Day 3 - Remembering

There is no right or wrong way to remember the baby or child you no longer get to hold or spoil or soothe or snuggle. There is no right or wrong way to grieve either. The best advice I was given was “everything is optional except breathing.” That amount of freedom I have needed to remember - if that means I can’t go to a baby shower, I have the freedom to not go. Or to step out of church during an infant baptism, I have the freedom to do that.

A wonderful podcast called The Joyful Mourning talks about milestones (#125 I think) and celebrating them (or not) - go give it a listen if you desire.

Tonight we chose to celebrate the week of Jacks birth with a date night. A bunch of friend gifted us a generous gift card to a local restaurant last year on Jacks first birthday so we used that finally and celebrated Jack.

Milestones are weird for me. Some parts of Jack’s story I am so proud of and others make me cringe that we (him and us) had to experience that. I am realizing the months of July and August are hard for me and probably will always be that way. A friend who lost her son last year reminded me that we will never “move on” from this, we just move forward. Each day holds a memory of 2 years ago we were doing this _____. Having the freedom to remember, honor, celebrate and grieve is so important and I have to remind myself of that often.

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Day 32 - How grief changed me

I obviously missed quite a few days - I took about 2 weeks off - turns out blogging about heavy stuff is draining and I probably bit off more than I could chew by aiming to do 35 posts. I have been reflecting on how grief has changed me over the last two years. In many ways, I am not the same person I was when 2021 began. Grief has changed my thought life, my friendships, my work. First - My world got tiny. I often felt myself looking inward (at my usually crappy situation) and feeling a lot of pity, sadness, anger and occasional shame. In those seasons, it’s so hard for me to be an engaged friend. Essentially grief has made me selfish. When you are going through so much stuff, you don’t have capacity to extend yourself to be there for your people. There’s nothing wrong with that - that’s the reality of grief: other people are checking on you for a long time - for good reason. But that’s hard for me- I wasn’t built to be needy, to mope or even be able to answer “...

Day 2 - The NICU

The NICU is a place you are extremely grateful for but you also dread its existence. You are so thankful that your fragile baby has around the clock expert care but you also hate that your baby has to be there without you. And then when you are there you feel awkward - you’re the mother but his caretaker is the nurse - you have to ask permission or for help to hold the baby (so many lines/drains so it’s not easy to pick them up). It’s also just heartbreaking to see the other babies that have been there for weeks or even months. Jack’s isolette/crib/bed was next to a baby born at 24 weeks (on April 8 actually) and it was July 12… he was still tiny with a young mom who we witnessed have hard conversations about her capacity to care for such a tiny fragile baby. The baby on the other side was born via c section because his organs were on the outside of his belly (omphalocele) and he cried and cried and cried. (We actually had a mom bring a baby with this same diagnosis to our house i...

Transitions

This past week, Ike and I both finished working. Ike had been working as a project manager with Shickel Corporation over the last three years and I was at the hospital for two and a half years, first as an inpatient clinical dietitian and then the last 7 months as an outpatient dietitian and clinical nutrition manager. Transitions are hard! Saying goodbye to really good things is difficult but freeing, it is sad but sweet to feel so loved in our work places, and scary but really exciting as we look toward next year. The last few days were spent away - first with friends at a cabin outside Harrisonburg and then Ike and I went to Asheville to explore a new place together and celebrate the end of work and beginning of a different pace. We anticipate the next month to be slower without the stress of working 40+ hour weeks but also packed with making time to see family and friends, a few Christmas parties, Christmas in VB, and then packing and movi...

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