All The Things I Knew But Didn't Know

If you have ever had the privilege to take a car ride with me, listend to me clean around the house, or if you have ever snuck up and listened to me through the shower water....which let me just say is and would be seriously creepy...you would know that I LOVE me some country music! Its true, say what you will but nothing in the world is so honest and spot on to me. Its like a therapy session for me to unravel my deepest feelings and sort through everything. Ill be the first to admit with everything we've been through this year that it very easy to start up with "if this had happened" or "I would change that". The first thing they tell you after the "Im sorry's" is not to dwell on these statements but "Really?!?!?!" How can you not!!! Well a different way of thinking is the answer!


Today thanks to Darius Rucker and his song  "This" which is basically about the decisions and events that did and did not occur to lead him to where he is in that moment and how he ultimately wouldn't change any of it because it lead him there and an amazing woman "T" I work with, I reached this new way of thinking.


I work with a woman who is a very likable person! She is funny but professional, very nice and one thing that is very very clear is that she is a great mom. She has boys and she is totally the mom in the stands, ya know the one who can be heard over everyone else. She radiates happiness and when I started working with her and found out I was pregnant I was excited beyond words to want what she had. Right before I went on leave to head to San Francisco, I was very upset in the break room and she was there. I admitted that the news was still so upsetting and that it was hard to think that my future so abruptly changed and that I wasn't going to have a little football playing baby boy and I was scared about our futures and happiness. She then shared with me something I didn't expect to hear. She told me how she lost her first baby, a girl. She didn't think she could ever be happy but that as sad as it was the loss of her baby tipped doctors off to an unseen issue that helped make her other pregnancies healthy and successful and that she wouldn't change it. This literally left me awestruck, mind you this happened to her over a decade ago and it never crossed my mind months ago that something like this could happen but it has and looking back, I'm so happy she shared that with me because it is a reminder that we still have a future and that it can still be filled with happiness.

The moral of the story is

For every stoplight I didn't make
Every chance I did or I didn't take
All the nights I went too far
All that broke my heart

All the doors that I had to close
All the things I knew but I didn't know
Thank God for all I missed
'Cause it led me here to this

We are always going to want to change things in our lives, but the events that happen in our lives, the people we say hello and goodbye to are what shape us. You always know what really hurts the most because they always make our list of things we'd change.

I have always believed everything happens for a reason and as much I have tried not to believe that at certain periods of my life, I guess if you really believe something you always come back to it. I believe that when I step away and look I have so much to be grateful from this year too. I have an angel looking down on us, I have an amazing Mom & Dad whom I love to death with all their support this year. I never thought I was even an ounce of how strong I really am. I am so in love with my absolute best friend and I honestly don't think I could've made it through everything without him, our relationship is a mountain (Always growing bigger and better and near impossible to break through) (<---I totally wrote that on my own! *Remind me to send that to hallmark!). I have such a great job and so many thoughtful coworkers. & I have the best friends (new & old) (who are totally reading this) that I just adore and cant thank enough for everything<3

(& don't email me telling me I took two words out of the song, its better my way, even Darius Rucker himself would probably agree ;P)

Welcome To The Grief Club, Book Club Is Down The Hall

So when Chase was diagnosed with Spina Bifida, I ran to support groups and research and studies and people and found a whole new very inspiring life and outlook. Bryan and I hopped over the hurdle so quickly I think we were even impressed with ourselves. So naturally I tried to do the same thing. I ran to articles about grief and overcoming it, and support groups and looking into studies about why, how, will it happen again...only this time everything is different. I don't feel I belong to the club of people who have lost older children, I don't quite belong to that club of women who just cant get out of bed, or even the club of women who seem so angry, I thankfully don't belong to the club of women who have gone through this multiple times, it makes my heart ache to read their stories and my soul is terrified of ever signing into that club. At the same time I don't feel like I belong to some of the more even spread stillborn groups for some reason. Every one is so individual with their grief  guess and so it is hard to relate I find. It can be very easy to feel like an outcast in the groups or even with friends and family. I even found that as much as Bryan and I have in common that even we grieve very differently. I find myself running from those things the harder I try to go toward them I run faster. I think I cling to the fear of it all. I am not in a state of depression or angry or just a complete wreck, I am just afraid. I feel like Bryan and I are good people, are we perfect people? No, and while I don't think it is up to me to make such a big judgement but I really feel like we didn't deserve all that has happened this year. It has been such a hard year especially for Bryan, he has so much on his plate always, I really don't know how he does it all (My Hero). I'm very fearful of more bad things happening, of this happening again, of me not being able to be happy with my next pregnancy. It is quite overwhelming.

The worst part of all of this is the things people say and do. Friends, family members, people we know from the lives we live ( co-workers, cashiers at the grocery store, waitresses from our favorite places to eat, our favorite tellers at the bank)...I feel ashamed to tell them what has happened when they ask why my tummy is suddenly so flat again and I feel afraid of what they will say and sure enough it is usually something that just breaks my healing heart again. I know it will get easier with time to tell people and to hear comments and I just keep trying to push myself to take everything with grace and a smile on my face.

So with that being said it was so nice to have Bryans brother and sister-in-law down from Washington. I adore them and if anyone in the world could take Bryans mind elsewhere at a time like this it would be his brother. They are so much alike I cant stop laughing, you wonder if they will finish each others sentences. We took them to all our favorite places to eat that they don't have in Washington. We introduced them to our most favorite place in California and where we fell in complete love SAN DIEGO. I think they are in love with San Diego now too as they are already talking about planning a vacation there with their kids next time. We bbq'd lots and went to Sea World and the beach and shopping...well Jenn and I went shopping while the boys played football on the beach. It was great to be somewhere where one we love and two no one knew what happened to us, we were just people on a weekend trip with some family!

I also think Bryan and I have decided over the last week that we do want to try again to have another baby sometime within this next year. We bought this house that has too many rooms for just two people ,we decided we want little more in life than just to be together and we want a family so while I love picking up after Bryan, and he just loves me waking him up in the middle of the night, there's a lot missing from that picture and so I have been on the phone all morning talking to my Dr about what I need to do to make sure we have a successful pregnancy next time! Of course we cant start trying for awhile but Im happy we are on the same page =)

Band Aids & Celebrating Life

It has been a better day for us, by no means was it a good day, nor an easy day nor a tearless day. But we crawled out of bed and made the decision to get dressed not in sweats all day and start being able to talk about things here and there. Losing Chase, there are no words that could properly explain just how much of a roller coaster of emotions I am. Questions we had to ask ourselves were where do we go from here? How do we go back to work or continue our lives like before? How do we deal with our grief individually and also together? How do we begin to heal? I will not share all the personal details of our decisions and I assure you it will take many "better" days and conversations to even answer some the questions but I will share my personal decision on how to heal. One of the ways came when I was sitting in what would've been Chases room and taking a moment, I was staring down at the band aid over where my IV was in my wrist and the other was actually Bryans idea, one that would've never crossed my mind. so on to the Band aids!

Sometimes your walking along and something that you didn't see jumps out at you and you take a fall, sometimes it's a big fall. Depending on what might be going on in your life before or during your fall you might react in several ways. You may yelp or scream, it may hurt like hell and the tears may start pouring or it may hurt like hell and you become angry and swearing...maybe even both. So you get up and see this big cut and you start to take steps to put on a band aid and heal. You make an attempt to stop crying or being angry, you try to clean up the area, you try to figure out or come to terms with how you fell in the first place.

When you put a band aid on a cut several things begin to happen. The blood starts absorbing onto the tissue,   you cover up the opening to prevent infection, the cut begins to seem not so awful for a day. The next day or week you may notice that the cut is starting to heal and to keep it healing you have to maintain it by re cleaning and putting on fresh band aids.

One day you wake up and there is a scab looking at you, it is the cross roads of a cut. You are frustrated, do you wait for it to fall off and live with this irritating scab or do you tackle it head on and rip it off quickly even if it hurts? It is a personal decision and every one chooses differently but no matter what you choose you end up with a scar, a constant reminder of that fall and the healing process you went through.

In no way could I ever look you in the eye and say I find losing my first born child to be so easily comparable to a cut on my knee but I can say that for a tiny minute in that room I felt like I was being showed a way to heal that in some way the healing process never changes just the situation and magnitude of pain. That I'm going to go through steps to get there and sometimes it might seem like there will be "scabs" but that its okay to nurse myself and there is no right or wrong way to heal, that no matter what way I go the end result is a scar, a beautiful, complex scar for me to one day be able to talk about when people ask.

The second way is that Bryan told me he felt I should keep this blog. I was a little taken aback at first, I just assumed my last post would be my last...that the story had ended, the journey over. I know that while I don't typically show Bryan every post before I publish it that he reads them all and he has told me on several occasions that he loves that I started the blog and proud of me for trying to reach out to others but this thought again never occurred to me. I asked him what he meant and he told me that it should be in Chases honor, that his journey doesn't end with us and that the blog should follow us on healing, on day trips, on vacations on future pregnancies on whatever happens in our life because just like in our hearts he is with us and we should keep this part of him and celebrate him as part of our family just like we would have before.

Nothing in the world made more sense to me and I secretly felt ashamed that I hadn't thought of it to begin with, so here I am typing away and telling you about how every day no matter how hard or sad I am going to find a reason to smile for my little boy and to continue this journey with him in our hearts.

We did take pictures when Chase was born but were not quite ready yet to share the pictures so Bryan and I thought about it and decided to take some of the pictures we didn't get to as today would have been our Maternity shoot. (Special thanks to Sara for the shirts!!!)

On June 29, 2012 We brought an Angel into this world and that is something for us to smile about today!