It’s that time of year again… the season where everything is a little more twinkly, a little more cozy, a little more excited. Our senses are heightened by all of the extra glow along the roads, extra vanilla in the kitchen, extra jingle on the radio (or Alexa… or Google, if you live in the Thomas house). It really is a beautiful time of year. It’s also that time of year again for us, in a different way.
This is the time of year (and I’ve been feeling it creep in here and there over the last few weeks) where our senses and thoughts are heightened in a different, non-Christmas-related way. Christmas is here, which also means that Kamri’s birthday is close behind. I didn’t plan on sitting down to write out the thoughts that have been circulating in my mind. I usually never plan to, but I always know when I’m being called back to this space. I’ve chronicled the entire journey so far (you can read all of those posts here) and I’ve learned what God’s nudging feels like and when it’s time to sit and put the thoughts that have been building up down on paper.
I think maybe this season can be a catalyst for that because I have found that it’s around this time that the grief starts to come back around and settle in for the winter. That sounds sad (and it is, to some extent), but it’s more like welcoming a familiar companion every year. One that you wish you didn’t have, but you’ve learned most of the ins and outs of each other by now to recognize that it’s the season to sit with them a little longer and feel their presence a little deeper. To me, it kind of feels like pulling out a heavy, but cozy blanket that sits in a cedar chest all year and wrapping myself into it for the next little while. So maybe it’s that act of pulling out the blanket and nestling into the inevitable that has stirred my thoughts into written reflection.
Walking through grief is anything but straightforward. This time of year points to the obvious moments where this is true, but there are so many instances all the time, in every season, where this is the case as well. I’ve been transparent this whole time with the nitty gritty of what (our; everyone’s is different) grief looks like, both in the unseen and the tangible, so I’ll share one of the tangible realities that families who have lost a child, or any family member rather, shoulder on an almost-everyday basis.
I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to explain it and I think the word that keeps coming to mind is decisions. There is a constant weight of decision that losing a child puts on you (or I’ll speak for myself here… puts on me) all the time. Pretty much everyday, we are making conscious and subconscious decisions about how to be Kamri’s parents and how to consider her within the context of our lives, given that she is not here. It’s exhausting. I know that this is might be hard to understand, so I’ll stick to some real-life examples to try and best describe what I mean.
When Kamri died, we were launched into a world of trying to figure out how and when to incorporate her as part of our family, and seven years later, parts of that are still really hard. In the beginning, it was navigating the “club that we almost fit into, but don’t really”. We were parents, but with no child to parent. Since she was our first, when she died, we were in this weird space of just having parented to a degree that some (hopefully) never will, but also still didn’t quite fit into the “parent groups” because after all of that, we still didn’t have a child.
Decisions to be made of how to identify ourselves.
When we got pregnant with Holden, from the outside (to those who didn’t know), he looked like our first. Do we correct people when they congratulate us on being new parents? Do we let it go? If we tell them he’s not our first, are we ready to wade into the discussion that will inevitably follow? But what will it feel like to let it go? If we let it go, are we letting her down? Are we shortchanging our daughter and the importance she holds for us? For the first time, we were faced with the responsibility that has never left us since: making the decision of where and when and how to include Kamri as a member of our family and when is it “appropriate” in the eyes of the rest of the world to do so.
Since then, those types of decisions- do we include Kamri in the family line up? – come up pretty regularly. The age old question, “Do you have any kids?”, is probably where that decision-making pops up most regularly. It was a really hard question to field in the beginning and nearly impossible to separate the answer from the emotion. I would dread it. I would dread having to make the decision of how to answer that question and often couldn’t do it without my eyes welling up, generally something more than the inquirer bargained for. Bet you’re sorry you asked, huh? 🙂
The question is easier now, not as jarring, but it’s still a decision to make every time. I usually start very vaguely in response to “how many kids do you have?”.
“Four.”
At that point, the conversation goes one of two ways and I have seven years of experience to back this up. Either that response is enough information for the inquirer and the conversation naturally moves in a different direction… OR, the most natural follow-up: “how old are they?”.
I always start with the youngest and work my way up: “My daughter Haven is 10 months, we have a 3 year old son, Calihan, our son, Holden, is 5, and our oldest, Kamri, would be 7 this December. She passed away a few years ago.”
There’s really no getting around it. We either tell the truth and “go there” or “don’t go there” and leave her out. It sucks. It sucks that those are the two choices. We’ve decided that it’s just not an option to leave her out of our lives and our family; that’s how we’ve chosen to move forward through grief and loss and life. BUT, the actual carrying-out of that decision in the real life, constant situations is exhausting. It’s not our reality, but what a dream it would be to be free of the responsibility of decision-making in that way.
Decisions to be made about how to answer, how to respond.
We learned a long time ago that we don’t owe everyone everything. The cashier at Target doesn’t need access to the most sacred spaces of our lives. But we still have four kids, so to answer the question with “three” physically hurts. I can feel my whole body respond in a gut-wrenching cringe to not count her. It’s not supposed to feel that way when you’re talking about your children, but it does. It’s not supposed to be this way, but it is.
The work-around that I’ve found helpful in some situations is “three here”. The asker may not know that the other isn’t just “at home and not physically right here”, but in fact, is not here at all… and that’s ok. They don’t have to know. “Three here” can work in a pinch. There are no hard and fast rules because there is no such thing in the world of grief, and I think that’s what makes it challenging and continually tiring.
It’s always a decision. It’s always something to consider, to weigh what either option offers or takes away. It’s always a responsibility to hold. Even seven years later.
But “four”. The answer is four. “We have four kids.”
So, what does having four kids (some here, some not) look like beyond the conversation topics? It looks like more decisions. 🙂 I’ve noticed over the years that these decisions not only come across our (Mitch and mine) plates, but our kids’ as well. They are entering into the age where they get/have to hold some of the responsibility of what parts of their family’s story they opt to share and in which settings and to what capacity. Especially with the start of the schooling years, the family tree projects (or more age appropriate, “draw your family”) are an interesting thing to wade through. We let them decide, often simply giving no prompts other than “ok buddy, draw your family” and seeing what happens. We don’t push them in any direction or require them to include Kamri in ways that feel unnatural or forced. We will always insist that she is part of the lineup when they list their siblings verbally in our own home, which I think already happens naturally in the ways that we talk, so it is something they are used to and comfortable with. Beyond that, we want them to have the freedom of figuring out how, when, and with whom they want to talk about her.
Sometimes I worry about this, wondering if it feels awkward or uncomfortable for them, but then I need to remind myself that we’ve done as much work as we can on ourselves and within our home on healthy grief-navigation and that’s the best we can offer them. They’ll figure it out and it’s humbling to watch them do it. When Haven was born, Holden, in his excitement to be a big brother again (and to a sister, his wish!), proudly told his pre-school class that now his family has two girls and two boys. He had figured out a way to include her like there was nothing to it.
More recently, in the beginning of his Kindergarten year this fall, he was tasked with the “draw your family” assignment. For some reason, I have a memory of him drawing the five of us, pausing and thinking about it, and then adding her in. However it came to be, the end result consisted of “Mommy, Daddy, me, Cali, Haven, and Kamri” according to his explanation, which I wrote in quotations on the back.
Decisions to be made about what our family make-up looks like to us.
For the most part, we’ve figured out what feels best for our family. Everyone’s grief is different and everyone is allowed to process and move through it in their own way. For us, she’s just a part of our gang. It hasn’t always been easy to work out what that looks like practically, and sometimes it feels clunky, but for the most part, we’ve found what works.
We still have pictures of her hanging around the house. In fact, we probably have more pictures of her than any other kid- she is the first, after all, and I don’t know a single family that doesn’t have more pictures of their first child and a near-empty baby book for their last. 🙂 When we take family photos, we always make sure to get a full-family shot with Kamri’s frame right in there and a few of the four kids all together. Kamri gets an Easter basket and a Christmas stocking, both filled with a few things for all the kids to enjoy together. Or toothpaste. 🙂 I’ve said it before, but we include her in our Halloween costume planning (just for our own laughs and fun… we don’t bring her Trick-or-Treating with us… I mean, there is a line and that’s it) and always assign her a role in the crew’s costume. In this year’s circus line-up, Kamri played the role of the bearded lady. This allows us to have some fun, light-hearted moments associated with her and gives the kids a chance to be free to have playful, laughter-filled moments with their sister. That’s been really important to us, something we try and intentionally do to balance out the more tender, sad moments. We bake her a cake and sing on her birthday for those same reasons. In the earlier years, we decorated a tabletop Christmas tree all in pink in her honor. We haven’t done that in awhile and it feels ok not to every year. Things ebb and flow, just like grief itself, and keeping an open hand with it feels like the healthy approach.
From the perspective of what works internally (in our own home we just do what feels best for us), it seems that seven years of walking through grief have taught us how to mold a life and a rhythm that feels right. Most of those decisions about how to bring and keep Kamri into the fold have held up over time and are not ones we constantly need to be evaluating. It doesn’t mean it’s always easy or always feels completely natural, which is to be expected. In fact, I’m learning that year seven of grief has introduced a new season of “does this still make sense?”, being that we’re no longer in those first few years anymore. And those types of decisions can feel sad and scary to hold and process. I’ll give you the example that has been on our minds for the last year or two and came up again this season; a full circle moment of our original Christmas chatter. Like I said before, ’tis the season. For all the festive things… Christmas cards included.
Since before she was born, Kamri has been in the picture on the front of our Christmas cards. How could we not? She’s our child, a member of our family. That has always been our thought process.
As the years go on, there’s an un-source-able pressure to consider whether we should keep doing it this way. This is where the weight of decisions that not every family has to (or should have to) make feels so very heavy. I say “pressure”, knowing fully well that this is most certainly more in our own heads than anything else. This is where transparency and vulnerability collide and while it’s scary to keep saying it how it is, I’m writing all of this in the vain of keeping things as raw and as real-time as they have always been around here. Year 7 of grief means we’re asking ourselves if we’re still allowed to put Kamri on the Christmas card. Sometimes we question it. There are some years where we go back and forth. To say that out loud or to type it even feels scary because it takes me right back to those feelings of terror that even considering a question could somehow equate to a betrayal of one of the most important people in my life. The weight of the decision of when, how, and how much is as heavy as it was the first time someone asked, “is this your first?” and the gut wrench no less excruciating. As we process this kind of decision, so many questions come to the surface that are simply a microcosm of grief as a whole:
We’re not new to grief and loss anymore, is there still space to share a representation of that part of us?
Should we have moved on by now?
Is it ok to keep talking about Kamri seven years later, as if she’s as real as ever?
Is that weird for people?
For those people that get our card in the mail, but might not know our story… are they confused why we’re holding a random photo of a baby?
What do other people do who have lost a child?
What if the way we do things isn’t the way other people do them? Is that ok?
What if what feels right for us makes someone else feel uncomfortable?
Decisions about what the rules of this are and what is still allowed.
I know the answers to some of those questions right off the bat. I know that some of the answers (and the questions themselves) don’t even matter, shouldn’t even be considered. But this is the reality when it comes to making the decisions that come with the journey of grief. They’re often not fair, not how it should be or how it was supposed to be. The reality of it is, though, that people and families that are walking the road of grief have to contend with questions and decisions that not everyone else has to. And while the answers may seem simple and straightforward at first glance (“of course, just do what is right for you!”), they’re just not. They’re tiring, layered, and complex and are often laced with pain, insecurity, and guilt. Even seven years out.
We wade in, though, and we let the feelings and thoughts come and then we make one more decision in a long line of those past and future. In the end, it will never be wrong to include Kamri and that’s where we consistently land. She’s ours, forever and ever, and no one has ever asked us to operate otherwise and even if they would… she’s ours and we’re hers and it’s ok to rest in and represent that. After all, it’s been one of the biggest blessings of our lives thus far.
I’m thankful for a few things as I unpack the grief blanket for the season and lean into some quieter moments with my girl and my thoughts. I’m thankful that the decisions are different now than they were when we first started out on this road. I’m thankful that God has been faithful in walking with us through each one. I’m thankful to be able to look back on where we started and see where we’ve come. I’m thankful for the people in our lives that have relentlessly and actively loved and cared about Kamri, allowing us the space to do the same. I’m so thankful for that.
Honestly, it’s for that reason that we’ve felt a sense of freedom from so many of those questions that I listed. Do we think about them and do they weigh on us? Sure, occasionally. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. But they don’t get the final say and they don’t get the title of “truth”. I know a few things to be absolutely true: God made and loves Kamri. There’s a reason he gave her to us and there’s a reason we were chosen to be her parents and the best thing we can do is to just keep doing that. In whatever ways He calls us to.
When I think about those truths, the complexity and pain and insecurity and guilt lighten because all of that will fade away one day, giving way to the Eternity that God has in store. An Eternity so perfect and pain-free and available to anyone who chooses to know and love Him. It’s why we send cards and celebrate this festive season in the first place- that Jesus came to be with us and then die for us so that we could be with him forever. And that is about as “merry” a thing as I could ever think of.
So, yes, it’s that time of year again… the season where everything is a little more twinkly, a little more cozy, a little more excited, and for good reason. So with that in mind, Merry (merry, merry, merry!) Christmas.
Merry Christmas from our whole family to you and yours.
Two months of Haven. Two whole months. When I started writing this, she was newly one month old and, as most things these days, it’s taken me another couple (ok, several) of weeks to finish it up. Such is life in this season. 🙂 Regardless, I can’t believe I’m typing this, but our sweet Haven has been here for over two months now and we (still) cannot get enough of her. She is, quite literally, our dream girl.
Haven Kamri Thomas was born on Wednesday, February 1, 2023 at 9:15am. She weighed 8 lbs, 6 oz and clocked in at 20.5 inches long. She’s got the Thomas baby trademark of full cheeks and a dark head of hair, and we are all very nearly obsessed with her. I wanted to pinpoint this very moment in time because she is in that stage of life where there are new changes nearly every couple of days and she’ll never be this little, this new, ever again.
These early days are tender and fleeting, it’s special to have a timestamp, of sorts, of life as it is right now. What it feels like to have a two-month-old-Haven, a few memories from the day she was born, and a place to share some sweet photos we (and by that, I mean my wonderful sis-in-law) were able to capture of her as she was in the first couple weeks of her life.
The day Haven was born, we left our house around 5:00am on Wednesday morning for the hospital. The next three or so hours were a mix of slow, sweet, full circle moments and a calm, but focused urgency to just get her here. The hospital was quiet in those first few hours as people trickled in for the day and the building slowly started to wake up with the hum of the daily rhythm. God blessed us with some beautiful, sacred moments in those first few hours. Face after face would peek around the door and then come in with hugs and hellos, so many faces we know from years of doing this in this place, most of whom were there from the very start. While there were faces we knew and were expecting, there were others that we didn’t, some that just knew we were there from L&D nurses’ board that morning… faces that have held onto their own memories from “that day” and wanted to come in and introduce themselves, and share their version of the story of Kamri’s birth. It really was the most beautiful, tender way to spend the morning as we worked our way slowly toward our fourth and final delivery.
Those moments are treasures to us, both the familiar friends and the newly acquainted, because the truth is, anyone that “was there” really doesn’t even need to introduce themselves to us before we consider them part of this family of inner circle people who were there, in those moments with us, those years ago. It was beautiful getting to walk into the birth of our final baby surrounded by the people who really have, always been there.
8:30am came and it was time to do what we had come there to do. All of the nerves and anxiety from the night before (you can read some of those thoughts here), as well as the ‘afraid-to-believe-in-it-yet’ hope and excitement came together in one collective deep breath and we took our usual places in the operating room for the birth to begin. For the most part, everything went as planned. The procedure started and there were all of the familiar sights, sounds, and smells. What a full experience it is, filled with a wealth of good, triumphant memories and heart-stopping, full-body panicking ones as well. That day was a mix, as all of our births since Kamri’s have been. This one, though, maybe even a bit more.
After a lot of pushing and pulling and tugging and hard work (on our doctor’s part… I just laid there), out she came. She was not an easy extraction because of her positioning she was in, compounded with the variables that come with this being my fourth C-Section… it ended up being quite the collaborative effort to bring Haven into the world (again… not on my part… I just laid there). Because of this, there was some stress put on her body (I’m not a doctor, I don’t know the right words) and when she finally did come out, we didn’t hear what we had been so desperate to hear.
This whole time, this whole pregnancy, we’ve operated with a “this is SO great, but she needs to cry” kind of mentality. It all comes down to that. If she breathes and cries when she’s born, then yeah, it’s awesome. But until then, this is still just a pipe dream. We’ve learned that nothings is guaranteed until it actually happens. So when Haven didn’t cry right away, it was everything we had not to let ourselves melt into panic mode again. We have a video where you can hear the nurses narrating to us what she looks like as they do her initial care and me asking, “is she breathing?” In that clip, Mitch is saying, “She’s just fine… she’s over with the nurses, they know what they’re doing… we’re going to hear her cry any second now… they’re not panicking, so we don’t have to either…”. Yes, yes, you’re right. And that’s awesome that she has hair and whatever else the reports are, “BUT IS SHE BREATHING?”
And then finally. Finally, she let out a cry, one wail after another. It took me a minute to hear it, maybe it was just slowly registering as real in my mind before I could really hear it. In that video, she interrupts Mitch’s encouraging and I can still hear the relief in his voice as he exclaims, “She’s crying! Can you hear it? Can you hear her crying?!”. Thinking about that little wail still sparks tears in my eyes. It probably always will. Haven was born at 9:15am on Wednesday, February 1, 2023 and an eternity after that, she cried. 🙂
The next few moments and days and now two months we spent taking her in, every bit of her. She’s a dream, the most wonderful final piece of our family. Like I said in the beginning, sometimes we still can’t believe she’s here.
The other night Mitch was saying that sometimes it still feels like she hasn’t been born yet, like the birth and her actually being here doesn’t feel real. For me, I am still wrapping my mind around the fact that she’s a physical reality and not just a dream that we’ve had that we’re still not sure will happen for us. I look at her and I’m still humbly blown away that I get to be her mom, that we get to be her family.
Speaking of the family, we are all doing really well. It has been a FUN two months. Moments of “holy crap, three kids here is definitely different than two” and “how do people get anything DONE with kids?”, but also “this is exactly where we’re supposed to be”. In terms of the boys… they’re doing great too. 🙂
They love Haven. I mean, LOVE her. The current running joke is that Holden is an enthusiastic, helpful lover of Haven and Calihan is the equally enthusiastic, “must be monitored at all times” sidekick.
Holden can always be counted on to run and grab a diaper or the wipes when we need it. He loves to hold her and I’ll often catch him stretching out next to her while she’s laying on a blanket on the floor, singing her songs. Last week, he got through “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star”, the “Eensy Weensy Spider”, and “Wheels on the Bus” (with all of the hand motions) before he noticed me filming him and broke out in a giant grin. His favorite thing to do is to pick out her hair bows, carefully finding the perfect match to whatever outfit she’s in. It is really special to see how proud he is of Haven and how proud he is to fulfill his role as her older brother. He wanted another sister and what a joy it is watching his dream come to life, just like ours has.
Calihan is our resident “Haven-kisser” and update-giver. He absolutely, 100% of the time cannot help himself… he must stop, lean over, kiss her on the forehead, and sing-song, “Hi, Havey bell!” way too loud and way too close to her ear. It’s one of our very favorite things… he loves her so, so much and considers it his current calling to tell us everything she is doing at any given moment. A few of the regulars we hear are, “Haven cwying!” and “Ooo! He’s (we’re still working on pronouns) eyes are open!” He takes good care of her in the ways that his two and a half year old self can. When she cries, he will stop whatever it is he’s doing to find her and give her a pacifier. Their relationship is so special and Calihan is the sweetest mix of little buddy meets brand new big brother.
What a treasure it is to get to watch these boys love their sister so well. It is a gift we cherish, being on the front lines of watching them figure out how to be brothers to each other and their sisters, each with their own separate relationship. And in terms of our girls… well, we have to pinch ourselves nearly everyday that we get to be parents to both of them. What a gift it has been, one that we will never, ever take for granted.
Welcome to the crew, Havey girl… what a wonderful fourth and final you are. We’re so glad you’re here and can’t wait to see what God has in store for this foursome of ours.
So there’s the run-down on what life has been looking like these past two months. A mix of all of the things… some just like they were before and some totally and completely new and different. Life with Haven here is so very sweet and knowing that she’s our last baby has made us soak it up all the more.
Haven Kamri Thomas… first a name that God gave us and now a real, live little girl. Her name has been locked in since day one. Honestly, it’s been locked in for six years now, we just never knew if we’d have the chance to use it or not. Neither of us can remember exactly how it came to us, it just did and there was no question for either of us that if we had another girl, her name would be Haven. Haven Kamri.
Her middle name in honor of her big sister, the bravest, most loving girl we know… we hope that this name reminds her just how loved she is- by her siblings, her parents, and most of all, her Savior. We hope it ties them together with a bond that spans across earth and eternity, reminding her that this world is not her forever home and that the greatest gift she’ll ever know is an eternal life with God and when she needs a reminder of that hope, she can rest in the fact that her big sister is there and waiting for her. And finally, a reminder to us that there is life to be lived here on earth and until God calls us home, we get the privilege to live it fully and live it well.
And her first name, Haven. A sacred, safe place. A place of peace and joy and welcome. A place to land on, to rest in, to stay. Feels a lot like heaven. In fact, it wasn’t until just before she was born that it hit us and the full circle tears of joy and sorrow and heartache and triumph collide together as we realized why God orchestrated her name just so, all of those years ago. And for those of you who have walked this journey with us all of these years may feel the ripples of how “meant to be” she is flood through you as you read, or sing, this last bit. Haven… Almost heaven.
8:05 AM
Yesterday, we were two days out. Now it’s tomorrow. TOMORROW. Like I said yesterday, I’m going to try and get my thoughts about all that’s about to happen down on paper before our world shifts again and everything is different. Today’s timestamp is uniquely January 31, 2023. And I don’t have a lot of time… it’s currently 8:05am, we need to leave to take Holden to pre-school, head over to our pre-op appointment, and wrap up all the last minute things before it’s go-time. Including packing our bags. 🙂 So let’s get right to it… a collection of thoughts about our newest addition, the beautiful (albeit complex) journey to get here, and what we’re feeling RIGHT NOW about going to do this whole thing one final time.
WOW. Only in our very wildest dreams did we ever dare to imagine that we’d be here again. Pregnant with a girl. A GIRL. There is so much to unpack here and I won’t bore you by trying to even scratch the surface of all of it. As you can imagine, it’s all of the feelings and emotions and often all at the same time. First and foremost, we are so very, very excited.
We are humbled by God’s gift of another child in general… a decision that we spent a lot of time thinking, praying, and wondering if would be the right move for our family. We love our three and are so content with the boys that God has blessed us with. In the end, we decided that three on earth and our angel baby will be the final count for the Thomas family… so one more adventure in bringing a new baby into the world.
That decision, for us, had to come with some serious reflection, particularly about gender. In the end, the only way we could see doing this again is if we could genuinely say that we would feel the same level of peace, joy, and contentment regardless if the baby ended up being a boy or a girl. That general conversation is a much larger one for another day and another post. It’s a tender topic (not talked about nearly as often as it should) and can be for anyone bringing children into the world with a specific hope for a boy or a girl.
Like I said, we have been so very blessed with and by our two boys and I have thought, several times throughout this pregnancy, how very thankful I am that our two children after Kamri were boys; were these specific boys. We needed them, exactly who they are and exactly who God created them to be in the exact timing he did too. Our lives are so sweet because of them and a big part of us was ready to be set with the family we had. The other part of us would have been thrilled to bring a third boy home, should we decide to have one more. We had gotten to that point (and had needed to in order for the decision to be a ‘yes’). After all, how else could our lives have looked but even more beautiful with another Holden or Calihan in the mix?
It’s a both/and situation here. It always has been. We have always been both thankful for what the Lord has given us and hopeful that someday we’d get another chance to raise a daughter here on earth. We’ve always wanted to be parents to a little girl. The day we found out Kamri was a girl was one of the sweetest days of our lives- something we had always dreamed of. I think that is part of the reason it hurt so much when she died. In some ways, it felt like God had given us everything we’d ever wanted, only to take it away. I know that is such a small and finite human way of seeing it, but we lived in that pain for awhile, even though the truth is so much bigger than that and broader than we can understand here on earth and God is way more loving than that painful statement falsely paints him to be. But the other truth also remained that still, deep inside us, was a longing for a girl.
We’ve opted to find out the sex of each of our babies… it’s just the way we’re wired. We need to know. 🙂 It has been particularly helpful, in navigating a complex season of bringing children into the world, to know ahead of time. It has given us the gift of time to process and prepare and be excited for both scenarios. For some (Kamri and Cali), we’ve waited until the 20 week anatomy ultrasound and for others (Holden and Baby T), we’ve chosen to do the early blood work at 10 weeks.
12:40 PM
What a whirlwind of a morning. We just walked back in the door a few minutes ago… Holden is at school, Cali will go down for a nap soon, and we’ll have a couple of hours to take a breather, get a few things wrapped up around the house, finish the dang bags, and let the morning settle before it’s time to go get Holden again and transition into the evening. Mitch just went down to the basement to bring up the pack ‘n play to set up next to our bed… it’s getting serious now. It feels like both a moment and a lifetime ago that we were at the starting line with all of this and now it’s almost time!
I’ll never forget the moment we found out that this baby is who she is… I had gotten my blood drawn at that 10 week mark, we had waited the two weeks they said it would take for the results to come back in, and after we couldn’t wait any longer for them to call, we just called in ourselves. I left a voicemail with the nurse’s station with my name, DOB, and the request for a call back with the results. The call came back soon after and before we knew it, the nurse was asking, “Are you ready to find out the sex?”… “You’re having a little girl!”.
Wow. Wow wow wow.
This morning has been a fascinating mix of calm and the beginnings of sensory triggers. Contrary to yesterday morning where we were definitely in our heads and both working through different fears and anxieties, this morning we were operating out of a focused, adrenaline-laced peace. We had our wits about us, knowing what we needed to do and thankful for a mindset of calming excitement. The pre-op appointment was as short and sweet as one can be; bloodwork, going over the pre-surgery steps I’ll need to take tonight, quick blood pressure/heart/lung check, and we’re out of there. Good thing, too, because toward the end, the familiarity of the sights and sounds and smells of a working hospital slowly began to fire off memories of all the times we’ve done this before. Not just the hard ones… we’ve had two very beautiful and successful births since Kamri, but all of them have a complex layer of excitement mixed with unbridled fear and nerves… it’s just how it is. Being in the hospital this morning started the slow trickle of bringing all of those emotions that settle into dormancy back to the surface. We know by now to just expect them to continue to grow as the day and night goes on.
12:52 PM
And what do you know, as I sit here typing, the call comes in from the hospital with the final details for tomorrow. C-section will be at 8:30am, we’ll need to be there at 5:30am. And just like that, all systems are a go and with every passing minute, the feelings get more and more real.
That concept of “real” is a mind-blowing one… we’ve had to ask ourselves that very question so many times throughout this pregnancy. Is this for real? We’re having another baby. We’re having a GIRL. It can’t be… it can’t be for real. Something that lived only in our deepest dream worlds, something we had resigned ourselves to probably never being our actual reality. There have been so many things we’ve had to mentally shut down over the last six years, knowing that our first baby girl is not here anymore and the blessings of our baby boys do not apply to. I had to stop watching video tutorials on little girl hairstyles and coach my brain away from imagining the day I’d get to do one on my own daughter. That might be a dream I’ve always had that will remain just a dream. Mitch has had to steel himself off while watching dads dance with their daughters at their weddings, coming face to face with the pain of that potential loss of experience with his own. That might be a day that never comes. I’ve learned to love shopping for boy clothes, finding my own style within a genre of colors and patterns that was once so painfully different than what we thought we’d be filling our drawers with. We may never have a drawer of girl clothes in our home again. I truly do love it now, shopping for our sons, but it took some practice and patience in switching gears from the sex of our first baby to the sex of our second. The undoing of dreams, even as new and equally stunning ones unfold, is excruciating.
Now, I find myself on the other side of the spectrum… I’m nervous to approach the girl clothes in stores, feeling like I don’t belong there, like I’m breaking some kind of rule. I’ve worked so hard to not even imagine shopping on that side of the store anymore that doing so again feels dangerous and unsafe, like I’m about to hurt myself mentally and emotionally because I don’t actually have a girl to shop for.
But we do. And it doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem real yet.
I think this is where it gets particularly complex for us… we’ve come to terms with the fact she’s actually a girl and she’s actually coming. It feels so scary to get excited, but we are SO excited. We all are. Holden, in particular, has been set on a baby sister since the beginning. He wouldn’t hear of any other option and the day we found out, we couldn’t wait until he woke up from his nap to tell him. He came into our room with bleary, sleepy eyes and we said, “Holden, we have something to tell you. We know what the baby is… it’s a GIRL.” His entire face lit up and he croaked out in his just-woken-up squeal, “I knew it! I wanted it to be a girl and it IS!”
We’ve embraced it fully, allowing ourselves to believe that it’s true- we get to have another baby girl. The complexity comes in believing and trusting in the realness that she’ll stay.
3:46 PM
The day continues on. Holden’s back from pre-school and the afternoon is weaning into evening. We’re finally packed. Like packed, packed. 🙂 I mean, toothbrushes won’t happen until tomorrow morning, but we’re about as packed as we can get. We did the boys first and actually had them ready to go last weekend, thinking we’d capitalize on pulling clothes from a mountain of clean laundry and sticking them right in their bags. Holden is old enough now to be almost as capable as he is excited about packing his suitcase. This time, I made a list and we worked through it together, me reading off to him how many shirts and pants and pairs of underwear he needed to find and him picking out his favorites from the pile and carefully folding each one before tucking it into his suitcase. They’re ready to go. Mitch got himself packed up in a matter of minutes yesterday… he’s all set. I puttered around yesterday, this morning, this afternoon slowly adding to my bag. We’re not packing a lot- we’ve done this enough times to know just how little you actually need. The last and smallest bag to pack is hers.
She gets the fewest amount of things because after taking into account what the hospital provides, she needs the least. But hers is still the last bag to be packed and I think that part of it may be because packing her bag is another step of this journey that dares us to trust that she’ll get to use what’s in it.
We know the reality of preparing for a baby, only to have to undo all of those preparations. We’ve decorated a nursery that never saw the child it was designed for. We’ve put crib sheets on a crib that never housed that baby’s bedtime. We have packed the bag that just got unpacked a month later with nothing but a pair of socks used out of it. The undoing of preparations is excruciating.
So it feels a little scary to pack her bag.
Will we actually get to put these clothes on her?
Will she wear this hat or be wrapped in this blanket?
Or harder still… beyond clothes and blankets…
Will we give her a bath that won’t be both a first and last?
Will we dress her in this coming home onesie instead of a baptism dress?
Or if we get to the deepest, darkest heart of it all… before any of that even…
Will we feed her any other way than from a cotton swab?
Will she be brought over so we can hold her? The same day she’s born?
Will tomorrow be the day we hear our daughter cry?
I know how heavy this feels, how heavy this reads. This is where it gets messy and uncomfortable, and I recognize that. That’s part of grief and trauma and the act of learning to live and continue to experience life afterwards. It’s part of learning to hold two experiences that are so parallel in some ways and so drastically different in others. The fact is, we’ve lived and experienced two beautifully boring births (that might be downplaying it juuuuust a bit, but you get what I’m saying) since Kamri’s, so in addition to those really hard questions, there is also a lot of hope because while we know how terribly sadly this can go, we also know how well it can go too.
I remember the boys’ births so clearly, probably because we were so desperate for them to be here and ok, that every moment of those experiences is seared into our memory. Holden’s was terrifying in that he was the first after Kamri and… you get it. I wrote a post on how we were feeling the night before his birth; you can read that here. Calihan’s was a little easier because we had finally had an experience in Holden’s that went as it was expected to, but still… there will never be a birth of ours that doesn’t have seconds and minutes that feel like hours where we’re holding our breath and clenching every muscle in our bodies until we know for sure that everything is ok.
We are immensely thankful for our boys and the beautiful deliveries we’ve had with them. From all medical and scientific perspectives, tomorrow’s delivery should be no different. And yet, she’s a girl and the last time we went in to deliver a girl… it’s a hard sentence to finish.
8:08 PM
Evening… night… less than twelve hours before we’re due at the hospital. It’s a cycle through every version of every thought you can think of. We are SO excited to meet her. We are SO nervous about all of the steps leading up to that point. It’s a jittery, butterfly-filled, pit in our stomach feeling.
We’ve done the hard work in counseling to “walk through” the experience and let whatever emotions and feelings that are going to naturally come up, come up. We’ve sat with the hardest parts of where we’ve been and what tomorrow may bring. We are ready and prepared to welcome the deepest emotions that will come with tomorrow and have already spent time in some of them with the help and loving guidance of our counselor. It’s the shallower nerves that riddle the last bit of night… nerves that everyone has, I’m sure. Ours just have a haunt to them that won’t ever go away, no matter how many times we do this.
All of those mini steps that lead up to the victory we are anticipating, the victory we are pleading God for tomorrow… those mini steps have us in a bundle of excited nervousness that can only be quelled by staying focused, not going too far down unhelpful trains of thought, coming back to God again and again in prayer throughout the night, and taking our minds off of it with the latest TV show we’re binge watching.
But we’re ready.
We’re so ready for tomorrow. We can’t wait to go and spend one last morning with the medical team that has become family to us, walking the path of all four of our children’s births with us. These people have sat in the pews at Kamri’s funeral and on the edge of hospital beds, holding our boys. We can’t wait to give them hugs tomorrow morning, to sip early morning coffee before things get going (them, not me… my food and drink intake sadly comes to an end at midnight tonight), to chat about their lives and families that we’ve come to care so much about as they’ve cared for ours, to laugh together (four kids in with this same group of people- we’ve done about as much laughing as we’ve done crying), and then to dial in and get it done. As our doctor said at our last visit, “we didn’t come this far to trip over the finish line, we’re running right through it”. We can’t wait for that final sprint and the triumph and celebration to follow.
We’re ready.
