Thursday December 13, 2012
Precious babies,
Yesterday marked the 1 year anniversary of the day we had our ultrasound. You were there, in full glory. They took 99 photos of the 2 of you, and I was amazed at the clarity of the photos, the perfectly round outlines of your skulls, your little noses, your arms and legs in crystal clarity. I was fascinated at all of the things they were checking. I also got a bit nauseous with the pressing of the ultrasound. I think it was just y'all, trying to say "Hey, leave us alone in here, stop poking around with that disturbing wand", so you sent signals to make me ill. Just like all the times when you let me know you didn't like the food I was eating. As we've discussed in previous posts, you liked high quality gourmet food, as evidenced by our birthday lunch with my parents at The Parlor and the many delicious meals we had in Las Vegas with your Aunt Manda, Uncle Kevin, Aunt Leah and Uncle Pete. After those meals, I was never nauseous in the slightest.
Yesterday also marked the one year anniversary of the beginning of both the happiest and the darkest 30 day period in my entire life. We shared your ultrasound photos with family and friends and I felt your activity level increase. We got ready to host Christmas Eve dinner, and 3 days later, I was in the hospital on bedrest, fighting to preserve the pregnancy, praying for another uneventful day, and another and another. But, as we all know, you arrived at the 24-week mark and your tiny bodies were woefully underprepared to tackle life on the outside. By January 12, you were both gone.
This week, I came down with bronchitis. Your father and I have both been battling sickness recently. Two weeks ago, he was sick all weekend, lying in the bed. I don't know if he had the flu or a colitis flare up or just mental fatigue. This broken-heartedness is impacting both of us physically. Daddy said he read somewhere that grief stricken parents are always battling illnesses, or something to that effect. I admit I didn't pay attention to him because I absolutely detest being sick. With the exception of our time in the hospital, my only other stint was an emergency room visit after I fell down the cellar stairs at Nana's, resulting in a mild concussion. But, another grieving Mom wrote something in her blog along similar lines. I'm afraid my mental acuity is less than sharp tonight, so I'm not up to quoting it, or even describing the gist of her post.
Your canine brother Ike is completely simpatico with my bronchitis. He has lain in the bed with me all day today, even forgoing his dinner tonight. He can't get close enough to me, he is trying to comfort my soul. Your canine sister is lying on the floor, she keeps sniffing the air. Perhaps she senses y'all are visiting us. Perhaps your Tante Jayne brought you for a visit, as she was always the family nursemaid, taking care of at least 3 generations. Make that 4 now that she's looking after the 2 of you. And, yes, Tante, I know I should be taking your famous concoction of honey and butter to kick this bronchitis.
I spoke with Daddy, he was supposed to get together with my SIG, Chloe's momma tonight. Ironically, SIG has also come down with bronchitis. We are forever linked in a horrendous way, but I find it comforting to have her with me on our grief journeys. He may see her briefly tomorrow before he leaves Alaska.
Darling Shelby and Dalton, Momma is signing off for now. Hopefully, this weekend, we will put up the Christmas tree. I have 3 ornaments for you, the ones I bought in Alaska in April and the one your grandparents Bones gave us. I hope I can find all of them, I've been more than disorganized these past few months.
All my love - Momma
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Monday, December 3, 2012
If We Make It Through December
Monday December 3, 2012
Hello my precious Shelby and Dalton,
I'm sitting here tonight, watching my Baylor boy, Robert Griffin III leading his Redskins on Monday Night Football against the New York Giants. He is a phenomenal athlete and seems to be of good character. His parents are still together, which probably has quite a bit to do with his maturity and composure. He is the face of Baylor. Sometimes, it seems so bizarre, as he wasn't even born when I started my days at Baylor, he was born during the second semester of my freshman year. I can still remember when he won the Heisman trophy, the ceremony was on Saturday December 10, 2 days before my ultrasound. So many of those "milestone" days are rushing at us over the coming weeks. I couldn't believe how your images appeared on the ultrasounds, that we could see every detail of your precious and seemingly perfect bodies. We really were blissfully ignorant, naively thinking that we made it through the 1st trimester and everything looked so good. I must admit, neither your Daddy nor I were paying super close attention to the 4 factors that contribute to premature labor when the maternal/fetal medicine specialist detailed them. I remember high blood pressure (which I never had), age of the mother (guilty of frittering away so much of our lives), and discord between twin weights (more than 20%, which you never measured until the day you were born), but I don't know the 4th factor. It really didn't seem like premature labor would be something that we'd be dealing with, but how horribly wrong we were. Thirty-one days after that ultrasound, you were both gone.
We somehow made it through Thanksgiving, and stayed sober. We both know alcohol offers no solutions, sometimes it just numbs the pain. We didn't even get to that point on Thanksgiving. Daddy had 1 beer, which he left on the counter half full, and then 1 gin and tonic, again leaving half of it in the glass. I had 2 small glasses of red wine, I poured a glass for Daddy at dinner, he didn't even take 1 sip. That was it. Our mothers were both pretty mellow, and there were no major issues. Grandma Nancy said grace, and your Uncle Ryan surprised us by initiating the hand-holding during the blessing. Your Aunt Violet is scared to death of Ike, and he senses that, so therefore whenever she holds your cousin Emily, Ike loses his mind. However, when Grandma Kay or Ryan or I hold Emily, Ike is just fine. He even laid quietly on the sofa while Emily scratched his head. I wish I could tell Violet to relax, that Ike is a big cream puff.
I think you were visiting on Thanksgiving. Emily was in her high chair between your Grandpa Joe and her Momma. She looked up behind her Momma, up toward the ceiling. She clenched her fist twice, as if she was waving and then she looked directly at me, as if to say "Your babies are here."
Last night, as we were falling asleep, your Daddy asked God to let us dream about you. Well, I had a dream that featured Shelby. It was the weirdest thing, in the dream, we were eating at one of those major breakfast chains (we rarely eat at places like this), there was a big group of us. When I went to pay the bill, there was a black lady at the checkout stand. She said to me, "I have a message for you from that little girl." I asked "What little girl?" She said "That little girl, didn't you see her? She came in and was standing by your table for a bit. Then she came up here and asked me to give you a message. She said "Tell her Shelby says Hi". Apparently in the dream, there was more to the message, something along the lines of "Everything's good", but when I woke up, I couldn't remember specifically the exact words. Then, when I was in Albertson's later, I was waiting for the lady to bring me a new bag of romaine lettuce, and I could have sworn they paged for a Shelby. During Daddy's flight this morning, he said there was a couple sitting in front of him with a baby boy who was about 6 months old and that baby just kept staring and staring at Daddy. Had y'all been full-term, you would have been about 7 months old. Maybe that baby met you when you got to heaven and played with you for a bit. As it is, tomorrow marks your 11 month old birthday.
December has always been a hard month for some reason. I've always loved the Merle Haggard song If We Make It Through December, and it seems more poignant than ever this year. Although I don't much care for Merle Haggard himself (I'm still irked by that story that he swindled Waylon out of a bunch of money in a poker game was Waylon was stoned out of his mind. I don't support such behavior, but I will always take Waylon's side, as he is my favorite musician, as y'all know). Alas, I digress. Your Daddy has never enjoyed putting up Christmas decorations, on most years he does it simply to humor me. This year, I agreed we don't have to put up outdoor decorations but I do want to put up the tree. I have some ornaments for y'all and all the ornaments that I've gathered going back to the year I was born. Daddy has some ornaments from when he was a little boy too. Plus, Ike really likes to sit on his sofa and watch the lit Christmas tree. The dogs also have special ornaments, so we agreed to put up the tree. But the coming weeks are going to be just terrible. They mark the last few days of what was a relatively uneventful pregnancy. Everything changed between my going to bed on Christmas Eve and waking up on Christmas morning. It was the beginning of the end.
Babies, please give us strength to make it through the next month. Keep giving us signs that y'all are with us and loving us and are happy with our decision to try again by embarking late next month on another attempt to have living children.
Momma loves and misses you.
Hello my precious Shelby and Dalton,
I'm sitting here tonight, watching my Baylor boy, Robert Griffin III leading his Redskins on Monday Night Football against the New York Giants. He is a phenomenal athlete and seems to be of good character. His parents are still together, which probably has quite a bit to do with his maturity and composure. He is the face of Baylor. Sometimes, it seems so bizarre, as he wasn't even born when I started my days at Baylor, he was born during the second semester of my freshman year. I can still remember when he won the Heisman trophy, the ceremony was on Saturday December 10, 2 days before my ultrasound. So many of those "milestone" days are rushing at us over the coming weeks. I couldn't believe how your images appeared on the ultrasounds, that we could see every detail of your precious and seemingly perfect bodies. We really were blissfully ignorant, naively thinking that we made it through the 1st trimester and everything looked so good. I must admit, neither your Daddy nor I were paying super close attention to the 4 factors that contribute to premature labor when the maternal/fetal medicine specialist detailed them. I remember high blood pressure (which I never had), age of the mother (guilty of frittering away so much of our lives), and discord between twin weights (more than 20%, which you never measured until the day you were born), but I don't know the 4th factor. It really didn't seem like premature labor would be something that we'd be dealing with, but how horribly wrong we were. Thirty-one days after that ultrasound, you were both gone.
We somehow made it through Thanksgiving, and stayed sober. We both know alcohol offers no solutions, sometimes it just numbs the pain. We didn't even get to that point on Thanksgiving. Daddy had 1 beer, which he left on the counter half full, and then 1 gin and tonic, again leaving half of it in the glass. I had 2 small glasses of red wine, I poured a glass for Daddy at dinner, he didn't even take 1 sip. That was it. Our mothers were both pretty mellow, and there were no major issues. Grandma Nancy said grace, and your Uncle Ryan surprised us by initiating the hand-holding during the blessing. Your Aunt Violet is scared to death of Ike, and he senses that, so therefore whenever she holds your cousin Emily, Ike loses his mind. However, when Grandma Kay or Ryan or I hold Emily, Ike is just fine. He even laid quietly on the sofa while Emily scratched his head. I wish I could tell Violet to relax, that Ike is a big cream puff.
I think you were visiting on Thanksgiving. Emily was in her high chair between your Grandpa Joe and her Momma. She looked up behind her Momma, up toward the ceiling. She clenched her fist twice, as if she was waving and then she looked directly at me, as if to say "Your babies are here."
Last night, as we were falling asleep, your Daddy asked God to let us dream about you. Well, I had a dream that featured Shelby. It was the weirdest thing, in the dream, we were eating at one of those major breakfast chains (we rarely eat at places like this), there was a big group of us. When I went to pay the bill, there was a black lady at the checkout stand. She said to me, "I have a message for you from that little girl." I asked "What little girl?" She said "That little girl, didn't you see her? She came in and was standing by your table for a bit. Then she came up here and asked me to give you a message. She said "Tell her Shelby says Hi". Apparently in the dream, there was more to the message, something along the lines of "Everything's good", but when I woke up, I couldn't remember specifically the exact words. Then, when I was in Albertson's later, I was waiting for the lady to bring me a new bag of romaine lettuce, and I could have sworn they paged for a Shelby. During Daddy's flight this morning, he said there was a couple sitting in front of him with a baby boy who was about 6 months old and that baby just kept staring and staring at Daddy. Had y'all been full-term, you would have been about 7 months old. Maybe that baby met you when you got to heaven and played with you for a bit. As it is, tomorrow marks your 11 month old birthday.
December has always been a hard month for some reason. I've always loved the Merle Haggard song If We Make It Through December, and it seems more poignant than ever this year. Although I don't much care for Merle Haggard himself (I'm still irked by that story that he swindled Waylon out of a bunch of money in a poker game was Waylon was stoned out of his mind. I don't support such behavior, but I will always take Waylon's side, as he is my favorite musician, as y'all know). Alas, I digress. Your Daddy has never enjoyed putting up Christmas decorations, on most years he does it simply to humor me. This year, I agreed we don't have to put up outdoor decorations but I do want to put up the tree. I have some ornaments for y'all and all the ornaments that I've gathered going back to the year I was born. Daddy has some ornaments from when he was a little boy too. Plus, Ike really likes to sit on his sofa and watch the lit Christmas tree. The dogs also have special ornaments, so we agreed to put up the tree. But the coming weeks are going to be just terrible. They mark the last few days of what was a relatively uneventful pregnancy. Everything changed between my going to bed on Christmas Eve and waking up on Christmas morning. It was the beginning of the end.
Babies, please give us strength to make it through the next month. Keep giving us signs that y'all are with us and loving us and are happy with our decision to try again by embarking late next month on another attempt to have living children.
Momma loves and misses you.
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