6 Weeks In

This morning I was thinking that I hadn't made a post in a while and I really needed to.  I really want to keep this up.  Now that I've told Kyler's story, I want to focus more on how we are honoring him and to a lesser extent how we are coping with our new lives.  At first I thought that there wasn't much that we've done so far, but then when I thought about it more I decided there were a few things.  The things I have done for Kyler are more things that I haven't done, and when you think about it they are actually huge.
 - I haven't started smoking again
 - I haven't started drinking again
 - I haven't been abusing the sedatives and narcotics that were prescribed to me
 - I haven't allowed myself to stay in bed all day every day
 - I haven't allowed myself to isolate
It's only been about 6 weeks since we lost Kyler, so I think we are doing great.

We have done just a couple other things.  My husband has a co-worker who had a baby with in weeks of when we had Kyler, and his co-worker was struggling with being able to buy a carseat/stroller set.  We gave him Kyler's.  We are glad it is going to good use and keeping another precious little baby safe.  We have a friend who lives down the street who just had a baby in July.  We were able to give her Kyler's movement/sound monitor and breast pump.  Again, we love that we were able to keep another baby safe and healthy.  Tomorrow I am going to have one of my friends take all the formula samples we acquired (like 8 cans) to his church go give to someone in need.  Hopefully they will keep another baby or two from being hungry this Christmas.

While we were still in the hospital one of my Aunts, who had also lost a baby, suggested that we plan to get out of town for a week or soon as soon as we could.  We talked to the doctor about it and she also thought it was a good idea as long as I made sure to rest and heal while we were gone.  Well, thanks to my mom and brothers we were able to make that suggestion a reality.  I was able to sit on a warm beach for a week, rather sit on the couch looking out at the frigid Idaho winter.  It was wonderful for multiple reasons.  Since I went on bedrest July 15, I missed most of the summer, my favorite time of year.  It also removed us from the reminders and the sorrow and reminded us that the world is still a beautiful place and we can still have a good time.  This is not to say that we forgot about Kyler while we were there, we thought about him every day, but the horribleness of the whole situation was more muted.  While we were there we went out on a deserted beach in the middle of a storm and released rose petals in memory of Kyler.  We were meaning to just put them in the ocean, but as we opened the container the wind picked up and spread them all down the beach and in the water.  It was a beautiful flurry of rose petals.  It was perfect.

Even though we are not in much of a Christmas mood this year we both decided to put in a little bit of effort towards celebrating.  We both really like decorating so we decided even if we didn't do anything else this year we needed to decorate the house, yard and get a tree.  Since we were gone, we didn't get a chance to get the tree up until this week but I am glad we did it.  Before we left we ordered a personalized ornament for Kyler and we think it is perfect.

I'm not sure how Christmas will go this year but I am sure Kyler wouldn't want us not not celebrate it.