8/9/11
There was more I wanted to add to this but I feel like the time has passed. It doesn't matter how the days differed between the years. I don't think I need to explain how bittersweet yet another holiday was this year.
Tyler's Story |
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Well, it was quite different from last year's Mother's Day!
8/9/11 There was more I wanted to add to this but I feel like the time has passed. It doesn't matter how the days differed between the years. I don't think I need to explain how bittersweet yet another holiday was this year.
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You know how people say that your life is never the same after a baby or "everything changes" after a baby. Well, the Clark family took that to a whole other level. 2 days before Keira was born, Jim accepted a position at a much larger company over 3 hours away from where we had been living for the past 6 year (yes, SIX year). So a week after Keira was born, we put our house on the market. That same week, we all drove down to meet with a realtor and look at houses. We put an offer on a house at the beginning of the next week, it was accepted, then we accepted an offer on ours that same week! Talk about a whirlwind! Thankfully, we didn't have to pack or move anything. Jim's company hired movers to take care of all of that for us (could you imagine packing up an entire house with a newborn?! LOL). He had to start April 18, which made Keira right at 4 weeks old. Since the closing on our house wasn't until May, they put him in a hotel until we closed on the new house. We lived 3 weeks that way...me and Keira in Macomb, Jim in the hotel down here and then he'd drive back for the weekends. ICK. I sent him pictures and videos of her everyday, but as you can imagine, that wasn't near enough. Each weekend, he'd see how much she had grown since the last time so when the movers came to pack and take everything, Keira, the dogs and I just drove down and stayed in the hotel with him until we closed on the new house. 2 dogs and a 6 week old in a hotel room for 2.5 weeks was a little ridiculous, I have to say, but we got through it.
So yes, when we brought a baby home, life did get turned upside down but in every way imaginable! I'm a little overdue for this post for 3 reasons: 1) I have a freaking newborn and getting on the computer is the last thing on my mind. 2) Life got turned upside down just before Keira was born (more to come). And 3) I really needed to get my thoughts straight before rambling to people who (for some) can only judge my well-being on these posts.
Keira's birth and my CS recovery were a breeze. I thought I had an easy delivery and recovery (physically at least) with Tyler so I have no idea why, but I was nervous going in to have Keira. Partially because if Tyler came out not breathing, it wouldn't have surprised me but I was terrified that Keira would. They wanted to put me in the same room I had been in after I had Tyler and they asked if that would be alright. It was really sweet of them to remember and ask. It was totally fine and I was anxious to go back to that room. With all of this grief, I've felt a need to face my fears head-on no matter how sucky they are. By the time I left the hospital, it didn't even feel like the same room. I had faced and beat that monster. For a repeat CS, they monitor mom and baby for an hour before surgery to make sure that everyone is healthy and things are going the way they're supposed to. After they took the monitors off, I had a few tears. Even though everything was fine, what if, by the time they got me to the OR, she had died? I imagined my second child dying and having to hold her lifeless body...again. Having to call the funeral home and ask them to come pick her up after we'd had our time with her. Seriously. But a few short minutes later, I was in the OR, getting my spinal and cath. Jim came in with the video camera (per my demand...er...request), up goes the blue screen and we got started. Jim was able to get Keira's birth on video :) For being "surgical", it wasn't near as gross as I'd imagined. I'd rather watch a CS a million times over a vaginal delivery...THAT is horrifying! Amazing, but horrifying. She was born at 8:56am weighing 8 pounds 2 ounces, 20 inches long and healthy as can be! Jim followed Keira everywhere with the video camera until I could come back to my room after recovery so I wouldn't miss anything of her. I didn't realize it the moment I saw her or the first time I held her, but Jim took a picture of us and it could have been a picture of me and Tyler. She looked IDENTICAL to her brother. I realized it after I had sent the picture people from my phone, but thought that it was just me until they started responding back that she really did look like him. It was beautiful and heartbreaking all at the same time. Part of me so wanted her to look like him (it's so cute when siblings look alike...me and my brother do not), yet I didn't want her to look TOO much like him, if that makes sense. Same as last time, my nurses and my stay at the hospital were beyond excellent. Did I mention I got the same nurse as when I had Tyler? She requested to be with me if she was working :) LOVE LOVE LOVE that woman! Another one of my nurses had lost an infant years ago to an infection (I think), so she totally knew what I was feeling during my stay with Keira. To be honest there were very few tears. I was expecting much worse. I think I was WAYYYYY hard on myself during this pregnancy. If you can have PRE-pardum depression, I had it. Once she got here, it all went away. Kind of funny now how my Dr., Jim and I (and I'm sure lots of other people) were so worried about PPD. Shoot, taking care of her has been the EASY part. There has not been a time since she got here that was harder than pregnancy. The lack of sleep, not a big deal considering that you don't really sleep at the end of pregnancy anyway (not just uncomfortable, but I had A LOT of pain). Her crying the babies cry for no reason, music to my ears! I still don't understand what people mean when they say that the first month (or 2) is so hard. I guess the lack of sleep thing, but when she was only a few weeks old, all she did was sleep. I'd say nursing was the hardest part only because she'd fall asleep and I was worried she wasn't getting enough. I don't know...I'd take the first 6 weeks of a newborn over 9 months of pregnancy ANY DAY! I never wanted to be one of those women that hates being pregnant, especially after losing Tyler. I realize how much of a blessing it is. But that's exactly what happened. My emotional state took a toll on me physically and it was just overwhelming. So anyway, I'm not posting to complain, I guess I just hope that any other momma carrying a rainbow will read and know that if they are feeling this way, they're not alone. Every second of every day was filled with fear and worry. I ended up going to the hospital twice in my third trimester to be monitored because once I was having lots of Braxton Hicks contractions and the other time, I hadn't felt her move in awhile. I was a sobbing mess the second time. It was 2 days before my CS and I just stood in her room, looking at the bedding I'd made and all of her clothes, imagining she'd died. I would have gladly gone insane to escape that feeling. It's one thing to imagine "something happening" to one of your children, it's another to have experienced losing one THEN imagining your healthy one dying. Not pretty. And it's amazing to me how different people can react. A fellow BLM (who I've spoken of often) feels completely at-ease with her rainbow. As soon as she brought him home, she was fine...no fears of SIDS or anything like that. I'm still a little (ok a lot) paranoid, but I'm getting better...slowly. I bet all of the visitors to this site have been bored to tears the last 2.5 months! There has still been quite a bit of traffic! (Even though I'm not posting much, I do check the stats often.) I started working on a blog to catch up from having Keira. I don't want to leave anything out, yet...it's exhausting and time consuming. I don't have the emotional energy or the time to put into the blog that I want to but I'm working on it. I have a lot of guilt about that because let's face it, this is my only direct connection to Tyler. This is the only place where it's okay to talk about how much it sucked to be pregnant with a baby after losing one. How much it sucks to now be realizing all the things you missed out on. And how much it still burns my soul to continue to live my life without my first born.
I'm getting there and I'm working on a few more entries to catch up! |
Brittany ClarkI'm blogging in hopes of reaching out to other parents who have to face the most heartbreaking experience in life. Archives
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