Today I have been very confused & lost. I weep. I sigh. I have no idea what to do with myself. I am confused. There are no answers. I want my baby back, DAMN IT! And I can not have her. I have been robbed, cheated, let down. I think of all the could of beens, and I cry. This hurts so DAMN BAD! I do not know how I am going to survive.
We went and saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, and Amadala dies from losing the will to live, because she lost her love. Well I understand that. I lost my love, my darling Alexa & I feel no hope right now. None. Zero. I can not see my future. What am I to do? What purpose do I have? It is all mixed up. I am very thankful for my other two children, but I am fixated on what I lost. I was so looking forward to having a baby again & that is gone. Yes, we can try for another & hopefully we will have another one. But I WANTED this one!! My Alexa Rose. I wanted her. Why did she get taken??? Why? Why? How do I go on? How do I breathe?? Will I ever live again, or will I weep forever???

Confused

Well, I am not crying every moment of the day, I think that is good. But I am still very very sad. I am tired of being sad all the time, as it is taxing. But what happiness can I have right now. I know my kids are awsome & healthy, and that makes me happy, but that does not take me out of my fog. It is so confusing.
I am also confused with what to do. Not just with my life, but with my daily tasks. I keep think of what I "should" be doing if Alexa was still alive. I should be holding a baby, changing diapers, nursing, all those baby things I was looking forward too. I miss them. I yearn for them. Will that go away too? It is hard.
I miss Alexa so much. It encompasses me. I ventured out of the house for really the first time yesterday, with my wonderful husband. It was hard. I saw babies & pregnant women EVERYWHERE! Every place we went they were there! I just pray that their babies make it safely into this world & I wish those that are born get many hugs & kisses from their Mommies. How in the world am I going to go back to working with babies???? Where will I find the strength?? My desire is there, for I love working with them, but the pain I feel when I see them is overwhelming. Oh what to do!!!

Tonight it will be two weeks since my baby died. It is so surreal. I have so many wierd thoughts. I want to go find another baby & call it my own. I expect someone to bring one to my door step. These are not rational thoughts, I am a very rational person. From my reading, these are normal thoughts for a grieving mother, but it is wierd. I also know it will not become reality, & that they are crazy but I think them. When does that end?
I fear forgetting what my baby looked like. I am constantly looking at her pictures. I am so glad I have them. From looking around on the internet for support I realize how lucky I am to have them. I also am blessed to have spent so much time with my Alexa, as other mourning Mamas did not get that time. So sad. I will cherish those hours I got to love on her & hold her close to my heart. Sad that I will never get to do it again, but I will remember her soft skin & hair. Oh baby why did you have to go?? My heart will always hold you gently, and today I weep. Someday I hope the sting is lessoned.

Gone for 12 days

My dear Alexa has been gone for 12 days. It seems so surreal. I am in a haze/fog. When people ask how I am doing, I say "I am muddling through." There are times when the pain is so fierce, and I am sobbing & have no idea where my next breath will come from. Then I breathe & it passes, and I wait to feel better, but it has not come. Then I find myself like zombie without a brain, staring into blank space, and I have to bring myself back to reality. I know in order to heal, that I have to feel each feeling, to the fullest. Accept it & embrace it.
Grief is an interesting thing. While I had grief with my fathers passing, it was nothing like this. When he passed it was a big sigh of relief, Dad is no longer in pain, struggling. With Alexa, she never new life outside the womb. She did not get a life here on this earth. She never saw my face, that makes me sad. I know she heard our voices, but she never got to see her family. That is a hard one to swallow. It is not as if she did not know love. Oh, how I loved her inside me. I nurtured her, I hugged my belly. I sang songs to her & talked to her. I have grief that she never got to see her Mom & Dad & her brother & sister. My Dh says that probably made it eaiser for her go, than for us to let her go. That is so true, maybe perhaps. I have to think about that one.
I am working on letting go of the guilt. I did the best with the information I had then. If I had known that this was going to happen, I would have changed my path in a second. But I did not know. I had no warning. I was informed & I made the choices I thought were best at the time. It is time to stop blaming myself, for I am not to blame. It just is. That is hard to accept. It just is. For I want to have had control & but didn't. I wanted to trust the process & it failed me, not I failed it.
Dear Alexa, know you Mama loves you & misses, and will every day of her life. My sweet baby girl.

Baby Alexa 

Regret & Guilt

These two words keep coming into my mind. I regret my choices of childbirth for Alexa. Did my stubborness & beliefs contribute to her death. If I had not chosen homebirth & stayed with standardized medical care, would she still be alive?? Then the guilt comes. I do not have any answers. I am looking for answers. I feel blame. I blame myself to much. This is very hard.

Fathers Day

Today is Fathers Day. What a solemn day for my husband. We have been so busy that I did not even get him a card. I keep reminding him & myself that we are parents of three. Two here on earth with us & one in heaven.
I realized a fear in all this grief. I fear forgetting my baby Alexa. I had her such a short time& our memories are so few. I only knew her inside me. I keep journaling how strong her movements were so that I do not forget. With my other two children, those memories have faded and that is ok because I have them on the outside. With Alexa that is all I have. Remember Mom, remember.
Today I seem stronger. I guess I will have days like this, so strong & others where I weep uncontrollably. Both are ok. I am walking through my grief & sorrow. It is a long journey & I have just begun.

My daughter died 8 days ago

While I have been hand writing in a journal, I have decided to step up to technology & write a blog. Just think, months ago I had no idea what a blog was, & now I am using one to memorilize my sweet, Alexa Rose & to journal my grief.
Alexa Rose was born still, 6/10/05 at 42 weeks after what was a pretty uneventful pregnancy. Here is her birth story.On Thursday evening my family & I went walking a the local market night, trying to start labor. When I was walking I had a huge muscle spasm on the left side of my uterus. I did not think much of it. Later that night, Alexa was moving like crazy. We were watching & enjoying that so much! (I do not know if it has anything to do with what happened, but that was the only pain I had suffered.) The next morining I woke up with a cold. I called my midwife to see what I could take being at term. After about 1 1/2 hours of being awake, I noticed she had not moved. I went & laid down, to do a kick count. Nothing. I drank juice & ice water, nothing. So I called my midwife back, and told her I had not felt movement this morning, (it is now noon), and that I wanted to have a heart rate check. She was about 45 minutes away. She got to my home & we went into my bedroom. She looked for a heartbeat for about 10 minutes & I kept saying, Oh my God, I knew this was going to happen. (Call is a feeling. I will write about this later.) I told my midwife, I know she is gone, lets just go to the hospital. She was so diligent looking for a HB and wanted to keep trying. I told her I was ready to leave. Anyway, we called the hospital. They told us to come & go through the ER. My DH happened to be working at the hospital that day, and I had him go to the ER before we got there and ask what we were to do. The ER told him to have me go straight to L & D. Then they aksed who my Dr. is. I told them, I had been seeing a midwife & Dr. V. They said, Dr. V does not back up any midwife. I said that Dr. V is not her back up but that I had concurrent care. The nurses then very snotty said, you saw him early on & quit. I said no, I saw him until 37 weeks. Anyway, they finally get me into a room. If anything is good about this horrible nightmare, Dr. V was the emergency on call OB. He came in very peacefully. That was so nice. The ultrasound machine was already in the room & he scanned my belly. I could see her spine, head, legs, but no movement. Nothing, just a still baby. They then has ultrasound come in and verify that my baby had died. I did not even give them a chance to give me options. I knew I wanted a c-sec. (My mom had a late term still born & it was hell. After hearing that story all my life I knew what I wanted.) I knew that once I had this c-sec, any future children would be c-sec (which we are). My midwife then told me how hard physically my recovery would be, but I was ok with that. It took about 2-3 hours to finally hae the surgery. Waiting was hard, as I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted to hold her & look at her & love her & kiss her. She was born still at 6:15pm. My Dh was with me. He got to hold her right away. I held her in recovery. I did hours of skin to skin with her. She was so soft. She looked like she was sleeping. They finally got me into my room at 9:30pm where my family & friend were waiting. Actually, my kids came in first to hold her. They handled this so well. We bathed her as a family and dressed her. We took a foot mold. I dressed her in the knit soaker I had made for her. We had her for 7 hours after she was born. My mom baptized her during her bath. We just loved on her. She looks just like my other two kids did when they were born. Lots of dark hair, fair skin. She was smaller than my other two. She was 7lbs 6oz & 20 inches. They were 8lbs 7oz & 8lbs 10oz & 22 inches. She looked absolutly perfect. I will alway have a hole in my heart for my Alexa. She had such a short life, but a very loved & nurtured life. We are planning her funeral. Going home from the hospital was very hard. Seeing all her beautiful things. I am trying to remember the positive pregnancy that I had. I have many unanswered questions, and I am not sure if they will ever get answered. Somehow though, I knew all along she was going to be born to die. It is wired, like she was talking to me and telling me all along.
We burried our sweet Alexa Rose yesterday. After a few pre-prayer service hiccups, flowers were wrong & then corrected, music lost & then found, we started. Father Jerry had the perfect homily, him being a father of 2 grown children, he knows the love of children, and perhaps knows the depth of our loss. I grieve. I am in pain. I have never felt such pain. Will it ever go away?????? I pray to God it does, I could not live like this forever. I have a void, as my friend delicately puts it, I have empty arms. That is so true. My arms are empty. Nothing to hold. My breasts swell with milk, & I pump it out, but it is not the same. I want a babe to suckle & grow from my breasts. Not a machine to do it & then throw the milk out. Some say save it, I say why? Would God let this happen again? I sure hope not, my heart can not handle that.
The cards & flowers keep coming. I would trade it all in a second to have my Alexa back. I can not say it enough, I miss her, I miss her, I miss her. Nothing I do will bring her back, I know but I say it & wish it over & over. Grief. What is it about that word? Nothing seems right. I am what? I do not know. I am a mother. A very good mother. Why does this happen to good people? My husband is an excellent father, he does not deserve such pain either. So many questions? Zero Answers.
I will end now my first blog. will answers ever come????