October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

So, in about 15 minutes it is going to be October.  11 Months since we lost Kyler.  I was thinking I needed to do something small to honor him, so I put this together to hang in my cube at work.  He needs to be shared.  Too bad if it makes people uncomfortable.

I think it turned out quite well.

Great weekend and other stuff

This weekend we had a great weekend. We stayed in a cabin at the summit of the blues. It was perfect. We were able to stay for 2 nights. Saturday we went down to Pendleton and took the underground tour and then went to the Indian casino. Today we hiked around the campground and then took a 4 hour detour home through some of the most beautiful country around. We saw elk, deer, rabbits, cows, chipmunks, Kokanee salmon. We are planning a winter getaway later this year and I had seen some good deals on cabins at wallowa lake in Oregon. I wanted to stop and make sure it was as beautiful and perfect as it looked like it would be. It was. I think we will get the reservation made when we get home. After stopping and checking that out we came up over the mountains into the hells canyon area. Like I said it was absolutely beautiful, but I wish we were home already. Only a little over an hour and we will be, though.

We are also thinking about going to the Oregon coast for either my birthday or Kyler's. I haven't been there in the winter. I think it would be interesting. Last year we were blessed by being able to go to Hawaii about a month after we had Kyler. While we were there we took rose petals out and spread them on the beach. I'd really like to be able to do that every year, but financially it is not realistic. So I think we will make a tradition going to the coast each November/December and spreading petals. Any coast, any ocean. We live about 12 hours from the coast and could just go, release the petals and turn around and come home at the very least each year.

Thursday I got up and was getting ready for work and started coughing and couldn't catch my breath. I took my inhaler and went to work thinking it would clear up, it didn't. I couldn't get an appointment at the doctor until the afternoon so I took a half a Xanax and continued on. It got a little better but not much. I went into the doctor and he gave me a nebulizer, a script for prednisone and more Xanax. He's not sure if it is my asthma or a wired kind of panic attack. Awesome, just what I need, more crazy. We'll see what happens. I am a little worried that it might be blood clots but he wasn't concerned.

Wednesday is my first volunteer shift at the foodbank. I am so excited to do something for someone else. It is also about time to work on some more blankets and I am thinking of doing a few big things for Christmas.

Tomorrow we are going to go refinance our house. It is going to save is quite a bit of money which hopefully will help us make a dent in the baby bills if I don't spend it all on adventure or charity. :)

Another one of my co-workers wife's is pregnant. When I was pregnant, actually I think it was the day before I went on bed rest he told me how jealous he was of us. Well I guess it's my turn to be jealous. I'd venture to say I am about 250,000 times more jealous then he was. Things will be fine for them, they almost always are. I've been having a hard time having hope for more babies in Clay and I's future lately. I just have a bad feeling that it isn't going to happen. I can't explain why. Hopefully it is just some of that paranoid crazy, but we will see. I try not to get too discouraged. Even if we aren't able to have more babies, we did make a beautiful one and we will have a good life together.

Anyway, enough gloom. Here are some of the pictures of our beautiful weekend.

Things are going

Things are going for me. Somedays are good some are bad. Some are a mix. Today everything is fine, but I've been fighting anger all day. I really just want to pick a fight. Thankfully no one is taking the bait so far.

In the past couple weeks it seems like everyone is having a baby. The pregnant girl had her baby. I had a hard time with that. I heard she was going into labor and it just felt so unfair. Of course she was going to go into labor and have a happy healthy baby a few hours later. That's how it works for everyone. Everyone but me. It's not at all that I wish this on anyone else, I just wish their reality on myself. My boss left me off the announcement email. I think that's better for me. One of my other co-workers wife's had a baby last week too. I'm happy for him. I've always just thought he was a nice guy. Not that I don't like the other coworker. It's just complicated. There is one more girl who is pregnant at work. She is due in December. I haven't had as strong of a reaction to her as other pregnant people. I'm not sure why. Sometimes she gets to me, but nothing like the random pregnant women in the supermarket. Maybe I am just desensitized to her. She is having a boy and so did the guy. I went and looked through Kyler's stuff last night to see if there was anything I could give either of them, but I didn't find anything I could part with. Maybe I'll go look again in a week or so.

Christmas is coming up quick. I think rather then do any gifts we will do some things in remembrance of Kyler. I was thinking we'd make donations to "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep", "Project Bear", "Mom of an Angel", "Handmade Memories" and "Share". Along with some charity toy donations and some more blankets. Maybe we will ask others to do this instead of getting us gifts. We'll see that plan is still forming.

Today's meltdown is sponsored by..

Today I got up on time, got ready for work, was ready to go a little early and then I had a meltdown.  What caused this sudden melt down?  This...

I was standing in my kitchen finishing my breakfast and I looked up at the calendar that my mom made with pictures from the last year and saw this guy staring back at me.  (Don't feel bad about putting him on the calendar mom.  He's cute and there is no way of knowing what will set me off.  This was just one of those out of the blue random weird things)  I had forgotten about him.  My parents got him for me and Kyler while I was on bed rest.  I was in love with him right away.  He had a hole that we found after they gave him to me.  I couldn't let him go back to the store, I made my husband dig out my needle and thread so I could sew him up.  I've always had an attachment to stuffed animals.  I didn't want to share this guy with Kyler.

After I had Kyler this guy stayed in the living room for a few months and eventually he was moved into the corner of our room with the rest of my special stuffed animals.  I had seen him every day but not really registered that he was there.  When I saw that picture on the calendar I remembered the whole story, especially that I hadn't wanted to share him with Kyler.  I couldn't remember where he was at first, then I found him and just started crying.  I just wanted to crawl into bed and cuddle with him all day.

I left for work anyway, crying.  I got to work, crying.  I moved desks and have a new neighbor at work.  I am sure he thinks I am crazy.  My bosses boss sits right behind me now to, I am sure she thinks I am crazy.  I did settle down after a few hours.  I was able to make it through the day.  I felt exhausted all day, but I made it.  Then I went to dinner with my family and it was fine.  I guess it is an accomplishment that I made it through anyway.  I think tonight I am going to cuddle up with the lamb, husband and maybe the dog in bed.

Kyler, I would have shared the lamb with you.

September 11

11 years ago, I didn't know much about tragedy or losing someone you are really close with.  I didn't really know any trauma.  I watched as the planes hit the towers and collapsed and thought how horrible it was.  But my life continued.  In fact I remember going to my accounting class and was a little disappointed that it wasn't canceled.  That afternoon, I went about my business and I drove around and picked up a bunch of job applications.

11 years later, I still don't know the immense trauma and tragedy all of those souls experienced, but I have experienced a small sliver of my own.  I can't imagine how they feel that everyone seems to have moved on this year.  Today seemed like it was just another day for almost everyone.  At the same time, I would suspect they are glad that the video isn't everywhere this year.  I don't know how I would cope if there was a video of that moment we realized Kyler's heart wasn't beating that was played every tv network over and over again.

Anyway, to the families, loved ones, and everyone effected by September 11, I just want to say I'm sorry.  I have no idea what you have been/are going through, but I'm sorry.  You are still in our prayers.

Ungrateful

I feel so ungrateful for what I have most of the time.  I have a good job, car, home.  I am, nor have I ever been, food insecure.  I am able to afford heath care.  I am able to do some fun things.  I get lots of time off.  I have a great husband, a great job.  I should be happy with it all.  I feel guilty when I am not.  A lot of what we have we worked for in preparation for having Kyler.  With out him it feels incomplete.  Sometimes I wonder what the point of working is, we could live on a lot less.  We just wanted to have a nice home for our kids.

Work has been okay.  I trained a few new analysts last week.  It went pretty well except every once in a while the calls would slow down and they would start talking.  For some reason their conversations always ended up involving their kids.  I know people talk a lot about their kids, but it seemed like they were the topic of every conversation.  Usually they were complaining about things like the baby waking them up at 3am.  I wish my baby woke me up at 3 am.  I can't really tell them "Hey, you are reminding me what you have that I don't, and you are being ungrateful about it, so shut up."  At least I was able to leave the area some of the time though, that helped.  The good news is I get to go back to the days off I had originally, Sat, Sun, Wed.  So now I only have to do two days in a row again.  That makes me feel a lot more like I can deal with work.    

A couple weeks I was having a rough day and it started to really bother me that we never got Kyler's stillbirth certificate.  We had asked them to send us one, but never got it.  So I went ahead and ordered one.  It came a couple days ago.  It is nice to have.  Proof that he existed, even to the state of Idaho.  I didn't expect it to have as much information on it as it does.  One thing that is really bothering me is that it says he died because of a placental abruption.  After we found out he had died they did a blood test that indicated I had a placental abruption, but then when we delivered him the doctor found the cord wrapped tightly around his neck so she said that was probably what he died from.  In fact, she confirmed that when I went in for my checkups after we had him, but the still birth certificate says differently.  It doesn't really matter.  I guess I have just been trying to wrap my head around "cord accident" for the last 9 months, I don't like another possibility being thrown in the mix.  We'll never know exactly what happened and knowing wouldn't bring him back though.

We went to McCall this weekend and rode the "Scenic" chairlift.  It wasn't as beautiful as it could have been due to the smoke in the area but it was pretty nice.  We rode it up, walked around the summit a bit and rode it back down.  Then we went into McCall for lunch.  It was a pretty good day, but when we got home I got upset.  For some reason I couldn't get over the thought that Kyler would have loved it.  He would have loved the car ride and the chair lift.  After we got home Clay Ranon and I curled up in bed and watched a movie.  That helped me feel a little better.

We also went to the fair today.  I wanted to go, but I didn't at the same time.  Last year I was pretty upset that I couldn't go to the fair.  This year I was wishing I was stuck on the couch pregnant again.  We went anyway and had a pretty good time.  Oddly enough the chairlift effected me more then the fair.

We are doing okay, but lately it seems like we are doing worse then we have been in months.  I don't know if it is all the stress with work and the chaos with my sister or what.  Our fridge and cupboards are getting close to empty and we are eating out nearly every meal again.  Like we did when I first got home from the hospital.  Hopefully the new schedule for work will help us get back on track, or at least back where we were.

Kyler's Room

Kyler's room is the only room in the house that doesn't get dirty.  We haven't been able to change anything in it other then move some of his stuff from other areas of the house into it.  Today I went in to dust.  There shouldn't be this layer of dust on everything!  It should be being used.  I know I've said I try not to get caught up in the should's, but this was hard.  His room is still perfect and waiting for him, but he will never come.  It's not that we never go in his room, we do but usually it is just for a few seconds to get something or put something in it.  I'ts been a long time since I've gone in and looked around.  Almost everything is just as we left it Saturday November 5th 2011.  I had gotten the "nesting" instinct and we spent most of the day getting everything just so.  We reorganized his closet, put the liner in the diaper pail, put the sheets on his crib and cradle.  We knew he was coming soon, but he never did.  I don't know what it is about today but it just feels like a late fall day in his room and brings back a lot of memories.

Anyway, I don't think I ever shared pictures of his room, and I am very proud of it.  So take a look, this is what is room looks like today.

That is his "backup" going home from the hospital outfit in his crib.  We buried him in the other one we had taken.  It is laying on top of the blanket we were going to put over his car seat to keep him warm.

The bins in the closet are the big thing we did the day before he was born, we went and bought the cubes and separated his "bigger" clothes into them to make room in the dresser.  He had so many clothes.

The bookshelf probably has had the most changes.  The memory box the hospital gave us is there, the sympathy cards, his foot/hand casts, his pictures, the Sunday news paper that I was going to read after we got back from having him checked.

We moved his cradle from our room into his room after a few months.  Now it holds the pinwheels I collect to take to him, the blankets I make to donate to the hospital, and the parenting magazines that I still have a subscription to (I donate those to the hospital too).

The sympathy cards we received are in his room on the bookshelf. I just read through them.  There are 21 of them.  They are so nice.  My 30th birthday was a week and a half after he was born.  There were a bunch of birthday cards mixed in with them.  I barely remember my birthday last year.  I think this year I am going to do a 31st birthday party and celebrate leaving this year behind since I wasn't able to celebrate 30.

Well, thanks for listening, I feel a little better now.  Thanks letting me share his room.