Six months.......

So.........six months ago I remember laying in a hospital bed at St. Alexius Medical Center frustrated and emotionally and mentally exhausted. I had failed the first attempt at induction at 42 weeks of pregnancy. I began to wonder if our baby girl was hanging on for dear life in there. At 8pm we restarted the induction process and once again failed.....a vaginal delivery was just not in the cards for our dear Gracie. After 24 hours of pitocin I hadn't even dilated to one cm......it was off to the delivery room. On the eve of what should be Gracie's 6 month birthday with her mommy and daddy here on earth, a person cannot help but think about how drastically our lives have changed in the past 6 months....what a difference a half a year has made. Gracie should be here with us giggly, cooing, rolling over, playing peek a boo with her Daddy and quite possibly cutting some teeth (I was an early teether). But once again reality takes over and you look around and she's not here. Instead there is a granite head stone with my daughter's name and birthdate engraved on it at the cemetary. The room we have sitting empty waiting to become a nursery some day is still sitting empty. I have been told the 6 month mark is one of the hardest and I won't lie (I never do)....it is. There is something about a half of a year passing by without your baby that really hits hard. The problem is once again that they world doesn't stop when yours seems to stop. Even with the help of medication I have not been able to sleep more than 3-4 hours a night this past week....but somehow I drag myself out of bed and go to work and try to function somewhat normally. What I would like to do is crawl back into bed and just stay there....for various reasons besides being tired. When 5pm hits, I get to go home....to my safe haven.....a place where I don't have to pretend everything ok. A place where the only other person in the world that knows how badly it hurts to lose Gracie is waiting for me....my husband. There is a sense of relief when I pull into the yard.....I don't have to pretend anymore....I can just be me. I am thankful for my job because it does make me get back into somewhat of a routine and rejoin the world, but on the other hand trying to function during times of stress is difficult. This past week the anencephaly world lost a beautiful soul named Katie. She defied the odds of anencephaly and lived for 9 months.....over the past 9 months I have grown to know this little beauty through facebook. I feel like I know her personally and her family regardless that we have never met. I have noticed that when a family in the anencephaly world that I have grown particularly close to loses their child it stirs up a lot of emotions and it tends to throw me back to Oct. 20th. I relive every minute I had with Gracie.....her smell, her movement, her grip on my finger, and the noises she made. I think of every visitor that came to see her and all the things we fit into her 15 hours including her birthday party her Godfather Dan, Auntie Marcy, and special sister Alex had for her in the hospital. I remember her last breath....I remember Sarah listening for her heartbeat and it was gone.....all of those things are so fresh in my mind yet. The hurt is so raw.......... I would love nothing more than to stay in bed tomorrow and let the hurt just be there, but I will not. I will get out of bed and I will go to work and I will partake in life. As difficult as it may all be with all of those memories there, I feel Gracie would want nothing less of her mother. It's easy to tell the brain that Gracie is gone to be with Jesus and that I should be so happy about that because she has no pain or suffering there......but the heart tells me such a different story. My heart aches so badly for the child that we had wanted so much that it does feel like it's breaking. You hear the term, "suffering from a broken heart" and think of it as a figure of speech, but it is something that is very real. Ask any mother or father that has lost a child and they will tell you that you literally feel like your heart is broken in two. There is a real ache in your chest when you think of the child you should be tending to instead of doing so many other things.
   I created this blog to continue to write out my true feelings and rare hurt. I created this blog to let people into a world that they will most likely never have to be part of. I do not sugar coat things because I want people to know exactly how Jeff and I feel and what we are going through. I do this for one very simple reason.....to spread awareness of infant loss and how it really impacts people's lives. "Back in the day" infant loss wasn't discussed and people were told to "get over" their child......this was of course said in pure ignorance. A lot of the moms in the anencephaly group that have blogs have them to do the same as I do....to their feelings out, but at the same time to spread awareness of what it is like to lose something as precious as a child. You do not have to have your child with you for many years to love them any differently or any more than how much we loved our Gracie in the 15 hours we had her. A parent's love in the same no matter how much time you have with them. Our Gracie was a perfect mix of her mommy and daddy. The hurt is as real today as it was 6 months ago.....we are learning how live all over again with a whole new way of thinking. We hope that Gracie's story continues to impact everyone as it did 6 months ago.