Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Surviving


Treading water, breathing slowly!  Wake up, survive! Taking life minute by minute is survival of the bereaving parent. 

In a world where everyone else is living day by day, a bereaved parent is simply surviving minute by minute. We don't know how or even why some days are harder than others but what we do know is to breathe in slow and out slow. We have to learn the "new" us that we have become. We have to put on masks for other people. We have to self preserve and take on what we can. We have to say NO when we can't be in certain situations. We have to look at other parents with living children and ache for our own. We have to breathe harder to survive.

Grieving is a full time job, no days off, no holidays, no vacation time, no clock to punch in and out of. It is full time everyday in conjunction with our real full time jobs, our day to day life and sometimes there just isn't enough time to survive the minutes. 

I will say my surviving time is on Wednesdays. My breath of fresh air is on Wednesdays. My smiles, tears, laughs, shared pain is on Wednesdays. On Wednesdays I get to sit with other bereaving parents. Parents whom have become my friends. Parents who know the depth of pain that we all live in. Parents that let me speak of Delaney with no judgements. Parents that smile when we smile over our daughter and cry when we cry over her too. Parents like many before us, and unfortunately many after us, miss our children with us.  We talk about our babies in an environment where we don't have to own other people awkwardness to talk about our dead babies. Parents who don't tell us things we can't hear, such as we will get over it. Parents that are raw with us and don't apologize for it.

See one of the things about being a bereaved parent is seeing how many people drop off, seeing how many people move on and forget about our children, how many people that can't handle our grief and expect us to be happy again. People who have never lost a child think that us parents who have should just try again. Another baby doesn't stop the pain of the one we lost. The truth is to be a bereaved parent you need to come to the realization that everyday for the rest of our lives we are missing a piece of ourselves. See the thing is when our babies die, part of us dies too! Some of us can continue on to have subsequent babies but still ache for the ones that are missing. Some of us can never babies again. There is even some of us that try again and lose more babies.  

Please if you love us and want to be a part of our lives, don't tell us to move on, don't tell us to get over it. Speak about our babies. Say our babies names! Let us know you miss them. Tell us you don't know what to say but don't keep adding to that statement. 

Delaney taught me that life is too short to care what others think about you. She taught me who in my life would stand by me and who wouldn't. Delaney is my reason for surviving. Delaney is in my every thought, every dream, every tear, every smile. Everything I do in my life now is for her. Delaney made me a mother and for that I'll keep her spirit alive as long as I am. 

Thursday, August 8, 2013

As I sit here thinking about how it's been 12 weeks now since I gave birth to our beautiful Delaney, I feel raw...


I feel these layers strip away at certain points in my day. Some days I know that I'm surviving and that I can continue to breathe but some days I ask myself why I'm living and my daughter isn't. I realize that I am not nor will I ever be the same person. I didn't lose a limb that I can learn to live without, I didn't lose a loved one that I have memories I can cherish, I didn't lose my house that I can start to build again, I didn't lose something that can be replaced, I lost my child, I lost myself, I lost my dreams of a family. Some people have told me I'll  be me again but I think it's said more for their benefit then my own. I realize that I do not smile the way I used to, I'm not the happy loving naive person I used to be that lived in a world with rainbows and unicorns. I am now a broken woman with a dead child that I never get to make a memory with. 

12 weeks ago I delivered this beautiful little girl that had all of my heart. I, like many other women, was handed my child on my chest to hold and make my lasting memories of my first kiss of her face, but I was also only able to kiss her face for that short time. I don't get to spend my life living and breathing my child here on earth, I have to work extra hard to make it known the love I have for Delaney.

I know it must be hard to always show your children how important they are. Everyday life has so much stress, time constraints, bills that need to be paid, and many other struggles that make parenthood be overwhelming at times. These are the times that you have to talk yourself through the day...but these are the day I'll never have. Instead I have the days like today where I think to myself "how would Delaney look today? What would her smile be like? What would make her giggle? Which one of us would be more wrapped around her little finger? Would she be loving her own noises yet?


Working in retail I see so many different families all the time. This week I seen a little girl that resembled what Delaney would look like. She had the staple outfit we would have her dressed in; pig tails, converse and a tutu. My heart broke, I broke, I couldn't even hold me tears in on the sales floor. I wanted to hug her and tell her how cute she was. She loved her Mommy so much. She was such a happy girl. Would Delaney be a happy girl? Would she know she was and still is our everything?


I wanted so much! I wanted the baby photo shoots with lots of pictures, I wanted the cute birthday with fingers in the cake, I wanted the first word,  i wanted the first step, I wanted her funny faces with trying new foods, I wanted her pulling the dogs tail and giving them the gross open mouth kisses, I wanted her first boat, snow mobile and 4 wheeler ride with her aunts and uncles, I wanted her little cousins to paint her nails and teach her how to read, I wanted to take off every first day of school to take pictures and scrapbook her growing up. I wanted to do her hair with all the fun ways there is out there, I wanted family days, I wanted family vacations, I wanted to have secrets with her that only we knew, I wanted to see her make friends, I wanted to see her ride a bike, I wanted to see her and Rach make the biggest mess they could making cookies for the holidays, I wanted to play Santa and watch her face light up being rewarded for being a good girl all year long. I wanted all the firsts, first book that she loved, first movie that she would watch over and over and over until we all knew every single word to it, I wanted to take long car rides and sing songs, I wanted to have cheat nights that she could stay up past her bedtime for extra cuddles and extra books, I wanted to make her smile everyday, I wanted to kiss her every night before bed and every morning when she woke up, I wanted  to see what sports she liked to play, or if she wanted to do dance or theatre instead, I wanted to see her go to school dances, I wanted to watch her graduate high school, I wanted to watch her get married and tell her that no matter how old she got she would always be my little girl, I wanted to see her fall in love, I wanted to see her become a mom, I wanted everything there is to want for a child, I wanted her, I WANT HER! She is my everything. 


12 weeks...84 days... How am I going to survive the rest of my life without her? How do I make the people that love me realize that I will never be the same person. Half of me died when I lost Delaney. I am half living and most days half living isn't even worth it but I continue to do it for her.  I continue to live my life everyday for the past 84 days because its hopefully one day closer until I have her again...