At a loss....

I am sooo behind on blogging and I should be posting about our fun trip to the Oregon coast a few weeks ago and all the end of summer fun but instead I am stuck in this funk. I have been debating if I should post about our recent loss or not and have decided that I will because although it has been REALLY rough, there has also been some sweet moments that I wanted to have written down.....

After going through an early ectopic pregnancy when Bree was 9 months old, Kris and I have both felt really strongly that we were supposed to have more children. That has been the hardest part about the last few years because we feel so strongly about this but yet it is not happening. So after over 2 years of trying and being on clomid I finally got pregnant and was SO excited! We felt so right about the timing....the due date was supposed to be Bree's birthday (in Feb) so they would have been 4 years apart. I was also thrilled for the timing because all 3 of my girls would be in school and I would have no one at home with me a few days a week and I was so excited to have another baby because I am not ready to be kidless in the day yet. We announced our news early because everyone knew we were trying so it was hard to keep a secret for long. It turned out that my sister was also expecting in Dec. and 2 of Kris' sisters are expecting and our due dates would have been just days apart. So of course we thought this was perfect and things were meant to work out, but apparantly that wasn't the plan.

While we were in Oregon, I had a weird bleeding incident which quickly turned to a brown spotting and I had no pain or cramping so we thought everything was going to be fine. I received a very nice blessing from Kris and my brothers and dad which brought me peace at the time, but was not the words "that the baby would be fine", that I wanted to hear. In hindsight Kris and I talked about this blessing and he said he wanted so badly to say those words and he could not, and he really struggled through it because of that. Now we know it was because it wasn't the Lord's will for that to be. So I was told by my doctor to take it easy the rest of the vacation because if it was not a miscarriage than I needed to be careful of my activity level. So we enjoyed the rest of our vacation and the day after we got home I went to the doctor's to have an ultra sound, thinking things were going to be fine, I went by myself and unfortunately instead I was told that there was no heartbeat. We had already had 2 different ultra sounds before this and found the heartbeat strong in both and things looked great in both. To make matters worse, my doctor was out of town and the on call doctor I saw was NOT sympathetic and quite cold about the whole thing. So I cried with the ultra sound tech, than cried on my nurses' shoulder and then cried with this lame doctor. This happened on a monday and my doctor was not going to be back until the next monday, and I did not want to make any decisions on a D & C without him so I just waited it out for the whole week, like a ticking time bomb. I was still only spotting brown and of course even though I knew what was going to happen I was hoping it was somehow wrong and things would be different. I had a miscarriage before Kyra and it was so different. It had happened all at once and this one was dragging out for weeks. So nothing really happened all week and then the next monday it started changing a little and I went into my doctor and he decided that since my body was starting that he would give me medicine to make my uterus contract and get everything going. As the reality of this set in, of course all the emotion set in again too. So long story short I went through it all at home and it was way worse than my first miscarriage because with my first I was only 9 weeks or so and this one I was 12 or 13 by the time it happened. One of the hardest parts for me this time was seeing the baby/fetus. In a way it was really hard and I wished I hadn't but in a way it was almost a bond thing and it made it so real because I could see what was forming and although so tiny it was a baby and I had lost it.

So needless to say it has been hard on all of us, because the girls had known we were pregnant for a while now and they were so excxited and were planning for this new brother or sister. The day we found out there was no heartbeat, Kris was explaining to the girls that something was wrong with the baby and they sadly sad "you mean we don't get a brother or sister anymore?" Kris said he hoped we would one day but it wasn't going to be right now. They were very sad and were so cute being concerned about me and how sad I was. So we told them all we could do now is pray that we can have another brother or sister soon. And they have been praying for that every night since. A few days ago, Adrie was walking and holding my hand and she said "Mom I thought you had to still be careful for the baby....oh wait, that's right" and she got quiet and sad. I said "yeah I was supposed to but I am not pregnant anymore, and she said" yeah the baby is with Heavenly Father now and we didn't even get to meet it!" I got emotional and said "I know sweetheart, I wish we had too, now all we can do is pray for another baby" and she said "yeah and this time we need to pray that we get to meet it too".

For the few days that I was going through the hardest of this process, the girls were staying with family so they didn't have to see me in pain and such. We realized even more how close to the spirit and what a sense of others feelings Bree has because she was not about to leave my side. My mom did take her overnight the first night, but she was sad the whole time fighting back tears and asking for mommy (the other 2 girls were with my sister in law) so we had my mom bring her back the next day and she came running in the house yelling "mommy mommy" and she would not stop hugging me. The rest of the week if anyone came by she clung to me thinking they were going to take her and she spent the majority of the week sitting next to me on the couch. This is not like Bree, she usually loves to go with anyone and I think she just knew that something wasn't right and she wanted to be with me. And let me say that her hugs and kisses and smiles were the best therapy I could have asked for! My other girls were also very sweet and concerned. While they were staying with their cousins, Adrie called and said "mom I hope you feel better soon".

Through all this of course the question of why? always comes up and as Kris and I were struggling with it, my dad gave me good advice and said that the Lord doesn't ask us to understand the why, he only asks us to have faith and hope and believe that he will bless us greatly after the trial of our faith. Although we may not have answers to why, we can always have peace from the Lord. So for now that is what I am trying to hold onto. I am grateful for the gospel and an eternal perspective when I face these types of trials and I am so grateful for good friends and family who have lent LOTS of crying shoulders, helping hands and kind words to help us through this hard time. Hopefully the tears will stop soon and we can move forward with faith that we can get pregnant again soon. After Bree was born I quickly learned that I was grateful that I wasn't in charge, that the Lord was in charge because if I had been i charge than I probably wouldn't have chosen for Bree to have down syndrome, and I would have missed out on GREAT joys and blessings if I had been in charge. So I can only hope that this will turn out the same way and I will look back and see that once again I am grateful that the Lord is in charge.