Hellobee

*Earlier this week, I reposted a post I wrote for my personal blog about losing our first pregnancy to miscarriage. Today, I thought I would repost another post from my personal blog that I originally published on October 15, 2015, which was also Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. This post talks  about how pregnancy loss continued to affect our family planning decisions after that first pregnancy loss. As we wrap up National Infertility Awareness Week, I thought I would share this post here as well (again fully recognizing that our journey to pregnancy does not even qualify as “infertility”)* 

October 15th is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day, which may seem like an odd day to tell the story about a baby we didn’t lose. At the risk of this post coming across as insensitive, please hear me out.

We lost a baby before we had Big P. That baby was supposed to join our family in early January 2013. 3 ½ years and 2 babies later the memory of that loss is still painful. I will never forget how losing that baby felt like somebody had surgically removed my heart from the rest of my body. That baby was not just a double line on a pregnancy test or an undersized image on an early ultrasound. That baby was fiercely loved and wanted. That baby was supposed to be the little person that made us a family. Losing that baby changed me. It completely turned my life upside down and inside out, which is why I often categorize life events in my head by whether they happened “before” or “after” that day in May 2012 when we heard the words “I am sorry for your loss”.

After we lost that baby, I looked at everything in my life from friendships to jobs to family to marriage through a different lens. Pregnancy losses don’t happen in a vacuum. You don’t just lose a baby, try again, then move on after you have a healthy pregnancy and baby. You don’t just forget that the way you envisioned your family growing is different from how it actually grew or didn’t grow. The way you think about family “planning” and frankly about life changes. In our case we were extremely lucky to get pregnant again so quickly after losing our first pregnancy and to have a healthy pregnancy and baby. Even when I complain about Big P’s naughty behavior, I always try to keep my perspective in check because I know how very very lucky we are to have that little man in our lives.

But even after having Big P the memory of that loss lingered. We knew we wanted more than one kid. After having Big P and surviving the newborn stage, we started to think about trying to have another baby and we kind of just assumed that process may be difficult. We had been there before and had so many friends that struggled with secondary infertility after relatively easy first pregnancies. It felt inevitable that the journey toward Baby #2 would be at best bumpy and at worse heartbreaking. Because of that, we really let go of any attempt to plan or not plan for our second baby. After Big P turned one, we just let life happen knowing full well it could take us years and multiple losses before we had two kids or we could potentially have our hands very full with two little ones very close in age. Miraculously for us the latter happened, which is how Little P ended up entering this world a mere 21 1/2 months after his older brother Big P did.

And even though having two very little kids while working full time presents its own unique challenges, let me state unequivocally that I wouldn’t change a thing (well maybe somedays the working full time part). In many ways Little P is our miracle baby because I fully expected that his pregnancy would end in a loss just as our pregnancy before Big P had. I went to my 8 week appointment prepared to leave in tears. I had already thought through which option I would elect to remove this “lost” baby from my womb. I was preparing myself to grieve the loss of Big P’s sibling when instead we got the greatest gift. We got Little P.

And on this day when so many of us remember and mourn those babies that we lost, I thought it was also appropriate to celebrate the one we didn’t lose. The one we purposely did not plan for knowing those plans often end in heartbreak. The one we never would have had so soon after having his brother if we hadn’t heard those heartbreaking words years before. Today I want to celebrate the miracle that made our lives a lot louder, messier, crazier, and most importantly more full of joy and laughter almost six months ago.

Little P is a perfectly imperfect baby. For the first few months of his life he was a terrible sleeper. He still hasn’t quite figured out the art of napping. He prefers to be held every moment he’s awake except when he wants to stretch and move, in which case he wants an audience. He spits up more than I thought any baby was capable of (UPDATE – it turns out Little P was severely allergic to milk!). His height and weight map to the WHO growth chart like a yo yo. Feeding him has been challenging at best. And he’s had more ear and viral infections in 5 1/2 short months than his older brother has had in 2+ years. He also giggles and laughs more than I dreamed possible (quite appropriately as his name means laughter) and has the best head of hair. The way his face lights up when he sees someone he loves literally takes my breath away and serves as my daily reminder of what’s really important in life. It is quite clear already that our Little P is a bubbly extrovert just like his Daddy. He is fiercely determined and has mastered crawling over 5 months earlier than his older brother did. He was the perfect addition to our family at arguably an “imperfect” time, and on this day of all days the significance of that is not lost on me.

I don’t know if we will try (or not not try) to have another baby or whether we will even be able to do so (UPDATE – we did in fact not not try to have another baby and were extremely blessed to welcome Baby P to our family in June 2017, which meant for about a week we had 3 boys under 4. My, how life surprises you sometimes!). But today, in the midst of the sleep deprivation and craziness that comes with having a baby and a young toddler, I am above of all thankful for all 3 of our perfectly imperfect babies and for their unbreakable ties to one another. To all of you walking that long lonely road of loss or infertility right now, please know you are not alone. I can’t promise you a happy ending, but I can promise your journey is not in vain. Your babies’ lives matter. Your journey matters. My heart aches for you. And I pray someday soon you will know it was all worth it.

P.S. Little P turned 3 just one week ago and seeing these photos was almost too much for my mushy mom heart this morning. Photos taken by C.Belle Photography.