Making A Rainbow

Today I hold a stuffed bear instead of my son...One year ago today the doctors told me and my husband that our son was sick and had to be delivered. I was 20 weeks pregnant. How can this still be true? Today the pain is real. Even with questions and pain I know our beautiful son Liam is in Heaven with Jesus looking down on us. My heart hurts that he is not in my arms to snuggle to comfort to kiss. He would be a beautiful 8 month old today. I wonder what his smile would have looked like. I am left a with a few mementos of his tiny, short life, but today I found my favorite. Today my husband and I made a bear in honor of our son. It's a small, sad but beautiful way to honor our lost child but hopefully it will be for our new baby.   Hopefully. That's where I'm at. Let me tell you a bit about the emotions and new world surrounding a pregnancy after a loss... Your fear is relentless. You are scared, no terrified, of losing another one.  Instead of telling people right aw...

You might be reading this if you or someone you know has experienced a pregnancy, stillbirth, or infant loss, or any kind of traumatic grief. If you are experiencing loss personally this is a very confusing and exhausting time and you need to take care of yourself. You might have people around you asking how they can help. Have them read this post. If you are wondering how to help someone who has experienced loss...keep reading! These are a few things that helped in the first few weeks after our loss...    1. Food- Food is Love. My husband and I had a few family members who brought us or sent us food (and wine) and it was gloriously wonderful. I am the cook in our family and in the first few weeks after our loss I did not want to cook at all. Who would? It is important to eat as you are grieving, skipping meals may delay healing and will make you feel even more lousy.  It was refreshing to have easy and nutritious meals. Consider gifting a grieving family a meal v...

Grief is something that, until the loss of my son, I had no frame of reference. Growing up I had had little experience with death besides an uncle die but I was too young and too naive to understand what was going on. All I knew of death was fictionalized. Books, TV, and especially social media do a horrible job of honoring death and loss. They portray it as something done quietly and quickly as not to offend or make anyone else uncomfortable. Death IS uncomfortable, as it should be, and I believe should not be swept under the rug. It is something to face, something that we must allow to change and shape us into something new.    I didn't realize just how grief transforms you and changes every part of your being into something else. Much of who you were has to change in order to keep on living. When I lost my son in April 2018 it was like a car crash, sudden and violent. He was there and then he wasn't, I was pregnant one day and have an aching hole in my heart the next....

I never thought I would be a person to fit into a certain "group" in society, but now I do. I have lost a child and now get my own month of awareness, yay for me -insert sarcasm here. I am part of the 1 in 4 women who have to go through the hell of losing a child. Think about that for a moment 1 in 4...  that is 25% of women have experienced a miscarriage/ baby loss or stillbirth. That. Is. Crazy. That means if you know 10 women then at least two have experienced a loss. Maybe its you or maybe its someone you know, either way you can spread awareness about this month. A simple post on social media or a text message of acknowledgement will suffice to honor a family member or friend who's lost a little one. If you have personally experienced a loss maybe you choose something a bit more like lighting a candle, looking at old photos, or a remembrance walk with other loss parents. For me its this blog. A few months back when I began this journey with the loss of my son a...