myohareusa: 2013

We managed a last minute few days away to California....."Oh we do love to be beside the seaside"and it's been a while (and there was the added incentive of escaping our house filled with ripped up flooring and noisy fans....)!!

We stayed at Newport Beach and although it was kinda cloudy while we were there, we didn't really mind as it makes a nice change from all the AZ heat and sun. The kids enjoyed a little long boarding...(ok one penny board in the mix too)

The waves were pretty big and the kids tried out some surfing and body boarding...they loved the wetsuits we rented (and it was chilly enough to need them...hey we live in Arizona our blood is thin!!).

We discovered a Duke's up in Huntingdon Beach and were excited to introduce the kids to the delight that is Hula Pie:) after the delights that were everything else....(but really we just went there for the Hula Pie!)

And I tried day after day to get just one shot of all my kids together where they were all looking and smiling at the same time...I thought it would get easier as they got older and could follow directions (but apparently not...unless it's with my iPhone apparently!!)

And we enjoyed a most beautiful sunset...I am a little bit of a sucker for a great sunset...maybe, just maybe I took a few too many photos (but really, how can you just walk away...!) Got to love a trip to the beach!

I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to write any more about this. I've had to come and go from writing this post for weeks as it just brings back the memories in waves of sadness and it is incredibly hard to remember and revisit, but ultimately I want to have a record of this time and after Andrew's post last week (here) I know it's time...

I was coming up for 5 months pregnant and had had three different scans (including an in depth one - because I am 'older' and at higher risk), seen her wiggle and move around and suck her thumb....we'd done a bunch of blood tests and everything had come back perfect, we'd narrowed down the name options to variations on the same name, and started planning life with a new baby. My kids were all just so excited.

I was at a routine appointment. All by myself, no ultrasounds or "fun stuff" for anyone to come and see. My OB had asked how things were and I'd been so happy to tell him how the morning sickness had calmed down that week and I was feeling pretty great. He set up my next Ultrasound appointment and a couple of other tests. He'd checked the results of some tests/ultrasound I'd had the previous week and told me everything looked perfect and then he tried to find a heartbeat...and tried....and closed his eyes and tried some more. He said he thought he'd heard something but just to wait a few mins for the other room to open up so we could just do a quick ultrasound to be sure. I texted Andrew after he left the room..."he can't hear a heartbeat....trying not to freak out" and really I am not a freak out kind of person, I am always sure that every doctor is literally crossing every t and dotting every i just to cover themselves...or just ordering extra tests because, well, why not...

So I'm pretty calm and after a few minutes we move into the other room for the ultrasound. He puts the thing over my belly and says, "there's your baby" and I immediately felt that little happy relief...you know the..see, I knew there was nothing to worry about...one. Until the next words came a minute or so later...."but there's no heartbeat. I'm so sorry". And all the oxygen just sucked right out of my body. As he looked around with the ultrasound a little more I just willed a heart beat to appear. My head was spinning and I couldn't quite grasp what was going on. I know we had some surreal conversation about a silent miscarriage and booking a surgery and I had to sign some paperwork but I had this balloon of emotion getting bigger and bigger and I just had to get out of there. I finally made it through the front office full of smiling happy pregnant ladies and somehow found my way to the car through eyes swimming with tears. I called Andrew's number and before he even answered, the balloon exploded and I just started sobbing.

Somehow I made it home, driving through a river of tears that seemed would never stop and it wasn't until I got home that I even realized that I had never zipped or buttoned up my jeans after leaving the doctors. Meanwhile Andrew had left work and was on his way home to me. He arrived and literally we just fell into each other's arms and cried.

Telling the kids was extraordinarily painful. Abbie took it the hardest and just kept asking why, as she cried and cried. The depths of sorrow felt more like an overwhelming pressure filling my whole body and the room and the house, pushing out all the air until I could barely breathe.

The first friend to come to my door simply said, "don't say anything, I just want you to know I am so sorry" and hugged me and then left. It was as much as I could interact in that moment and I was unbelievably grateful that she would understand that need I had to be loved but the absolute inability I had to talk. And the friends continued to come one after the other, filling the space between the pain with love and comfort. I honestly felt so much love. It's the most bizarre thing to feel so loved in a situation that is so painful but literally I felt more loved than I have ever felt in my life before. I felt the arms of heaven wrapped around me just as strongly as I felt Andrew's arms and the arms of our friends, physically wrapped around me. I knew that God loved me and mourned with me and would not leave me to endure this alone, and I found that I had the most wonderful friends who literally served as angels providing meals and text messages, words of comfort, hugs and yes, many tears. I was never alone.

I spent the night before going to the hospital awake and in emotional turmoil. I cried and pleaded with Andrew not to have to go through with it. I couldn't let them take my baby out of me like that. But as morning came, we went through the motions and drove to the hospital, the same one I had driven by a hundred times in the past months thinking that that would be where our baby would be born. This was not how it was meant to be. At the hospital, everyone who came into contact with me kept asking me "what are you in here for"...I know that it's a routine question but at the time it was like a thousand daggers to my heart and with a literal stream of tears running down my face I would try and fail and try again to find the words to say, I'm here for you to take away my baby.

We spent the next week or so in a haze of emotion and visitors. Andrew trying to have hushed conversations at the door and on the phone if I was sleeping, while enduring an agony of his own. He had longed for this baby for years and patiently waited until I was ready and it had hit him hard. I'd wake up in the night hour after hour with tears streaming down my face and often Andrew would reach over to me and hold my hand and I'd realize that he was awake and had tears of his own too.

I was just completely unprepared for this. Despite having some difficulties and complications during pregnancy with some of my other kids, I had had four kids just fine. It never really occurred to me that this could happen and it really was just such a shock. I'm sure all the pregnancy hormones just heightened the emotional response but it is one of the most emotionally and physically draining experiences of my life. I found it really hard to understand why and I wanted answers that weren't really there. I would stand in the shower or look in the mirror and was angry with this body that had betrayed me, the happy swollen stomach dissolved to an uninhabitable empty shell. I was angry with myself as a mother. How could I have been so oblivious? How could I have not known? How could I have been so happy when things were so wrong? What signs did I miss?

I don't know if I was mad at God exactly. I wanted to understand. I wanted there to be this big obvious reason. I wanted to know why I had to suffer, why Andrew had to suffer, why my kids had to suffer. I wanted to know why she didn't get to come here and be part of my family. I wanted to know why, despite such a big gap in my kids, it had felt so right to be having another - just to have this happen??, I wanted to know, just know for sure that I get to see her again, that she is mine, my baby girl, my child forever... I had so many questions that bounced around loudly in my head.

After a couple of weeks my lovely friend volunteered to go with me to the temple. It was beautiful and I cried pretty much solid for three hours. I had the words to this chorus go over and over in my mind and it truly felt like home to me that day, more than any other. I knew that my little Anna had somehow come there to meet me and I truly felt comforted.

"It feels like home to me...

It feels like I'm all the way back where I come from

It feels like home to me...

It feels like I'm all the way back where I belong"

After I got home, I knew I just had to stop. I had to stop thinking and questioning. I had to stop remembering. I didn't get all the answers I wanted but I had to let go of the questions in order to accept it. I didn't know if it was possible. I did know that I couldn't do it by myself, but somehow I was able to place all of these emotions and memories into a metaphorical box and close it up. I don't know for sure that that is the best way of dealing with things, but it is a way.

And it works. Mostly. Gradually I am finding that I can open the box and look around a little. I have finally been able to take out the handwritten cards and notes and be grateful. I can brace myself for certain conversations or situations and handle them without my heart ripping apart. And yet still there are times that the strangest most unexpected thing can just touch me with surprising force. I recognize that time truly does heal many a wound and yet, there may always be a trigger that brings a lump to my throat and the prickle of tears to my eyes. And I think that's OK with me. I don't want to totally forget. I want to have a tiny piece of my baby girl remembered in my heart forever. I want to be able to look at her scan pictures or hold a newborn baby without quite as much heavy sadness, or deep longing. And I think that I'm getting there.

I would not ask for this experience, but I recognize that I have also learned so much because of this experience. At first that actually made me mad. I didn't want to HAVE to learn these things THIS way. I didn't want a baby, my baby to die so that I could learn and grow and become a stronger, better person. But it happened. And I have learned. And I can't change a thing. All I can do is move on and live life and love my other kids and ultimately trust that God knows and understands more than I.

"I'm letting my fears go

Giving You control

For You are the one who holds me closer

in my souls darkest night

Everything I see is so temporary

So help me run the race before me with eternity in sight

And I'm in Your arms, where I belong

There's no other place for me than right where You are

Some things just don't change

When I call Your name

You never hesitate to wrap me in endless grace

When I'm in Your arms

"God's light is real. It is available to all...It has the power to soften the sting of the deepest wound. In the furrows of despair, it can plant the seeds of a brighter hope. It can enlighten the deepest valleys of sorrow...

Even after the darkest night, the Savior of the World will lead you to a gradual sweet and bright dawn that will assuredly rise within you.." (Dieter F. Uchtdorf)