A New Book

A new resource for bereaved parents has just come out in the last week. I have been wanting to write about it here for a long time, but wanted to wait until it had been officially published.

It is a collection of essays written by a group of 26 people who have lost a child, some in pregnancy, some in infancy, and some later in life.  It was written to give those that are new in their grief some hope for the future. Each essay was written to describe one aspect of life in the first year after loss.

I found out about this book when there was a call for essays to be submitted in an online group that I am a part of. The editor of the book was specifically asking for essays from fathers. I forwarded the information on to Dave. He decided to write one and out of several hundred entries, his essay was accepted to be part of the book and one of only two from the perspective of a father.

The book is now available. We are eagerly awaiting its arrival at our house, hopefully in the next couple of days.

Nathaniel's Legacy at the Library

We got a thank you letter from the library yesterday. It included a list of all the books that were donated or bought by the library with funds people gave for Nathaniel's birthday. I brought two more over today so now the total is now 57 books donated in Nathaniel's name.

If you donated and included your address on the form you should be receiving a thank you letter from the library. If you donated money there will be a list of the books that the library bought in your name.

We were at the library today so I decided to see if any of them were there. Most were checked out, but I did find four or five. So if you donated a book (or books) here is what they look like.

Nathaniel Day 11 - Playing in the Snow, Buying Books, and a Tea Party

You can read about the idea behind Nathaniel Day and the activities of previous months here (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

It snowed enough to play in a few days earlier so for Nathaniel Day I decided that we would go play in the snow somewhere for a while. It turned out that it was really cold that day, but not quite as cold as it had been the past few days (not below zero with windchill) so I asked Abby if she would want to go play in the snow. She was ok with the idea. 

So we got her skis and my snowshoes and lots of warm clothes and headed to a forest preserve not too far from our house that I knew had a playground not far from the parking lot. That was a good thing. We got all dressed in our warm clothes and headed down the path. Abby had lots of fun sliding down the snow covered slides and making snow angels. I think we were only there for about half an hour before she was done, but that was ok. We got to play in the snow and it was fun.

After the playground we headed to the store so that Abby could go pick out some books. We decided that we are going to donate board books to the library for Nathaniel's birthday and were each going to pick some out. Abby mostly just wanted to play with the toys, but I did eventually get her to decide on two books to get.

By this time I was getting really hungry. We headed back home and started preparing for a tea party. Abby and I made cherry muffins and train shaped sandwiches to go with our tea. 

By the time we ate it was about 3 pm. I was so hungry, but it was fun. Nathaniel bear even joined us for part of the tea party.

Dave got home from work, we ate dinner, and then Grandma came over to watch Abby (who had fallen asleep after the tea party and was still sleeping). Dave and I headed to a bookstore that he had found at Christmas time to pick out some books for us to give. We were there for a long time and each ended up getting a couple of fun books. 

On the way home we stopped and got ourselves some milk shakes before relieving Grandma. Abby was still sleeping when we got home (and ended up sleeping all night). I think we all had a fun day especially for it being so cold.

I See Loss Everywhere

I read a lot of books. I don't recall reading much about dying babies or children in the books I chose in the past. Since Nathaniel died, I think every single book has the death of a child somewhere in it.  I didn't choose the books because they were about baby loss. They weren't about that, at least not according to the summary on the inside cover. They were random novels chosen mostly from the new book section at the library. One was a young adult bestseller.

In the book I am reading now a mother loses a baby on page one, sentence number four. It really isn't terribly relevant to the story so maybe had I read it four months ago I would have not remembered it. Now it sticks out. Am I just more sensitised to it now or is it really everywhere?

People lose babies all the time. It's really fairly normal. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that now that I am living it that I should see it everywhere I look.