The slacker in me

Surprise, surprise…there is a slacker in me. My goal was to blog every single day about that days events or how I am feeling or just to post pics of our growing baby girl. Well, that didn’t happen this week…although I have written and rewritten this post a million times already.

I decided to keep a notepad of paper near me in the car, so when I get hit with an idea or something I need to write about it I will be able to remember it by the time I get home. I will have to start this next week because I already forgot to take it with me and tomorrow is Thursday. Oh, well. I am sure I will get it together soon…

We made a decision to travel back to Orlando this summer even after the almost unbearable high temperatures we experienced last summer. So, on Friday we will board an airplane for the first time as a family and with Bennett’s memory tucked into our hearts we will take off for a weekend of fun! Our plan is to visit Animal Kingdom on Saturday and then Sea World on Sunday. Ellie Grace LOVES animals, so we figured those two places would be perfect for her. She is at such an exciting age right now. She knows what she likes and she gets excited about it. It is difficult to imagine going on another semi-family vacation to a place where we dreamed of having Bennett with us. I believe with all of my heart that he will be with us this year as he was last year. This also marks the one year anniversary of the second biggest scare of our lives…the trip to TCH for Ellie Grace. That turned out to be the MOST EXPENSIVE diaper rash in the history of all diaper rashes! It’s funny to talk about now, but the day we returned from Florida last year is when she began gasping for air…it was exactly 6 weeks to the day that Bennett died. I just reread that journal from last year and it brought chills to my body. What a year…what a life!

When can you just sit back for a second with out worrying about anything? I am not expecting a lifetime of worry-free living. I am just wanting to enjoy what I have now without any new worries…it might not be possible.

Speaking of worries…I am still waiting for the doctor to call us back for our next appointment. We are basically waiting to see if I will have to have surgery again in the next few months. We are praying that my body is healthy and strong, but it has failed me in the past so I guess I shouldn’t have super high expectations. At any rate we are still waiting. I believe that Brandon will have to be blood tested to see if he is a carrier of CF. Because Bennett showed up as a carrier it means that one of us is. I am pretty sure that they already performed that test one me…but my medical file is as long as Bennett’s and I am sure some of that info gets lost in the shuffle.

Lost in the shuffle is a funny term to me…I feel like I am lost in the shuffle of life sometimes. So many thoughts are constantly racing through my mind about Bennett, Ellie, Brandon and the business. I am constantly shuffling thoughts about each of them in my mind…always thinking…always worrying…

There are a few prayer requests I would like to put out there from us. Please pray for Heather ~ a young mom in the blog world that recently found out she has stage IV melanoma cancer. I have listed her blog under our friends, so please keep her family in your prayers.
Baby Rhys ~ born 16 weeks premature he is fighting like our little chunky monkey had to. Please pray for Rhys’ lungs, PDA valve and his head scans. He is just beginning his journey down the road in the NICU and he could use all of our prayers and support!

Also, please keep our family in your prayers as we venture off to Florida this weekend. We will return with tons of pictures and great tans…hopefully!

My Child

My Child - Plumb

Peacefully you are sleeping
Silently you dream
And I cannot help but feeling blessed
While watching you

Your eyes
My eyes
Your smile
My smile
Your love
My gain
Your hurt
My pain
Your laugh
My joy
Every time, it's mine
You are my child

I will always protect you
Oh and I will even let you go
I'll spend the sweetest time holding you
And will let you grow

Your eyes
My eyes
Your smile
My smile
Your love
My gain
Your hurt
My pain
Your laugh
My joy
Every time, it's mine
You are my child

Don't ever be afraid
Don't ever be afraid
Cause I am here
And if you start to fear
Just close your eyes
And hear me say

Your love
My gain
Your hurt
My pain
Your laugh
My joy
Every time, it's mine
You are my child


my precious little angels: Bennett and Ellie Grace

My child is a song by an artist named Plumb…it is a beautiful song that touches my heart for a million reasons. I have been wishing lately that I could hear Bennett’s cry just one more time. You see, for the entire six months Bennett was in the hospital we might have heard him cry a total of 5 times. This is because he was constantly on the vent working as hard as he could to get back to a CPAP. When I heard this song it reminded me all over again of the things I am going to miss about being Bennett’s mom. I will miss his eyes…were they like mine or were they like his daddy’s? His smile…his sweet lips and the way they were always looking so peaceful. The song is just a true confession of what being a parent is like. It touched me so deeply… “I will always protect you…Oh and I will even let you go”.

This song makes me feel like I have so many things to say to Bennett. Things that I can not wait to say until we meet again at Heaven’s gates…so, I guess I should begin putting together a letter for my little man. I am sure it will take me some time to get it just right.

You probably won’t believe this…and I am even embarrassed to admit it. Anyway, on Saturday I was in the computer room and all of a sudden it dawned on me that it was July 19th…the 19th…this meant that the 15th was the week before. That meant that I had sailed through one of the worst weeks I’ve had in long time and didn’t even realize it was the 15th…Bennett Day. I have very bad anxiety issues and events like that one set off my attacks. OH NO!!! Did he think that we forgot about him? Surely, he was near us and he knew that our minds were racing with memories of him all week…or is there even a way for him to know that?

Let me back up to the beginning of last week. On Monday I sent our paperwork to our fertility doctor to look over before we go back for our next check-up. That was pretty much the exciting start to the week. Then Tuesday came and it brought a phone call from my partner that we had a HUGE and I mean HUGE order to fill in just a matter of days for one of our stores. So, back at the house we were with the monogramming machine on and the midnight oil burning (it was Bennett Day that day…how did I miss that?). On Wednesday Brandon was leaving to go out of town for a few days, so we decided to have lunch together before he left. I was on 610 (a major freeway in Houston) when as I was exiting my car shut down…breaks locked up and that was it! I panicked…it was 97 degrees outside and I had no clue about what to do to fix the car or who to call or anything. I called Brandon and he met me in a neighborhood near West University. He fiddled around the hood and then the car was back to normal…I was not so sure! We drove it to the dealership and then we all piled into his car and we were off to the airport so he could be on time for his flight. Our Mimi was flying in from Atlanta at the same time, so we picked her up and went off to eat and get home. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were fun filled single parent days with all of that work looming over my head. Thursday we picked the Armada up and it was all fixed…or so we think. Friday night we picked Brandon up and off to work I was in our office. This brought me to Saturday when I had the realization that we had just skipped over the 15th without realizing that it had passed. Disturbing…

I don’t know why, but I have so many fears and worries about Bennett being buried. I worry about everything out there. Rain, heat, cold…they all make me think of Bennett being buried out there. I know I have written about this before and I know that Bennett’s spirit is in Heaven. However, his tiny little body that I held in my arms in down in that box and I can’t do anything to help protect it from the heat or the rain or the cold. I think it is times like this that I know I need therapy…but does that mean that you are ready to talk about it and work on “getting over it” because if that is what it means that’s not what I want. I think that is why I started writing. I knew I needed to get all of this out, but I didn’t want to talk to someone that was going to try and make me feel better…what do they know.

So, anyway if you haven’t gathered it’s been a long couple of weeks. We are busy with work (praise God) but I just can’t get myself together. I can’t convince myself to cook dinner or to even leave this house unless we have set plans (which is almost everyday anyway). I’m just blah…sad and scared and tired and blah! I miss Bennett and I love Ellie Grace so much that it hurts sometimes. I am scared that we will never have another chance to be parents again and that scares me. This part of my life is a rollercoaster and this is just one of those down times…bear with me.

UPDATE TO TODAYS JOURNAL: We requested Bennett's medical records from the hospital, so that we can actually know what happened to him during that last few days and get this...just to read about what happened to Bennett will take over 7000 pages and almost $1200 to buy. Can you believe that I will have to fork over another $1200 just to read his medical history...For God sake I gave birth to him and didn't even get to take him home...shouldn't they just give the stupid medical history to me??? It's not like I can ever use it for another doctor...Where is the justice?????

Weekend Fun with Ellie Grace.

Christmas in July for Ellie Grace and with her new bike
She's thinking, "Oh, what fun I'll have on this bike..."
Daddy teaching her how it works.
Mommy and Aunt Steppy.

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Fears...questions...and feelings

A million little things need to be written in order for me to clear my head today. I usually have just one thing that has been weighing on my mind that I need to get out, but for some reason today there are several.

In this crazy world of bloggers I have met some wonderful people. I get emails and comments from total strangers that comfort, pray and sometimes can even relate to my situation. It is amazing that there are so many stories out there like ours. It is therapy to read the outcomes (some good, some sad) of their stories and keep up with them daily. One night I found a blog about a family that had a very similar story to our own. Infertility…Twins…boy and girl…premature labor…precious little boy passed away. I felt connected for the first time in a long time. I did something that I would typically never do…I emailed her. For a few months now we have been communicating back and forth and it is nice. It is so nice to have someone that knows you are not ungrateful for what you have, but you will never “get over” the loss you have experienced. It’s nice to have someone that feels your similar pain. It feels less lonely somehow. Yesterday, during my usual “blog check-up” time (at about 12:45am) I was heartbroken to find news about another fellow blog mom (30 years old, two small children) that was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma cancer. For the first time since Bennett’s death I was scared of leaving this earth with Ellie left behind… Just like it is hard to imagine living without Bennett every single day, it was suddenly equally as tough to imagine not being with Ellie Grace. It was a reminder to me that this life is a temporary mission. I know that I have so many “jobs” left to complete here in this physical world…and I feel blessed to have the faith to know that.

This brings me to the next random thought.

If you know me well…you know that I am a perfectionist (nice way to say anal). I like to be organized, planned, researched, ordered…you know…everything that life IS NOT! So, when we were doing IVF I researched EVERYTHING. Brandon was often times embarrassed to go into the doctors office with me (and my book of questions) because I asked a million questions, read statistics, asked about future research they were planning to do, etc. I even went so far as to “challenge” my doctor while I was laying on the operating room bed about the number of blastocysts he was going to implant. You see, the odds are only 50/50 that any woman will get pregnant with IVF and he wanted to put in 2 eggs. I thought why waste the time with 2 (we had a total of 7), lets at least put in 3 and see what happens. You can understand why, 2 weeks later, when I visited his office his first words to me were, “I told you so!” Anyway, at 11 weeks and 6 days pregnant I suffered a sever hemorrhage. I was rushed to the hospital the whole while thinking I had miscarried our long awaited miracles. NOPE! It was what they call a threatened miscarriage and I had a 50% chance of losing the babies. After several weeks of complete bed rest I went back to the doctor to be diagnosed with a subchorionic hematoma. I was sentenced to at least 6 weeks of complete bed rest (I had a large hematoma) until the bleed could reabsorb into my body. My fingers were on fire as I researched this rare diagnosis. My doctor told Brandon to pull the plug on our computer b/c it was not healthy for me to spend hours worrying about the odds/outcome of these types of bleeds. So, I obliged and spent the remainder of my bed rest attempting to knit (YUCK) and scrapbook (What was I thinking). At 19 weeks I was finally allowed to get up and return to work (I was an elementary teacher). I worked with my little angels for 7 weeks until my water broke AT SCHOOL at 26 weeks pregnant. After the twins were born I spent endless hours researching prematurity and the complications associated with it. There was ALWAYS something to research as Bennett was the classic “worst case scenario” preemie. It occurred to me a few months after Bennett died that I never really understood what happened with my own body. Why did I hemorage…what is a subchorionic hematoma…did it play a role is my PROM (premature rupture of membranes)…I needed answers. I was disappointed to find out that there isn’t much written about my condition. It occurs in roughly 1.3% of pregnancies…and a few other useless stats. I have only met one person that even had one and I call her the mystery nurse practitioner (she was supposed to be the new NP in Ellie’s pedi office…she was there 1 time at which time I talked to her about the sub. Hemorage and then she never came back…weird!). Long story short I would love to meet/talk to someone else that knows about this rare condition. Is it going to happen again…was it the cause of our PROM…is my next pregnancy likely to be as troubled???

Anyway, like the blogs that I read about families that have lost a child, it would be wonderful to find moms that have had subchorionic bleeds to talk to. If you have had or know someone that has had one of these please feel free to contact me.

We have 5 embryos left and we are praying that just one of them will grow into a healthy baby to join our family. It is a scary time for us. We are once again planning to let go of our control and leave it all up to God. There are just a few questions/fears we need to calm before we move forward. Most of you took the last journey with us and we feel blessed to have you pray with us on this next journey…

Last Friday we went up to the hospital to see Bennett and Ellie’s nurses and bring some books to the hospital. It is always so amazing to see the number of nurses/RT’s/NP’s and other hospital staff members that remember you. The long term preemies are famous in a way. I think it is because they cause the most trouble and they require the largest number of staff members to stabilize them. I think that Bennett will go down in Women’s hospital NICU history. It was awesome to see the nurses that spent endless hours taking the absolute best care of our little angel. It was also nice to see the few that had Ellie during her short stay. We got to see Uncle Chris and Aunty Charlette…always a heartwarming experience. We feel tied to this part of our lives forever b/c they are our only link to the best time of our lives. They are the few that we got to share our greatest loves in life with…they are our family. As we stood in the scrub area in the NICU I could see past the glass pain door to the other precious miracles fighting for their lives. It gave me chills to see the tiny blue knit hat on top of the lemon sized head and legs the diameter of my finger. The nearly translucent skin, the wires, and the IV sites brought back all the memories of our 6 months and 1 day in the NICU. What other definition of bravery is there…I mean when you see a 2 pound baby fighting to survive that is brave! You would think that this experience would detour us from ever trying again to have children…but, I feel like that is where our faith comes in. Are you ever prepared to relive that type of experience…NO…but, at the same time I don’t think we can live our lives in fear of the unknown.

My irritable toddler is reminding me that I have been on the computer way too long! It is a blessing to know that I can type out my fears, questions and feelings to so many faithful friends. Thank you for listening today!

A new link

Well, today will be short and sweet as Ellie Grace is patiently waiting to go swimming!

I have added a link to our new temporary blog site for Peek-A-BOWtique. We are excited to have a professional site under construction and we thought that creating a blog in the mean time would be...fun...because we have SO MUCH free time! (laughing) We will begin adding pics and new merchandise as soon as we get it all together, so stay tuned.

In Ellie Grace news...
Wow! This summer Ellie has grown and is changing every day. She is talking up a storm and has a pretty serious attachment to her baby dolls. In fact, she WILL NOT ride in the car without her two babies. Yes, TWO! In fact she does not ever play with just one baby it is always two. It gives me chills sometimes because it is as if she knows that she is a twin and that is just the way it will always be...

Ellie tried cold cereal for the first time two days ago. I usually fix a hot breakfast for her only because I am here and honestly I thought it was better for her. However, we discovered that she loves Honey Nut Cheerios and Coco Crispies (like her daddy) when they are mixed together. She is nothing if not unique!

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Pain, pain go away!

Not much has changed in the last year. I was rereading my post from last July 4th and it was chilling because I still know that same pain. Once again it is raining outside and Bennett’s “freedom” outfit is still hanging in his closet.

It just doesn’t seem like a year has passed. I can remember every single detail about last July 4th. I remember watching the pouring rain from my rocking chair and being so thankful that I didn’t have to go out and celebrate. I deliberately kept Bennett’s outfit in the laundry room, so I could look at it and torture myself with the thoughts of what was supposed to be. Our little miracle man was supposed to be at home with us by July 4th. Instead we had just buried him two weeks before. What happened? I think about that every single day. What did happen? To be honest with you I can’t really answer that question and that is part of what eats me up. After one year of pain and sadness I still have questions about exactly what happened. I know that one of these days I will have the strength to try to figure it out. Now…is not that time.

We had so many wonderful offers to get together with friends and family this year and I found it so difficult to commit to any of them. I couldn’t decide what felt right. I knew visiting Bennett’s tree was a priority, but aside from that I don’t really have the strength to celebrate. I think it has to be hard to understand how effected we are still. Weeks and days that lead up to holidays are so painful for us. We don’t dump our feelings out to many people b/c if we did it would probably get really old, really fast. It is difficult to balance all of these thoughts and emotions.

Truthfully, it is hard to explain the emotions and feelings I have. It seems like I will go for days short tempered and tired and I don’t understand why. Then, it will dawn on me that I must be feeling pain somewhere inside. I don’t actually understand what’s going on when I am feeling that way. It takes me thinking about it to realize that it is just sadness…sadness that you don’t necessarily feel, but that is just there inside of you. Once I realize that the exhaustion and irritability is from my sadness I am able to snap out of it and move on for the next few days or weeks…until the next bout. I like that I am able to identify why I have those “episodes” and I love that Brandon is so understanding. We are a gift to each other in this circumstance. God truly knew what He was doing when he combined our hearts forever.

So, on this rainy Independence Day we have decided to visit Rees and Sophia (our NICU friends) so the kids can celebrate together. It is difficult to celebrate on a day that is more like a brutal reminder of what should have been… However, every single time I look at Ellie Grace I am thankful for ‘what is’.

Happy Independence Day!