Intro

Hey guys. I recently lost my little girl on 12/21, after her birth on 12/16. My birth was fabulous and uneventful, went exactly how it was planned, but upon birth her oxygen levels were low so they sent her to another hospital with a nicu, then after an echo it turned out she had a vein that grew on the wrong side of her heart and it was also blocked. She got airlifted to her third hospital, en route she coded twice, something I didn't even know til a few days later. originally they told us she would do surgery that night, but because of the coding she had to recover. Her body never did, her organs started shutting down instead, and we took her off the machines keeping her alive on 12/21.

Originally I blamed myself. I went crazy, thinking it was something God was trying to tell me for months that I was missing, and this was supposed to get my attention and show me what it was I wasn't doing. I came up with all these things I felt guilty for: being lazy and not keeping the house clean, giving up on things that had been hard (a small farm, my horrific job, relationships with coworkers that were too difficult), and also not living in the moment but constantly looking for the next goal. For several days every time I was presented with a decision I was like, oh shit, what should I do? What will make God happy? I kept thinking I had to make sure I got the lesson so it wouldn't happen again (we do plan on trying again). Now I just try and think about all those things that I clearly feel guilty about and reevaluate how I handled them. Especially living in the moment. Being better at that will make things better regardless. 

Monday it will be one month since birth and I go back and forth with how I am doing. I have days I cry constantly and days I am happy and cry only a little. I have stopped feeling guilty for the good days because sometimes the bad ones are bad, and I have to hold on to some happiness. 

I have heard two things that help me every single day since she died. One, from my aunt who lost a child  days after birth 30 years ago, said, "Don't let your tribute to her short life be the undoing of yours." I am not sure where I saw this other concept, but I read somewhere else that you shouldn't let grief turn you into someone that you aren't, or someone that the person you lost would be ashamed of. 

These things carry me through, along with a prompted grief journal and and a journal that I keep on my computer about my thoughts and feelings. Maybe we can all help each other with our "crazy" thoughts and feelings that family just doesn't get.