get the word out to get more participants.

--The brochure from the UW research team is below for reference---