Current Struggles

I know this blog has focused on our miscarriage a lot lately, but that's just our life right now. Some days are worse than others - some moments are worse than others. These are some things I've been struggling with lately, that maybe I didn't expect to, or have been affecting more than I thought they would:

Last week I attended a PLC (professional learning community) for school about the effects of childhood trauma on the brain. This is something we've been discussing and learning about as a school and district a lot this year to be better supporters in the classroom. Anyway, the presenter was talking about how much the brain develops so much even as a fetus, before a baby is born. She was saying how things like stress in the mother and/or her smoking/drinking while pregnant has a negative effect on the baby's brain and development that could impact them for the rest of their life. It just made me think about how I tried to provide the best prenatal care that I could for my boys, but I still lost them and how that's not fair! How come the mom that drinks and smokes during her pregnancy can have her baby, but I didn't get to have my two boys...after six months of fertility treatments!
I know that life isn't fair. And I know that's just how the world is, but it just sucked a little bit extra that day, in that moment. It's things like this that pop up every now and then, that makes me think of what could/should have been and makes this whole experience hard.

Another thing that's been bothering me lately is that our boys don't have names. When we were in the hospital, after they were born, several of the nurses/staff asked us if we had names picked out, and we didn't. We thought we had another 3-4 months to pick out their names, so we hadn't really settled on anything - we hadn't even had a ton of ideas yet. Sitting in the hospital, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I just gave birth to my babies half way through my pregnancy, and that they were dead......the idea of naming them just didn't feel right. We didn't have names picked out. How could I sit and name them when I didn't even get a chance to know them?!
But now, I want to. I have thought about their little faces every single day for the last seven weeks. I have put different names to their faces in my head and I want them to have names. I want them to have identities, even though they'll never grow up in our family - they're still my babies. They're still our sons. I don't know how to go about it, and obviously that's only something Tim and I can decide, but that's what's on my mind recently.

Pregnancy. That's what's on my mind a lot! I, honestly, cannot wait to get pregnant again. And it's not to replace the babies we've lost, but to grow our family the way we've always wanted to. I've written an entire separate blog post about this topic, that I'll share at a later date (no, I'm not pregnant), but it is absolutely something that is on my mind all the time.

Announcements of pregnancy & newborns. It seems like my entire Facebook feed has been filled with positive pregnancy tests, announcements, bump pictures, birth announcements and monthly photos of adorable little newborn babies! And maybe it's because I'm just a little extra sensitive right now, but I just can't handle it!

"I'm supposed to be posting the bump pictures. 
Today is Wednesday, that was the day we took the pictures.
I wonder how giant my belly would be today?
How far along would I be now?
We're supposed to have three kids.
Are they scared to share their news in case something happens? 
Why did my boys get taken away?
I wonder what they would have looked like."


Dreams. I've been having a lot of dreams recently about having babies, being pregnant, etc. One night I had a dream where we had a 4-5 month old son and while I was playing with him & feeding him, I couldn't remember his name or if he had a name. Then he was in an exersaucer, leaned forward, fell out and bumped his head. When I picked him up, he started getting smaller and eventually looked like Baby A. So I started nursing him, and he was back to his normal size and was totally fine. (WEIRD!)
Last night I had a dream that I was pregnant again, with one baby. I couldn't bring myself to find out the gender, I wanted to be surprised. But then someone looked at the screen during the ultrasound and said, "wow, yes, I can tell", and immediately I knew we were having a boy. I got so excited because we would be able to use the clothes that we bought, and still have, for the twins.

I'm guessing this is just the way my mind is working through not having our sons, but my heart still wanting them. I will always wonder how our life would have been different. I am not posting these things to make people feel bad for me. I'm not looking for your opinions on baby names or when would be the best time for us to try to expand our family again. I'm using this as a form of processing for me, and sharing my experience with others so that they can learn from or have someone to connect with if they've gone through something similar. This is real life for me. I don't ever want to forget the two little boys that were supposed to join our family this summer, and this is the way I'm choosing to grieve and process.