Infant Loss Awareness Day

October 15th has been designated as Infant Loss Awareness Day in our country.....October 20, 2011 is our Gracie's birthday. Gracie was born at 8:35am by C-section nearly 6 years ago. There were so many unknowns about that day.....Did we do the right thing? Was she going to be alive? Would I get out of the OR in time to see her and hold her while her heart was beating? Was she going to be able to be baptized? What was my reaction going to be to my first born child that was not going to be born with her skull and only parts of her brain? All those questions were answered that morning of October 20th at St. Alexius hospital in Bismarck, ND when Dr. Witt delivered our daughter. My fear for so many months would be my first reaction to her birth defect. What I first noticed on my daughter where these big hands that had to belong to her father. I noticed her defect, but it was not significant enough to be my first memory....because mother's love their children unconditionally. Unconditional love became the theme of our pregnancy with Gracie after we found out her diagnosis and we knew there was nothing we could do to "cure her" or "make things better." We decided to love her even though we knew in the end she would be taken from us. We already loved her so it did made this a natural decision. Deciding to terminate our pregnancy early would not have spared my spouse or I any pain. Instead we took this time to embrace our time with our daughter. We didn't have years to make memories once she was born, so we embraced the time we had with her before she was born and the hours after she born. Most people reading this blog know Gracie's birth and life story and I'm not going to go into details, but while Gracie was still inside of me she helped her Daddy farm. That farm year we hauled anhydrous, raked hay, rode in the combine, drove in her Dad's semi, worked cattle, went for four wheeler rides and everything else that makes up a "farm year." I was raking hay when I was 40 weeks pregnant trying to get her to come out on her own....that didn't happen obviously after reading the intro to this blog. You see, Gracie did things her way and for a great reason. Everything that happened during her pregnancy was on her timeline. She was in charge of her life and her story. We as parents allowed Gracie to tell her story as she wanted to. After Gracie's birth and death, I tried to make sense of this tragedy. I was a nurse....I made everyone else better and I couldn't help my daughter. It was a horrible and helpless feeling. Somewhere along that bumpy road it came to me that I needed to educate future nurses. I contacted the two nursing colleges in Bismarck with my idea of presenting Gracie's story to their class and both colleges embraced my idea. You see, there are some lessons in nursing you simply cannot learn from a text book. Gracie will be 6 this week and this also starts my 6th year of doing my Everlasting Grace presentations to the nursing classes. I was recently asked to present at the State Convention for the Nursing Student Association of ND......this is so much bigger than I had ever planned for things to become and I am so proud of our daughter for guiding me through these past 6 years. I am not a public speaker....and in fact it has been one of my biggest fears, but somehow she guides me through every single presentation and I know she will guide me through this upcoming presentation. I don't have a set speech when I do my talks....I let Gracie tell her story. Every single time she has left an impact. One of the colleges has started to give me the evaluation form at the end of the presentation so I can read what the students say....Anne...thank you for this as it shows my husband why I continue to do my talks. I have healed so much from sharing Gracie's story and seeing others take away from my presentation a gift they can use in their nursing career. It makes my heart feel a bit more complete every single time I impact a new class of nurses.
At 7pm this evening, please light a candle in memory of all babies taken from this Earth before their parents' hearts were ready and put it in on Facebook. It is known as the Wave of Light on Facebook and it to draw attention and awareness to Infant Loss. Help us baby loss mommas continue to squash out the taboo of talking about an uncomfortable topic. We live it daily and want it be known that our children's lives mattered no matter how long or how short.