I'm Still Fragile...Handle with Care

It may have been three years since we said goodbye to Sammy and Andy...and Ben may be 18 months old...but I still fight those feelings...those same feelings I had both before I was ever pregnant at all and the ones that first year after Sammy and Andy were born and passed.  I still ache for my babies.  I still struggle with being thankful...

Beginning Year 3 a New Me

If you asked me three years ago if I thought I'd be here, in this place, in this mindset, I would have told you no way in hell.  Today, I look back and feel as though I have made the best choices for myself over the past three years and the best choices for my family.  Me three years ago seems far away.  I am a new me in many, many different ways.

Mother's Day 2015 and Thoughts on Parenting my Rainbow

This is a week late, but better late than never, right?

This year marked my third Mother's Day.  My third Mother's Day without Sammy and Andy.  But my first Mother's Day with Ben.  So to many, I guess it looks like my first "real" Mother's Day.

March for Babies 2015

It's been a hectic couple of weeks gearing up for the Upper Valley March for Babies at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center!

So Thankful

I have slacked on my blog and I know it.  The last 8 months have been insanely emotional.  Happy, sad, frustrating, exciting, and everything in between, but we are here.  Alive and well.

Day 17: Time

There are no words for the length of time I have been missing my baby boys....just that I've been missing them for too long and know that I will continue to miss them.  Each day is a day further from their sweet, sensitive little bodies...but a step closer to someday getting to hold my babies again...

Day 8: Color

I don't know at which point each of our boys got their "color."  It just seemed to happen that Sammy always had blue and Andy always had green. But really, I think that came after they had already passed away. Perhaps my way of having a special color to distinguish them as two unique little boys. Everything I have created for them has used this color distinction and it just seems to stick.  Typically blue is what I use in most circumstances given their birthstone is a sapphire though. How fitting it is that that is the case. Their urns are blue and I wear a sapphire ring as my mothers ring. It's all just become such a natural habit...

Day 5: Memories

I'm not sure that anything speaks more than these two pictures.  This is one day I need two pictures.  One for each of my babies.  And coincidentally the best memory I have of both of them is the first time I got to hold each of them.

With Andrew, the first time I got to hold him was also the last.  I remember watching doctors and nurses trying so hard to keep him alive and I knew it was no use and all I could think was how badly I wanted to just hold my son.  To make sure that he could feel my presence before his spirit left...so that he knew how much I loved him and how badly it was going to hurt when he was gone.  The feeling when the nurse handed him to me for the first time...I have never felt more like a mother than in that moment.  Holding my son, crying, and telling him over and over again how much I loved him.  Somehow I think I needed that to get through the following weeks watching Samuel struggle and to be able to let him go, too.  Maybe that's the best memory Andrew could have given me.  Strength.  I think Andrew gave me strength and a will to fight for his brother.

Holding Samuel for the first time was so different.  He was warm, breathing.  His heart was beating.  And it felt refreshing.  To hold a living baby.  My baby.  It was also why it was so important.  To show me that there was hope.  That maybe I would be bringing home a living, breathing baby.  Unfortunately I was not that lucky, but this picture marked the first FAMILY picture of us with our little boy that we thought would be coming home with us.  I am forever grateful to our nurse for taking it because it marks such a happy moment.  And she knew how badly I needed to hold him, too.  So that I could have hope that he would be okay.  That he would make it.  I loved ever moment stroking his sensitive, beautiful, soft skin.  Feeling his heart beat and hands and feet move against my body as I had when I was pregnant.  It was a pure miracle holding him.  Knowing I made him and he was so perfect and tiny.  If only holding him had been enough.

There are so many memories...but holding my babies are by far the best moments of my life.

Happy 1st Birthday, Samuel & Andrew

Dear Samuel & Andrew,

Maura's Mission

For any parent that has lost a baby, you know that there are a lot of support groups out there!  I am a part of a few and have left a few because of personal issues. However, I recently liked a page on Facebook called Maura Lynns's Baby Loss Memorial Blocks which is a part of Maura's Mission.