Grateful

It's not all sad and scary and negative though. I don't think I have ever been as grateful of anything as I was when I saw Victoria for the first time. It probably sounds bad because I have Dayne, but when I gave birth to him I don't think I really and truly knew what it was to be grateful. I often said that everything in my life shifted when Dayne was born, he became the center of my world and I realized what happiness truly was. When I had Alexandra, everything shifted again and I TRULY understand what loss and pain was. Every sad or painful thing in my life paled in comparison. When Victoria was born, everything shifted again, everything in my world clicked into place and it all became complete and an amazing feeling came over me. I was not just grateful, but I felt an incredible peace.
My family is not just complete because of Victoria and Dayne, but because of Alexandra as well. They all made a different impact on me and I wouldn't be the same without having met any one of them.
When my grandma met Victoria for the first time she said, "She's real. She's really real." I laughed about it, but it captured what we were all feeling on the inside...awe.
I often find myself staring at Victoria thinking to myself how amazing this is, to have her, to be able to watch her grow, to see what kind of person she is. Everything she does is new and exciting, Steve, Dayne and I are always watching her, talking about whatever cute thing she did, or getting excited because she smiled at us.
It's amazing, to have this feeling, it definitely trumps all the negative and scary feelings.

Expectations

Throughout my pregnancy I worried about my own and other people's expectations of this baby. I worried about the shoes other people would set out for her to fill. We didn't get Alexandra so when her sister came along, I worried that there would be some feelings that she should fill all the hopes and dreams that were dashed when we lost Alexandra.
I was especially worried about this for myself. What if I put too much onto this little girl? What if I expected all the things of her that I expected of Alexandra? It just didn't seem fair to me at all.
It's funny how you worry about things while you're pregnant that never come true once the baby is born. I was so grateful to have a living baby to take home, I was concentrating on HER, what she would be like, what she would love. I was happy to have a baby, and I didn't compare or expect anything from her, other than to be her own baby self.
And she's amazing, just for who she is. She would do this high pitched screech when she was first born and would cry, and it was adorable. The nurse at the hospital looked at me like I was insane when I told her it was cute. She commented that I found it cute "for now" but she was wrong. She loved her very first bath, and pretty much every bath since then. Her favorite thing when she was very little was sitting in her bouncy chair in the bathroom with the shower on. She went through a phase after she turned 2 months where she would scream whenever she was in the bathroom while I showered, it was a difficult few weeks, but she got over it and is now mostly content to sit there and soak in the nice steam.
It is an amazing thing, to actually hold this little baby, after everything we've been through, after thinking I would never get to have another baby. Maybe there are bigger expectations of her under the surface, but I can work on that one day at a time. And in the mean time, I will just be grateful for my family and our new addition.

Scary Thoughts

Victoria was so small, she was tiny and fragile and I was afraid of everything involving her. I was afraid to give her a bath, afraid that I might drop her, afraid that I would hurt her somehow. Everything she did scared me, she made weird noises while she slept, I was sure she was having breathing problems, or seizures.
In those first few weeks she wasn't growing how they wanted her to, I was terrified that I had already failed at breastfeeding and she would have to have formula. I don't have an issue with formula, but this felt like a personal failure on my part. Her lack of proper growth also made me fear that something more serious could be wrong with her. I Dr. Googled until I had planted all sorts of crazy ideas in my head.
At night sometimes I would wake up and look at her, waiting for her to wake up (I wasn't prepared for a good sleeper), and I would think that her face looked pale, or grey, she resembled Alexandra and in my sleep deprived state, I would think that she looked like Alexandra in more than just familial resemblance. 
When her growth got on track we had another incident. She was in the bath and began to cry so I took her out and laid her in her bedroom so I could dress her. She screamed as I frantically searched for something for her to wear and dried her off. As I was toweling her dry I noticed that she seemed a bit...blue, around her diaper area. I thought the light was weird and I was seeing things. Then her torso turned blue and I scooped her up and rushed her in to see Steve. "Is she blue!?" I asked him. He squinted, complained about the light and then said, "maybe a little bit." My son replied that she was indeed blue. I dressed her, wrapped in two receiving blankets and put a hat and mitts on her. I held her  close to me to warm her up. She was back to normal after a few minutes, and I knew that she had done that because she was a newborn and she couldn't regulate her body temperature, but still, I sat up at night while I fed her, googling. I did this for 3 days before I brought her to the doctor to have him tell me exactly what I already knew. She was fine, that heart condition I had convinced myself she must have was all in my head, she was just fine.
I had lots of scary thoughts, I thought I might somehow drop her down the stairs, thought I would slip on the ice and drop her, would fall asleep with her and suffocate her. I thought that something would be wrong and I would miss it somehow and then when the inevitable horrible thing happened, it would be all my fault.
Most of the time I felt like I was doing quite well, I was so grateful for my little girl, so happy to have her, but those scary thoughts, they loved to creep in. They still do sometimes. I wonder if they will ever go away? I wonder if I will ever get to that place where I stop knowing and thinking about, how fragile life is...

Labor

On January 11th, around 5:15pm, they started the oxytocin. It was about 15 minutes later when they broke my water. As soon as I was allowed, Steve and I went for a walk around the floor. I felt at peace with whatever was to come, the fear had melted away. Those moments with Steve, while we walked, I will never forget. I was in my socked feet, new socks that I bought just to wear to the hospital. We avoided little puddles on the floor from people's shoes, and I filled my water cup every time we walked by the water machine. Hospital water is extra tasty.
We walked by the Scott Smed room, where we stayed when Alexandra was born. We walked by it several times and we talked about the room and about Alexandra. I felt like she was there with me in those moments, waiting to meet her baby sister. I wondered if she would help, watch over the baby and keep us both safe. I wonder if that's possible...
When the contractions got too close together, I decided the walking was done and I wanted an epidural. When I was pregnant with Alexandra I planned to have a natural birth, but once we lost her I decided that I didn't need to torture myself any more than I already was, so I got the epi. It only worked for a little while with Alexandra, it allowed me physical comfort while I slept for several hours, and then my labor progressed too quickly for it, so I felt it all. This time I went in saying I would get it. I wanted to go through as little stress and pain as possible, for myself and the baby. She had already gone through her entire life so far in the belly of a basket case.
Once I got the epidural things started to happen. I was shocked when I felt like I had to push, I told the nurse and she said that was very possible. Once they checked me they realize I was right, I was ready to deliver my daughter. And once again, the epidural didn't have time to work, and I felt everything...everything by my legs, that is. I was terrified, I remember thinking...I don't actually think I'm ready, I wish I could stop this, I've changed my mind about the induction.
It was fast, I don't know how long I pushed for, but baby Victoria Rose was born at 8:53PM (less than 4 hours after they induced me). When I heard her cry I completely broke down. She was real, she was alive, and she was in my arms. My little girl, Dayne and Alexandra's little sister, Steve's youngest daughter...here she was, some kind of miracle. And right after she was born the doctor looked at me and said, "When I booked you to come in today, I did not think this was how it was going to go."
We were home less than 24 hours later, and our new life, with our new little family member began...

 

January 11th

I guess I will get to it. Beyond the emotional roller coaster that was pregnancy, I dealt with a lot of feelings and anxiety regarding the birth of my baby. I would deliver this baby in the same hospital that I had delivered all of my children, the same place that Alexandra was stillborn. I WANTED to deliver there, and I had to because it was the only place my prenatal clinic delivered. It was one part of the fear of delivery. Would it be too hard for me to go there, to be there delivering another child after losing Alexandra.
After much careful consideration of my mental health and the health of the baby, I made the choice to be induced at 37 weeks, rather than go through the trauma of going beyond the time we lost Alexandra. So, after an ultrasound to make sure everything was ok, the date was set and it would be January 11th.
I prepared the house, cleaned, set everything up and packed bags for myself, the baby, and Dayne. I was reluctant, waiting for the bottom to fall out, waiting for the horrible thing to happen. As the days led up to my induction, the terrible thing didn't happen. And deep within myself, I felt a tiny bit of hope, mixed in with the fear that the bad thing might happen while I was at the hospital, when I delivered, or shortly after birth.
On January 11th we got Dayne off to school and waited for the hospital to call. I was up at 5am, I couldn't sleep, so I was up, dressed, and completely ready and waiting. They didn't call until after 11am, and we didn't end up getting in until after 3pm. They thought that I would just be getting prepped for induction. Something to do with a balloon to soften my cervix, the whole thing freaked me out a bit! But, when I got in there and they checked, they decided that they could just break my water and induce me right away. I had no idea what I was in for!

It's a Girl!

People begin to talk about the sex of the baby from the moment they find out they're pregnant. Friends and family make bets, take guesses and otherwise get super excited to find out what kind of future they are picturing, one with a girl or one with a boy.
This was something that I struggled with. More of the  complex feelings after a loss. I had always wanted a little girl...a living girl. When we found out that Alexandra was a girl I was elated, I was over the moon, but slightly skeptical, I thought I was about to get everything I ever wanted and wondered if it could be true. I thought it was too good to be true, I thought the baby would probably end up being a boy and we would find out at birth. I didn't think it was too good to be true because the baby, my daughter, would die. People often use the phrase "A smack in the face" something is a smack in the face when it's a shock, when it's humiliating and unexpected. My daughter being yanked away from me, when I was so close to meeting her, alive, was kind if like that...only worse, so much worse.
When we decided to consider trying again, I worried that I might be disappointed if I became pregnant with a boy. I felt that my chance to have a living daughter died when Alexandra died, but I thought that I might be ungrateful and hurt if I ended up pregnant with a boy. When the pregnancy became a reality, and the idea that it might stick set in, I started thinking a lot about what would happen when I found out the sex of the baby. I felt that, if the baby was a boy, I wouldn't have to worry as much about another stillbirth, because a boy would be something realistic, something I already have. But I still longed for a daughter. If the baby WAS a girl, the pregnancy would be that much more difficult, the thought of losing her more real, it had already happened, and surely I would never get my living daughter.
On the day I had my ultrasound and found out the sex of the baby I was nervous. I was feeling guilty too. How could I be worrying about the sex of the baby when so many other things could be wrong? And then those things were front and center and I was nervous about finding out the sex and terrified that I would find out that the sex didn't really matter because the baby had died. Or, possibly worse, there was something wrong that was not compatible with life and I would have to make a decision regarding that.
Most moms are excited for that anatomy scan. I was a wreck.
I laid there, nervous, scared, running through everything in my head, preparing myself for anything. When they gave me the news that everything looked good, I began to prepare myself to hear that I was having a boy. I thought that was the next thing they would say, and I worried that if I wasn't happy immediately, or comfortable with the idea, that I would be terrible person.
I think I prepared myself for everything but what I heard...
"It's a Girl!"
And I looked at Steve and had a complete breakdown. Traumatizing everyone in the room, I'm sure. The ultrasound technician in training that told me the news was surprised. She didn't seem to know what to do so she just asked if I already had a daughter. I said, "I have a daughter, but she died." and I think I heard a very quiet, "oh" and then nothing else.
I had prepared myself for a boy, was expecting a boy, and I got the little girl I had secretly always wanted. Now I had to hope that she would make it into this world alive, so I could meet her.

Guilt

Being pregnant after you've had a loss comes with an abundance of complex emotions. Guilt was a huge one for me. I felt guilty about virtually everything.
I felt guilty whenever I would have any feeling other than gratefulness that I was pregnant and it was going well. I lost the luxury of having pregnancy complaints, I believed that if I complained out loud people would think I wasn't truly appreciating that gift. I felt that if complained to myself, something bad would happen to punish me for not being grateful. It's ridiculous, I know, but I WAS lucky to be pregnant, I WAS lucky to have it going so well, and rather than spend my time complaining about my sore back, morning sickness, or how tired I was, something inside of me told me that I needed to spend that time being grateful and happy for every pregnancy pain.
I felt guilt for being excited. I felt somewhere inside myself that being excited for this baby took something away from Alexandra. What it took away, I still don't know, but I believe it's tied into the fact that a lot of people seem to think that once you have another child after a loss, your loss doesn't matter any more. I have not moved on from my beautiful angel Alexandra, I have moved forward WITH her, but people feel that if you are pregnant again, you must not hurt anymore, and it's ok to forget...it's not.
I felt guilt for being pregnant around women who had lost a baby and struggled with getting pregnant again. The guilt was there when I was around women who had recently lost a baby. I didn't want them to think I was rubbing it in their face, I couldn't hide the belly, but I know from experience that it is a cruel reminder of what should have been but isn't.
My guilt was greatly wrapped up in my fear and anxiety, like a ball of nerves that could cause blinding pain at any minute. 
Guilt doesn't stop when the baby arrives either, it carries over and you have new things to feel guilty about...but we will talk about that later.

Alone

I'm pretty active within the loss community. Before being visibly pregnant with this pregnancy, I would attend the monthly peer support meetings, we hold fundraisers, I'm active on online grief support message boards. I have made many dear friends who understand the pain of losing a child.
These women are amazing people, who are supportive and kind and will always be there for me, no matter what. Many of these women have gone on a similar journey to me, losing a child and trying to conceive another one. Some have even had more than one loss, just like me.
It's like walking down a path with a dear friend and tripping in the same spots, even falling and helping each other up in similar spots. But sometimes, one of those friends ends up taking a different road at some spot on your path. In this case, that person was me.
When I was trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, it would sting when people around me would announce pregnancies. It would sting when I would see those around me having babies. I was jealous and I was hurting. I am not a mean person, I didn't wish anything bad on those people, and I was always supportive and happy for everyone around me that was getting everything they wanted...everything I wanted...but it was like a tiny little knife in my heart.
When I finally started announcing my pregnancy to everyone, I felt the burden of someone who has been on the other side of these announcements. I felt guilty. Everyone found out eventually, but the guilty still weighed heavily on me. When I was experiencing anxiety about my pregnancy, I felt like I couldn't go to my friends and family who hadn't experienced a loss because they wouldn't truly understand the complexity of my feelings and the extent of my anxiety. And guilt prevented me from talking to anyone who had experienced a loss because I felt like piling my feelings about pregnancy on someone who only wishes to be pregnant seemed extremely selfish.
I would become angry with myself a lot, why could I not just be grateful and happy? And while I was grateful, I felt that I must not be grateful enough, if I was, I would be happy and excited, not scared and anxiety ridden.
I was alone and lacking the support I needed because I was afraid or didn't think that anyone would understand how I was feeling. I kept hoping that my feelings would subside, that my anxiety would taper down as my pregnancy progressed. I kept hoping that it would really sink in every time the doctor told me that it was virtually impossible for me to lose another child the way we had lost Alexandra. None of that happened though. The anxiety persisted, the feelings stayed strong, and the words of the doctors didn't resonate at all.
Even in the deepest, darkest moments of my loss, I had never felt so alone.

Limbo

When you have experienced the loss of a child in utero, everything changes. It's like everything has a small cloud over it.
After we lost Alexandra, I experienced a subsequent loss. It was very early, an ectopic pregnancy that resulted in the loss of that tube. It was devastating to go through that after getting excited that I may be having another living child. I was leery at first, and had just come around, literally the same day that I began to bleed with that pregnancy. I talked to Steve about possible baby names less than an hour before I discovered that I was bleeding and everything started to fall apart. It was like a slap in the face, and, to me, a warning...do not get excited, do not get attached, this could all end at any moment.
You're stuck in a place where you want to feel all those exciting feelings, but you are terrified to.
When I got the positive pregnancy test after both my losses, I told myself that once we determined it wasn't an ectopic pregnancy, I would be able to get excited. We learned that the pregnancy was not ectopic, but the excitement didn't come. Instead I felt that, once we had the 12 week screening done, I would be ok and able to get over the intense fear and anxiety I was having. That didn't happen. I told myself, once I hear the baby's heart beat, that's when it will all click for me and I will be happy. When that didn't work, it was once I could feel the baby move, but still the fear and anxiety held on. I felt like there was nothing that I could do, but work on getting through the pregnancy mentally and emotionally intact, and hopefully with a living baby.
I felt like I was stuck in limbo, unable to move forward and unwilling to go back. I remember being at a meeting for people that had suffered a loss, the topic was pregnancy after a loss. I didn't tell anyone I was pregnant during the meeting, it didn't fee right to me, to be surrounded by these women who had just lost a baby, talking about being pregnant. I listened to the people who had had children after their loss. One woman spoke about how she embraced every bit of pregnancy, if it was going to end badly, she wanted to enjoy the time she had with that baby. I wished I could be like that, I tried with everything in me to see things with that outlook, but I couldn't. I was too afraid. If this pregnancy didn't go well, and I had allowed myself to get attached, I would be shattered...again...how could I live through it all again? How could I tell Dayne that his sibling wasn't coming home, again? How could I look Steve in the face knowing that my body had failed us for a third time?
No. I couldn't let myself fall in love, I couldn't get excited about all those little things that normal moms were excited about in pregnancy. I couldn't worry about the little things or plan for the future until I knew what the future would bring.
When I was pregnant with Alexandra, I would sit in her room and go through her clothes, I would look at them and imagine how fun it would be to dress her up. I would sit in her room and plan her future, think about how I was going to do things and imagine how she would be, what she would look like, what kinds of things she would like.
When I was pregnant with my next pregnancy, the ectopic pregnancy, I planned for my health. I told Steve I would still walk Dayne to school every day, I would stay active, I would eat healthy foods and I would stay fit. I thought that was the best idea, keep my body healthy and I'll keep my baby healthy.
This pregnancy wouldn't be like that, I stayed active and ate healthy foods, but I didn't talk about it, I didn't mention to anyone that it was a "plan" I lived my life exactly as I had before I was pregnant, working, taking care of Dayne, walking the dog, living my life, but not admitting to myself, or anyone, that I was planning for a baby. I didn't go into the baby's room until well after I had with Alexandra, and when I did, I got everything done that needed to be done and then I left and didn't go back in. There was no sitting and dreaming, I didn't dare imagine how the future would be or imagine what my baby would be like. I didn't dare jinx myself like that.
It's funny how you can be in such deep denial, but still form such a close bond to a baby that you are desperate to meet...

The Psychic

For as long as I can remember, I have had a serious interest in everything paranormal. I love the things that we can't prove but still huge amounts of people experience them everyday. I love the idea that our loved ones can come back for a visit. That belief alone held me together on a lot of dark days after we lost Alexandra. I saw her in everything, I felt that she was near me, comforting me. My son would even comment that his sister was with him. It made me feel a little bit better, thinking that she could be there, that she could know how much I missed her what we were doing to remember her. I still believe that she's with me, watching over, and I work hard to make her proud of her mama. I imagine she's somewhere with all the other children that were taken too soon, pointing at me, "That's my mommy" with a big huge smile. I hope that I'm right.
My need to know that Alexandra was close caused me to do a lot of things. I researched what different religions believed happened when you die, I attempted to contact different psychics, I read everything I could read about death, dying, and where we go. One of my favorite websites is a local paranormal research teams site. I visit it fairly regularly, I even participate on their forum. That is where I met a wonderful woman named Jane. She identified herself as a psychic, but most of our conversations weren't about anything to do with her gift. In April 2011, as we were busy planning a fundraiser to celebrate Alexandra's birthday, Jane commented that she would be at the Mind, Soul, and Spirit Expo in my city, inviting everyone to come and visit her. I took her up on it, I wanted to go and hoped that I could get a reading from someone. I hoped that, for once, someone could tell me that my daughter was safe, happy, and with me.
I sat down with Jane that day and opened myself up for whatever would come. Jane did talk to me about my daughter, she did tell me a lot of stuff that I needed to hear, but it didn't bring me the closure about Alexandra that I thought it would. I needed to find that within myself...but I wouldn't learn that for some time.
Jane did tell me something that really stuck with me, something that floated around the back of my mind until that warm day when we saw 2 lines on that pregnancy test and then it was shoved to the front. She told me that I would have another living child. I asked, of course, but her answer was odd, she said that I would have another living child, but not until my son was 7. Dayne (my son), was 5 at the time. I wondered how I could wait that long.
From the moment I saw that positive pregnancy test, until the day I delivered my living baby, I remembered her words...another LIVING child, when my son was 7...he turned 7 when I was pregnant. It brought me many moments of comfort throughout my pregnancy...another living child...so much of what Jane told me was true, this could be true too...right?

Positive

I can't remember which day it was...it was warm out and as we drove home from dropping our son off at school I said to Steve, "I'm probably wrong, but I want to stop at the store and pick up a pregnancy test." He agreed. He always agreed, almost every month for a year, I was always wrong.
On this day, I got home and got back in bed. I laid there watching TV until I had to use the washroom. As I waited for the test to change I thought to myself that it would be negative and I needed to be prepared. Slowly the control line changed, and then there was a second, faint line. I walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom where I said "I don't know...I think there might be a line...I think I might be pregnant..." I was in shock. Steve got up and walked into the bathroom and we both stood there, staring at the test, there was no question, it was positive. I had a rush of excitement as Steve hugged me. I wanted to believe this was the one that would stick, this was the baby I would get to take home, but deep down, in the pit of my stomach, I was terrified.
A new journey began for me that day, one filled with anxiety and fear, and more importantly, hope. This one would have a happy ending, I told myself every day...

One Step At A Time

"One step at a time there's no need to rush 
It's like learning to fly or falling in love 
It's gonna happen and it's supposed to happen  
That we find the reasons why, one step at a time"

They refer to the baby born after a loss as a "rainbow baby." The beautiful thing that happens after a storm. I chased after my rainbow for a long time...or at least I consider it a long time...

We lost Alexandra on April 29th, 2010. Born "sleeping" due to a cord accident, our lives took the most drastic turn. Alexandra is our amazing little angel, an amazing gift taken far too soon. Her loss took away all of my strength and left me broken and hollow. But as I grieved and learned to bring my little girl's memory into my life in a happy way, she gave me a new strength, the kind that you can only get from surviving something tragic.

It wasn't really enough though, I felt like something was missing. I had my beautiful son, fiance, and dog. I actively support my local pregnancy and infant loss support program. We fund raise. I had a job that I enjoyed, and I should have been happy, but something was missing. I needed my rainbow.

It's not that we hadn't tried. We had. The Christmas after we lost Alexandra we decided to try again. I even got pregnant, but that pregnancy ended in another loss...that loss of baby, the loss of my fallopian tube, the loss of another dream. Once we were given the go ahead, we kept trying, but month after month I was disappointed.  I finally gave up. I was all done trying, it was too hard and too painful.

And that's when it happened...I was pregnant. And I was thrust onto a new path, with only hope to hold onto.

This is my rainbow story, for whatever it's worth, to whomever it may help.