Dear Donna Rose

My dearest Donna Rose,

Oh how I miss you. It hardly seems possible that it has been more than a year since I carried you inside me. Now, with your little brother or sister living there, I am reminded of what it was like to have you inside me, to feel you move.

I picked up my copy of "Oh Baby, the places you'll go!" yesterday to read to your sibling. I remember reading it to you with so much love. I had no idea the place you would go included heaven and that the wonderful friends you would meet would not include your daddy and me. I wept through the last pages.

I find that I can't sing to your sibling without a tremor in my voice because I remember the songs I sang to you. Your song was "Lida Rose" from The Music Man, but I always sang it as Donna Rose. That used to be one of my favorite movies, but now I can't watch it without crying.

My life is very different from what it was before you came. There are some very good changes, but also some things that I wish weren't so. I'm so glad I have your daddy. He's the very best part of my life. Your grandpa and grandma (my mommy and daddy) are so good to us too and you have lots of loving aunts and uncles who are sad they never got to meet you.

I'm a lot more fearful than I used to be. When I carried you, I didn't worry very much about the aches and pains. My body was changing for the first time. It was stretching to fit you inside. I worried about school, I worried about the future, but I never worried about you until the day we lost you. With your brother/sister, every ache scares me. Every pain screams "you could lose this baby too!" I am not so innocent anymore. It bothers me to see clueless, happy pregnant women. I want to warn them that you're never safe from losing your baby. Sometimes I really have to bite my tongue. I'm getting better at that, though. People get very offended if you suggest that pregnancy isn't just a walk in the park and a joyful thing.

I am hoping that I continue to grow this year. I hope it gets easier to be joyful and less easy to be terrified. I am hoping that your brother/sister will grow to full term and have a chance to live outside my womb. I still have so much growing to do.

I love you, Donna Rose. I wish I could watch you grow and live.

Love,

Mommy

Right Now

Today, you should be 6 months old.

You should be rolling all over the place.

You should be making your daddy run after you.

You should be smiling, giggling, and making cute sounds.

You should be eating soft foods, like cereal and 'nanas.

You should be playing on your back with toys hanging on a baby gym

But instead, you're spending the time in Heaven. You've been there a little more than 10 months, my dear. Perhaps you're starting to uncurl your baby wings. Maybe the angels sing you to sleep at night. And perhaps Jesus holds you and hugs you because Mommy can't just yet. It's so hard, my dear, to be left behind. There are days when I would give anything to change places with you because having you gone just hurts so much. Your daddy and I miss you and think about you every day. I wish we could see what you are like. How you grow and develop, if people do that kind of thing in Heaven. I love you, my little rose. 

Spring Grief

Today Ben and I took his father to Fort Collins to view an apartment. On our way back, I saw a woman pushing her baby in a stroller over to a park close to our home. It kicked me in the gut. I should be that lady now. I should be taking my baby for walks on beautiful days like today. I should be fussing over making her comfortable in her stroller and keeping her booties on her precious little feet. I should be chattering away at her as I clean my kitchen and make dinner for her daddy. I should be singing to her to sooth her crying. She never got the chance to cry and I never got the chance to sooth her.

The troubles with TTC

Once the doctor cleared my health, Ben and I decided to TTC. It's been a very frustrating thing. I get my hopes up, start dreaming of a new baby, and then am crushed to find out that we weren't successful. In some ways, it's like losing another baby, because I have this pretty little scenario all in my head. I so badly wanted us to be successful last month. It would have been a bit of justification to me for losing Donna Rose. Had it worked, her brother or sister would not have been able to exist had she been full term. Here we are again at a point in the month where my hopes are high and I am starting to dream again. I'm not looking forward to the roller-coaster dip should we not have been successful this month, and it is so hard to wait to know. Ben is equally impatient, wanting me to take pregnancy tests well before they can tell us anything.

http://www.youtube.com/user/grmarmorstein?feature=mhsn

Losing Her

She is a piece of me, a long dreamt dream so close to fruition. And she is perfect in every way. She has teeny tiny fingers and toes, perfectly formed and beautiful. But her lungs are not yet developed and the chances of her living are none. Oh how I love her. and how sad it makes me that I will not get to hold her longer, that I will not get to nurture her beyond a few more days. Her father is devastated. She a piece of him too.

As I sit here, feeling contractions that make it more and more evident that God has a different calling for our little angel, I can't help but feel that the physical pain is so much easier to bear than the heartbreak. God has made me strong, and I am grateful that he has given me the ability to get through this. But I so wish that his will would allow me to know my daughter, to love my daughter into adulthood.

The test I failed last week pales in comparison. The emotional pain I felt in the dissolution of what I had hoped were promising relationships can't even come close to the measure of the grief my Ben and I feel. We are stricken to the core.

But we both believe that God would not allow this for no reason. And our only grasp on sanity right now is a belief that he knows what is best and that his will is perfect. We do not know all the what ifs.