Our Baby Basket

Life has been hard lately. Don't get me wrong; overall, things are going well. I still love my job, Darren graduated from BYU with his bachelor's degree in IT, we're planting a garden, our friends are wonderful, and our family is just as amazing as ever. Our lives are, I think, objectively going pretty well. But the last few months have been so ... hard. And draining.

I was really caught off-guard when I first started noticing that I was showing symptoms of depression a few months after our miscarriage. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised me -- grief & loss are difficult things, so *of course* I'd be feeling down. But it was more than that. I wasn't just "feeling down" -- I was really struggling. Like, not-wanting-to-get-out-of-bed-ever kind of struggling. All-I-want-is-chocolate-and-PJs kind of struggling. Feeling-numb-and-distant kind of struggling. And maybe it surprised me because I felt like I had handled things fairly well back in September. I had felt peace and comfort and purpose and reassurance and support. And I still do feel those things! But some days (or weeks) are just really freaking hard.

And that's okay.

I'm trying to take care of myself -- reaching out to friends, talking with Darren, keeping busy, eating (fairly) well, and trying to be kind to myself. Those things all help. It also helps that our friends are really awesome & supportive, and they're exactly the kind of support network we need in our lives right now. (To those friends reading this -- you know who you are, and you are literal Godsends.)

Tonight was one of those nights that was just really hard. Lately I've been dealing with a sort of insomnia -- I don't want to go to sleep because that means I have to deal with tomorrow soon, and I am *not* mentally or emotionally prepared to deal with tomorrow. (This happens most nights, not just for a particular "tomorrow.") So tonight, when I wasn't able to sleep, I went into our craft room, which is also our someday-nursery, and I pulled out my "baby basket."



And I went through each dear, precious item in this tiny basket and had myself a good, grieving, cleansing cry. After the miscarriage, I made a very conscious decision to NOT put any of the baby stuff "away" or out of sight. To me, that would have been a sign that I had given up; that I lost this baby and I don't ever want to think about that sad fact ever again, so I will hide from it. (This was how it felt *for me* -- if you are grieving and need to put things "away," you do what you need. I'll love ya no matter what.)

So we've kept all the baby stuff. It may seem weird, but going through it and seeing all the cute little reminders of babies is both heartbreaking and encouraging. For me, it's a reminder of loss, yes, but also a promise of what's to come.

I don't know if this will make sense to anyone else, but I felt strongly that I should share my experience tonight to help others who may be going through similar situations.

So here's my baby basket. I've never really shared this with anyone other than Darren, but it holds most of the little reminders of our sweet angel baby...


The adorable, soft burp cloth that I hand-crocheted a border on...


This incredibly sweet card my friend's little girls made for us when they heard our baby had died...


The tiny first quilt I'd ever made, with a super-soft fuzzy border, perfect for a carseat blankie...


Itty-bitty baby clothes my Mom sent us the day she found out I was pregnant...


And my very favorite picture of Jesus Christ ever....


My pregnancy journal. I only got to write in it 5 times, but I'm not getting rid of it....


It has all of our baby's pictures in it...


Including the "no heartbeat" image (that I possibly stole?) from our last ultrasound....


And the letter I wrote to our baby on the day we found out about the miscarriage....


That letter is the reason I'm writing this massively long post today. I won't share it all here -- it feels too personal and sacred to share on the internet -- but reading through it reminded me of the peace I felt that day. August 31, 2015 "should" have been one of the worst days of my life, but it wasn't! We were sad, of course -- beyond sad! Heartbroken, devastated, grieving -- but we were surrounded by the comfort of the Spirit and the promises that we have been sealed by God's priesthood as an eternal family unit, and that we will be able to see and hold and love our baby in person in Heaven. In that letter, I told our baby how much we love them and look forward to meeting them one day; but for now, they are "in God's care right now, and I can't imagine a better babysitter for our precious child. ... This is not how I would have chosen for your life to go, but evidently Heavenly Father has bigger plans for you than I ever could."

I needed these reminders tonight. Yes, this is hard. Yes, my heart breaks when I think about the baby we don't get to hold right now. No, I wouldn't ever want to go through this again. But I know that we will be okay. I don't have any idea how things will go for us from here on out, but I know that today, I am loved. Today, we have friends and family who rally around us and help lift us up when we are feeling down. Today, we had sunshine. Tomorrow we might have rain. This journey isn't at all what we expected it would be, but I know that God knows and loves us, and so things will be good.

My parents sent this card along with the cute baby clothes when they found out we were expecting, and tonight, perhaps because it is 2 o'clock in the morning, it seemed weirdly ... prophetic:

"There is wonder in the waiting."

I have wondered many things while waiting, but maybe it's time I start looking for the wonder *in* our waiting.

A quote from Elder Jeffrey R Holland has been rolling through my head lately:

"Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven. But for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come."

With all my heart and soul, I believe this to be true. I don't know how, and I don't know when, but we will be able to work through this grief and pain. We will be able to have and raise children, whether in this life or in the eternities. For now, we keep trying, we keep working, we keep believing, and we keep leaning on our loved ones.

Good Things and Hard Things

(Note: This post was started in November 2015. I've sat on it for months trying to work out how to say what I meant, but I've decided to just publish it as-is.)



This last week (the first week of November 2015) has been full of good things and it has been full of hard things. It's been a rollercoaster of a week -- partially because there were actual, physical rollercoasters involved, but also because I've been trying to sort through my emotions and understand better why, even when I'm surrounded by good things, I occasionally just feel the need to cry. So bear with me as I try to dump words on a page to make sense of the jumble in my brain.

I tend to think of things in boxes, and the boxes don't touch. (If you're unfamiliar with Mark Gungor's "Men's brains vs. Women's brains" spiel, go give it a listen. It's pretty entertaining.) Events and things happen in their own little boxes, and once I'm done with a box and pack it neatly away, I don't usually expect it to leak into other boxes -- especially not into boxes that are figuratively across the room. So when these emotional leaks happen (and happen they do), it takes me some time to sort out where all the extra emotion is coming from. Which brings me back to this week.

We went to Disneyland! It was really fun and exhausting and we got to see Mickey and talk with Mary Poppins and ride the Mark Twain steam ship and eat delicious food and it was all fantastic. The wonderful company I work for sent Darren and I (and several other families from the office) to Disneyland Resort in California for a week, and it was a great vacation. I planned and organized the whole trip, so I've been looking forward to it for months.

When I first booked the trip, I was about 6 weeks pregnant. I did the math, and figured I'd be about 20 weeks by the time we visited Mickey Mouse. "Perfect!" I thought. "We should be able to find out the sex of the baby before we go, and we can get fun baby souvenirs. I've always loved the little tiny Mickey ears!" Then, a few weeks after booking the trip, I miscarried. Even with how much peace and love and support I felt going through the miscarriage, I knew there would be rough days (and weeks, and maybe months) ahead. But overall I felt okay; I felt fairly calm and like perhaps I had dealt with that particular grief and could move forward in faith and positivity. In fact, there were days where I didn't think about the miscarriage at all -- I was handling it much better than I expected to, all things considered.

In the week or so before our trip, there were a few moments where I felt sad as I realized a milestone I had been looking forward to -- finding out the sex of the baby -- wasn't going to happen. Disneyland is supposed to be "the happiest place on Earth" and we were "supposed" to be going there with some of the happiest news of our lives, but instead we were going without.


(This is where the original post left off. From what I can remember, I started crying while writing and had to walk away. I never could figure out how to finish this post, so I'll just leave you with this: Disneyland was wonderful, and it was hard, and that's okay. It wasn't nearly as bad as I worried it might have been, and I'm glad we took the opportunity to go & make happy memories together.)