Skip to main content

6/30 The First Month

June 30, 2018 | 1 Month

I walked through a fatal diagnosis & am now on the other side of it. The doctors were right. Our baby Mila did die. May 31st. It was the saddest, most painful experience of our lives. But we are not alone. The Lord is near to the broken-hearted (Psalm 34:18), and He surrounded us with a whole army of support, and with many other broken, bereaving mamas who came alongside me to understand me, encourage me, and give me practical wisdom for the hardest journey of my life.

Praise God, we made it through the first month.

Some friends came over for a couple of hours this week. I haven't felt very social at all. Being back at church was hard. And I knew seeing local friends again, starting up music classes again, and going back to our regular life would be hard. I didn't want to just resume all our normal activities & pick up where we left off as if nothing ever happened. I have to remind myself that just because we're returning to all of our former activities doesn't mean that we're ignoring all that happened with Mila. It's a hurdle I need to push myself to get over. In the end, it was nice to have company again.

I feel like I'm ready for true healing to take place. I can visualize what I want life to look like, but I don't necessarily know how to get there. I want to be able to enter a room with a smile on my face again. I want to make jokes and laugh again. I know the direction I want/need to go in, and I am trusting the Lord to continue carrying us through.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

5/31 Baby Mila is Born

. May 31, 2018 | 31 weeks Our baby Mila was born today. 3 lb 1 oz and 14 3/4 inches of pure bliss. She stayed with us just long enough to meet her brothers and sisters, and then she breathed her last and went home to our Lord. We had been looking forward to May 31 for weeks. I was impatient about it, even. It was the day that our second opinion was scheduled. I was eager to find out more information about our baby. Instead, I got to meet her face to face. The Day Before Wednesday afternoon, just after 3 pm, I noticed that I had some sort of a discharge come out of me, out of the birth canal side. It was only a little bit. When I wiped, it kind of looked like diarrhea (an olive brown color), and I thought I must have leaked something when I passed gas. Super embarrassing. But anyway, when I wiped my other end, there was no sign of diarrhea whatsoever. So I googled it and concluded that it must be the beginning of some sort of infection, and I resolved not to eat any more chocol...

5/6 Difficult Decisions

May 6, 2018 | 27 1/2 weeks Since I'm now coming up into my 3rd trimester, I need to start realistically thinking about the birth, but that involves making some difficult decisions. Do we induce birth and have a chance to see baby alive or do we wait it out and allow the baby to die in the womb? It's a battle between what I selfishly want and what I selflessly know would be best for baby. I want to hold a warm baby, alive and breathing. I want to smell the baby. I want to kiss baby's soft cheeks and wrap baby's tiny fingers around my own. I want to see baby's eyes open and close. I want to whisper into baby's ears just how much Mommy loves him/her. I want to hear baby breathing and feel baby wriggling. But all of this means that I am asking to have a baby slowly die in my arms second by second. What would be best for baby? Wouldn't it be better if baby never knew the harshness of sin in this world and was able to go from womb to glory? From the ultimate e...

6/4 Mila's Milk

June 4, 2018 | Day 4 I've been pumping for a few days now, and it has its ups and downs. It's comforting to see life-giving milk come out of me. It's comforting to see my body go through the full cycle from pregnancy through delivery to breastfeeding. I've nursed six kids already, so my body knows that this is how things are supposed to happen. Breastfeeding/pumping helps the uterus to contract after giving birth. That's healing. For me, this is something that feels right amidst everything else that feels so wrong right now. Hopefully Mila's milk can be donated somewhere and give life to a baby in need. Pumping gives me phantom baby feelings, in a good way. I like imagining what Mila would be drinking. It makes me feel more like her mommy. It's Mila's milk, I tell the kids. When it's almost time to pump again, I feel like "the baby is about to wake up." In between pumping, I feel like "the baby is sleeping" & I can relax...