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.

Milestones......

So it is Easter time.....it's always been a fun holiday in our family and it's one of my husbands favorite holidaya as well. I think it will always be a little bit different for the both of us as we have both spent a great deal of this past week thinking about how different life was a year ago at Easter time.We knew at that time that there was a possibility that there was something wrong with our Gracie but still had the bit of hope to hang onto yet. Last year after I got off of work we drove to Bismarck and went to the clinic to have the life changing QUAD blood screening drawn. Dr. Witt had told us that if this test was off then we would have the option of having an amnio and then we would have our answers we had been looking for since March 15th. I think a lot of mother's tend to sense when something is wrong with their child and I was no different. I knew the test would come back badly, but no matter how much you make your brain think something your heart feels things all together differently. We went to Napoleon for Easter and as we sat in mass on Easter Sunday I looked around at all the babies....the little boys in their suits and the little girls in their beautiful Easter dresses and my heart couldn't help but make my brain think about us having a little one at Easter mass next year. I thought about how different our lives would be and how we would have to do things differently on the farm with our schedules. We on Monday at work on my lunch break I got the call from Dr. Witt that my test results were some of the lowest numbers he has ever seen on the QUAD screen and if we still wanted to do the amnio to get answers we could do it that week. I managed to hold it together for the phone call and I hung up and looked across the lunch table at my friend, Sarah and I had the total nuclear melt down at that point. Jeff was between Bismarck and McClusky and was stopping at the clinic when he got back....he had no idea what he was walking in on. We are lucky in the fact that God blessed us with Sarah as our friend and she sat us down and helped me tell Jeff some of the hardest news I have ever had to tell someone.....especially someone that I love with my entire heart and soul. We decided to do the amnio so we had some concrete results and we could start to deal with the reality of the situation. We went in that same week on Thursday and the standard protocol is to do an ultrasound to locate the placenta positioning and the babies' position and that is where the tech could plainly see our baby Gracie had anencephaly. The walls started to crumble in at that time and most days they feel like they continue to crumble in on top of us. I've been told the 6 month mark is the one of the most difficult times to go through and as the days mount to this milestone it is harder and harder to think, sleep and function. It's like this overwhelming event is creeping up on us. We talk of Gracie all the time at our house and are surrounded by photos and momentos of her, but only on occasion does my stoic husband say something to reveal how much he is truly hurting. Last night as we sat at the kitchen table out of the blue he states, "I miss Gracie and I miss holding her. I want her back so I can hold her again." Two sentences.......my heart ached for him. With so much going on at the farm now with calving and getting ready to go seeding, you tend to lose your feelings and emotions in the hustle and bustle. The Easter holiday really stirred things up at our house this past week and you can't help but relieve every single moment of how things occurred last year at this time. Sometimes I wonder how in the world we have managed to make it this far without completly losing our minds. I believe two reasons why we are managing to go on with life (so to speak) is first of all our faith in God, and second of all our true and unending love for one another. I speak highly of my husband often when I write about our loss, but nothing that I write is untrue. We are each other's best friends and each other's soul mates. I don't take that for granted as I know how fortunate I am. When either of us have a bad day with missing our daughter (me more often than him) we are always there for one another and are literally the shoulder the other cries on. There are not a lot of people that can relate to what we are each feeling and I know as we sit in mass on Easter Sunday we will both be thinking about the same thing as we see all of the young couples with their babies in church. We will both be feeling the same ache in our hearts and that feeling of emptiness. This past week a Bismarck magazine publication called Inspired Woman came out with a new issue. On the front cover is my sister in law, Cheryl and I......Cheryl wrote into the magazine when they had a contest on who inspires you. Cheryl wrote about Gracie and I and won first place. Gracie's story is not touching many, many, many more lives which is exactly what God's plan was for her. Here is the link in case you haven't read it yet: http://www.inspiredwomanonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/IW-April_2012.pdf   My head knows why things happened with Gracie the way that they did, but my heart tells another story. My heart is one of a mother that longs to hold her child and see her precious face again. I see it when I close my eyes at night and it is the first thing I see when I open my eyes in the morning. Her face is in my mind as I go to work and take care of so many other people at the clinic and it is in my mind as I cook supper every evening. The image of her yawning and smiling enters my mind so often as does the image of her proud Daddy as he brought her into see me for the first time in the operating room. My mind drifts to her so many times during the day.....my brain knows she is gone, but my heart doesn't know how to deal with that realization fully. There will always be a little hole in our hearts from losing Gracie...I believe she took a piece of it with her to heaven and someday when we are together again our hearts will once again be whole.

adjusting to life.....

It's been quite a while since I blogged last.....I've been a little lost in life. The time period between Gracie's 4th month and 5th month birthdays was particularly rough for me....no one reason, just a bunch of little ones. The thoughts of what I am missing out on flooded me day in and day out and sleeping was more difficult than normal. I struggled to get out of bed every morning and go to work....I struggled to be part of society. What I really wanted to do was curl up in a ball and stay there....the only problem is that when your world stops, the rest of the world doesn't. Most days you feel like you are barely keeping your head above water. Simple things like cleaning the house become so overwhelming that you have a panic attack when you start to think of everything that you have to do. The truth is...my brain doesn't work the way it used to. I used to be able to take in all kind of information and be able to filter it and deal with things....now when a bunch of things get thrown at me, I can't filter it and I get overwhelmed and start to panic about it. Even if it is something as simple as cleaning the house and I logically know it's not going to matter what I do first and how long it takes, my anxiety takes over. The fact that I know this is happening and can't stop it once again challenges my need of control in my life. I know I have to learn to develop coping mechanisms for this, but that is easier said than done. It's like trying to learn to live your life all over again. In the middle of trying to learn to live again.....I am missing my daughter....a lot. I can't help but look at other babies and think about everything I am missing with her. I feel like I've been robbed of so much. If she were still alive she would be cooing and smiling and learning all kinds of things. It never fails when Jeff and I go somewhere, there has to be a baby girl around the 5 month mark there. Seeing those babies triggers so many emotions and thoughts.....and tends to send me into a tailspin for a bit. I want my baby like any other mother does. I want to hold and cuddle her and feel her weight in my arms again. I want to sit and rock with her in the rocking chair. I don't want to go to the cemetary to see my daughter......but this is my new reality of life. It's not something  a person gets "used to" over night or even over a series of months. Some may feel that I should be farther along with "dealing with things" and be doing better....well life doesn't quite work that way. How does someone "get used" to those feelings of loss....a loss that big? There are a lot of unanswered questions in life for me that I have to figure out yet. It's very easy for those on the other side to feel that Jeff and I should be feeling a certain way and that we should be moving on......but until you go through something like this, no one can understand what we are feeling(and I hope no one has to feel this pain as we don't wish this on anyone). Day by day we discover new bits and peices of who we have now become. Thankfully Jeff and I have each other to lean on in these hard times and us becoming closer has been a huge gift. We don't know what our future holds and where it is going to take us, but we know that we are going there together. This past week we hit the milestone of Gracie's 5 month birthday....our minds drifted a lot and we talked of our hopes and dreams that we will never have with our little girl. At the end of that emotionally draining day, we crawled into bed together and curled up together. Jeff knew I was having a difficult day so he did what he does best and made me laugh as we cuddled together before going to sleep for the night. While some people complain about their spouses, I thank God for my spouse. He is such a gift to me and I will be forever grateful for his love. Together we trudge forth in life and together we figure things out. We know that our love for each other has brought us through this all and without it, our coping would be much more difficult. When we got married we had a song, Take My Hand and little did we know how true this song would be in our life. Here is a link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E_rVbkK5G8    So as with anything in life....we will stick together and get through the difficult times.

Ignorant Bliss......

This past Saturday, January 28th marked one year ago that Jeff and I found out we were pregnant! After taking fertility medication we had finally conceived! YEAH! We thought we had finally won.....that we finally got our break! We were so overjoyed and all the plans we had for this little baby started to form! Jeff immediatly nicknamed the baby, Little Johnny (after John Deere of course) and talked about how he was going to teach the baby how to run the air seeder, and make hay, and combine, drive semi, take them fishing and hunting and the list went on and on! One thing was for sure....this baby was going to be a farmer not matter what. Jeff and I got a whole 6 weeks of what I now call ignorant bliss. During those 6 weeks we did what every parent does....dream of everything that is yet to come. All the hopes and dreams we had for our baby were made during this time. I had bought a sign at a local store in town for our baby's nursery that simply says, "Wishes and Dreams." This baby was what we had prayed for, wished for and dreamt about for so long. We really thought the hardest part of our journey was behind us since we were able to get pregnant. Little did we know what was ahead of us. On March 15th our lives became to crumble........we had a 10 week ultrasound since we had been on fertility medication and were told it was only to see if we were dealing with a single birth or a mutiple birth. We got our one picture from the US tech and headed to our appointment, blissfully unaware of what was yet to come. Our doctor walked in and with little tact said right off the bat, "Well the radiologist is having difficulty making out all of her cranial features. We're going to set you up to see a perinatologist in Fargo for further analysis of this, but that won't be until June." Now......this is where the appointment stopped for both Jeff and I. Our minds shut off at this very point and we had a whole 1 hour appt. after that yet. As a nurse I knew she was covering something up....you just don't send a someone to a perinatologist for nothing. I was upset with how she conducted herself and needless to say, so was my friend Sarah. Sarah recommended Dr. Witt to us and we thought at this point, what did we really have to lose. We found a blessing from God when we walked into his office. He treated us with the utmost respect and with dignity and laid everything out for us. We didn't need a perinatologist....we did everything with him.
   I often think back to that blissful 6 weeks....the only 6 weeks of that pregnancy where I didn't have the weight of the world on my shoulders.....and think about all of our hopes and dreams for our little one. I had 6 weeks of being in a "normal" pregnancy......6 weeks out 42 weeks. I will always cherish those moments of feeling "normal" but I will also cherish the other 36 weeks. Although they were very stressful and brought a lot of tears, they also brought a lot of happiness and smiles. I was one of the fortunate ones that did not have a miserable pregnancy. There was little nausea, no excessive weight gain, and no excessive fluid retention. I was able to go about our normal daily lives and helped Jeff with raking hay even when I was 40 weeks pregnant. We decided that Gracie would help her Daddy farm from in the womb.....she went through pretty much every season on the farm from calving to seeding to haying to combining. She drove tractor with her mom, a LOT and loved it. When I would stop then she would kick up a storm! We laughed as we wondered what she thought about those rough hay fields! We cherished her kicks and movements. Knowing this was the only time we had with our daughter that was guaranteed, made us appreciate our pregnancy on a whole new level. We wouldn't change a thing....this was what God wanted. Gracie came into this world and was blissfully unaware of her condition and she was also unaware of how many lives she was impacting by being there. The people we had at the hospital with us thanked us for allowing them to be part of Gracie's Day....it was what God wanted. Everyone there that day saw a little bit of heaven and saw one of God's littlest workers. That was such a blessing for us to witness as parents......what a gift.

Life.....

Life......in today's society it is taken for granted on so many occasions and in so many situations. This past week a fellow anencephaly mommy had her precious baby boy, Andrew. Andrew is now 5 days old and is at home with his mommy and daddy....something they never thought would happen. What precious gift from God! His mom along with the rest of us mommies all had to make decisions right after receiving the most horrible news of our lives.....are you going to carry to term or induce early/abort your baby. I remember that moment of feeling like I had been slugged in the gut in the ultrasound room with the technician, our doctor, and a medical student staring at my husband and I right after they delivered the news our precious daughter wasn't going to make it. I remember them telling me that the defect Gracie had made her "incompatible with life." Those words are burned into my memory and will most likely be there for the rest of my life. We were given the same option as all the other anencephaly mommies were given....are you going to carry your baby the full 9 months or are you going to prematurly end your pregnancy. There was only one answer for us as neither of us believe in abortion, but most importantly we wanted to do the only thing we could do for our daughter....love her. And we did.....to the full extreme. The love our hearts felt and continue to feel is not any different than any other parent's love for their children that they have been blessed to keep on this earth with them. She's a part of us and a part of our souls. Today is church, Father's sermon was about abortion since January 22nd marks the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade in our nation. Father talked about how some do not view a baby in the womb just as that...a baby. They feel it isn't a baby until it is born. How wonderful for them to live a life of ignorance. Those wonderful little beings do so many things inuteral that babies do once they are born....they suck their thumbs, they get the hiccups, the can hear and are soothed by their parents voices and they react to their surroundings. In the words of Dr. Seuss..."A person is a person, no matter how small." I know there are liberals that will tell you that abortion is the choice of the parent....and why yes it is, but it doesn't neccessarily make it correct. I think back to that day when our doctor asked us what we wanted to do.......what if we wouldn't have carried Gracie to term? I think of everything we would have missed....what if this is our only pregnancy? We would have missed watching my body change and feeling her kick and all the antics she did while inuteral. We would have missed that parental bonding that you do with your child as you wait for them to join the world. People have said...."Well you could have spared yourself the pain of loving that child." No we wouldn't have.....we loved her from the minute we found out we were pregnant. There would have been no sparing the feelings of losing a child. Everyone does what is best for them and I am certainly not to judge them as that is not my job. I simply think of what people are missing out on. Just as baby Andrew's mommy and daddy.....they are on day 5 with their baby boy and who knows how many more days they have of memories to make with him! What a wonderful gift! This baby boy has already touched so many lives as his story continues to spread. You can't help but smile when you think of the love his mommy and daddy are experiencing. When Gracie was born her story was heard far and near and impacted so many people's lives.....her life was not in vain....and neither is baby Andrew's. They were sent here by God and as parents were lucky enough to experience their lives and love. People always say to me....."Gracie was sure lucky to have you guys as parents." My response is, "no , we were lucky to be chosen to be her parents." I know my fellow anencephaly mommies all feel the same way. When you hold your newborn child that you know you are going to lose, you can't help but know you are holding a peice of heaven in your arms. When you lock gazes with that beautiful child it is indeed like looking into God's face.....what a beautiful gift. Father said just in ND alone every week there are as many babies aborted that is the average size of a kindergarten class. This is just in ND.......as I sat in church my heart couldn't help but ache for those children and their parents. I know a lot of the mom's that make these decisions are scared, uneducated, and alone and it saddens me that they have to make such a life altering decision in that state of mind. I had a conversation with a friend earlier this week and we were talking about Gracie and I said if someone would give me the choice to carry another pregnancy knowing from the start that I would lose that child, that I would do it. It is the most difficult, wonderful, beautiful, and life altering thing I have ever done. I don't have a single regret about my decision and that brings me a lot of peace of mind. There have been many, many, many tough days and I know there are many more ahead of us, but the reward of getting to know our daughter was worth it to us. After church today we decided to go the cemetary for a visit. These visits are always tough, but yet peaceful at the same time. I know Gracie is up with our Lord and is having a wonderful time playing with all of her anencephaly buddies.....us moms are convinced they have a club up there.......but of course you long to have your baby in  your arms again. Life is something that will never be taken for granted at our house, especially after witnessing our beautiful child come into their world and leave it. As the saying goes.....Life is fragile, handle with prayer.

A New Year with new dreams.....

I've been thinking about what I want to write about for quite a while on here and it seemed like after the past 5 months of journaling I had developed writers block! I could have written a lot about how we tried to cope and get through Christmas, but the words weren't adequate to describe those feelings. And now the new year is upon us and it made me start thinking about things. Jeff and I are both looking forward to 2011 coming to an end and praying for 2012 to bring us some happiness. We will never regret carrying our Gracie to term and meeting her but it was the most difficult and the most joyous thing either of us have ever done. I find myself sitting and staring at pictures of her and wondering how she would have been as a two month old baby. How would her features have changed and what would her personality be like. Last year as we started the year 2011 we had gone through all the fertility testing and were finally going to be able to take some medication to help us try and have that baby we had longed for. We really thought this would be the toughest part of our year and after we found out we were pregnant we really did think the hard part was over....well the rest is history on that topic. In the past as the new year would roll around I would think about all the things I was going to change and like most never really followed through on them as most were rather petty when I look at things now. You don't go through the loss of a child and come out the other side the same person. I have discarded petty behavior and petty items in life, as they are just not something I want to waste my time on and I just don't tolerate a lot it in my life anymore. Things have more meaning to me now....so when I look at the new year rolling around and start thinking about what the year will bring my husband and I, it's not the same old small things I used to think of.....like losing weight (I'm just going to be a girl with meat on my bones and that's all there is to it) or going on a trip or anything of that nature. I want some peace in my life along with some happiness and the feeling of contentment. I want my soul to be able to heal. I think sometimes life can sweep us along and we can lose touch with our faith a bit. I have never been far from my faith but I have learned to rely on it much more heavily after what we have gone through. On Christmas Eve, Jeff and I went to mass in Napoleon at my home parish. It was what I was terrified to do as I knew there would be lots and lots of babies there with the holiday. I didn't do as badly as I was anticipating and at one point in the mass I prayed to Gracie to give us a sign she was with her mommy and daddy at church. The minute I asked this of our little girl, Jeff jerked his arm that was touching mine and I looked over and he had large goose bumps on his arm and he said he has gotten this tingling sensation up his arm that went down his spine. This happened to him two more times afterwards. During the closing song it happened to me. I do not feel that this was a coincidence by any means....I know this was Gracie giving us the sign we had longed for. What a special Christmas gift our daughter gave us. Our faith in God is what has carried us through this year and it is what we are carrying into the new year with us. We pray for a much less stressful new year than the year we are leaving behind and we pray for some much wanted happiness in our lives. We both feel very fortunate that we came through this life changing event a stronger, more loving, and more faith driven couple than when we entered it. We plan to enter the New Year as a joined force and we continue to muddle our way through this journey together. No one told us marriage was going to be easy. I used to ask my 90 year old patients in the hospital what is the key to marriage and after the good old joke cracked by the husband of, "Keep your wife happy" they would all tell me the same thing...."love." They all told me to love your spouse unconditionally and I do and he loves me back. We are fighters....not quitters. We are hoping 2012 is kind to us and blesses us with the family we long for. We are hoping with our beautiful angel up in heaven to help us out that this time around will not be as difficult. We feel blessed to have had our daughter and no matter how difficult it was to lose her, we will never regret our decisions we made in the year 2011. So with this new year, comes new dreams.

Time....

Time is something that something that tends to pass by extremely fast or it can drag on depending on the situation. I don't know about many of you, but I get those periods in my life that seem like they happened a long time ago but at the same time you can recall everything like it was yesterday. Tomorrow marks 8 weeks since Gracie was born.....that seems so hard to believe. I can recall every minute of the day and I can recall every feature of my daughter's face and body like I was just holding her a minute ago. At the same time it feels like my daughter has been gone for so long and yet my heart still hurts so badly. My mom said to me exactly what I had been thinking the other day....it's almost like Gracie was a dream and at times we have to wonder if everything that took place really happened. All around our house we have reminders of our daughter...from pictures (many), her ornaments on the Christmas tree, her memory chests, and gifts we have received in her memory. There are so many things going on right now that my  mind is having a hard time dealing with and processing everything. I go back to work next week Monday for the first time in two months. I've been at my job for a little over two years and there is very little I don't have a grasp on at the clinic, but yet I find myself very anxious and almost panic like about going back to work. I love my job and I love my co-workers ( I am one of the lucky ones that has great co-workers that are my friends as well), so why would I be so terrified of going back? I have asked myself this over and over and over and I don't have an answer. I think I am more scared of re-entering the world of reality....like I am suppose to be "normal" again and move on. I can't wrap my mind around trying to move on without my daughter. I will never "be over" losing my daughter.... I want to talk about her and remember her with people. She is the love of our lives and we don't get to share our lives with her. She is gone from our site....I know she is still with us in spirit. It is not a coincidence that on some of my more challenging days that I will talk to her and ask her to help us get through some challenging task or difficult emotions and things tend to turn around rather quickly. It is comforting to know my little princess is with our Lord, but still remains very difficult to live with daily. I know you have all heard the saying from people that parents shouldn't have to bury their children....well it is true. The hurt is  unimaginable until one has to go through it....it is a hurt on a whole different level. Also in the next week is Christmas and that is so hard for us to imagine without our daughter. I have had nightmares of going to Christmas mass and seeing all the little babies and the little girls dressed in their Christmas dresses and me running out of church crying. Some people may think that it's been 8 weeks and we should be doing better, but the reality of the situation is that we are not doing better. It's almost like everyday makes us miss our baby girl even more. So trying to return to what was my "old normal" life of going to work and celebrating some of my favorite holidays is so hard for my "new brain" to try and wrap itself around. It really is like we are having had to relearn how to be alive and how to be part of society. It has been easy for me to be protected at home out in the country... away from people, but come Monday morning it's like my protection will be gone. I feel like an egg with a crack in it already and it just won't take much for my shell to completly shatter. I know I need to go back to work....my husband told me I need to go back to work....as I think a routine will be good for me again. And once I get my feet wet, working with the public will be good too. Most of my patients are like an extended family to me and they care about us...that is always so comforting. So as my time off from work is coming to a close I can say that when I walk back into work Monday morning I will be a completly different person than the day I walked out there. I am now trying to learn the "new me" and trying to figure out what exactly is normal again. Time has a new meaning to both Jeff and I....we cherish our time together on a whole new level. We don't take time for granted anymore. He has told me how I need to return to the work world, but how much he is going to miss our time at home as well. Gracie has taught us not to take our days together for granted as you never know when those days will be over. We remember Gracie every hour of every day and everything she taught us in her 15 hours of life. Time....what a precious thing.