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.

Happy 1st Birthday Blog

This day last year I started this blog. I wrote and published my first post. I never thought that I would be able to keep it up or have the impact that I am having. I never thought I would have so much to say or that people would actually want to read it. Apparently 1.5 million people do. Craziness.

It was just a suggestion that was made in a seminar about book publishing as a way to get noticed and have a better chance of publishing. I still haven't done much about that. I hope to be able to focus on it again now that Felicity is here.

Spreading Hope

A few days after Felicity was born I saw a request for birth stories of rainbow babies (babies born after pregnancy or child loss) on a site that I read a lot while I was pregnant with Felicity. I felt like I needed to submit the blog post I had written here so I did. They decided to publish it. It is up today here: http://www.pregnancyafterlosssupport.com/rainbow-birth-story-felicity-hope/

I hope it gives people some hope. I know there are a lot out there that could use some.

100th Post

I haven't posted for a while so here are a few random things:

This is my 100th post. I didn't think I had that much to say when I started this blog. 

I got past 1 million likes the other day. Crazy! I think it took 10 days from when I posted about it.

We carved pumpkins the other day. Abby insisted that we needed to buy one for Nathaniel and carve it. We did, I didn't take a picture of it, we put it out on the porch and some creature ate his face off. Stuff like that always seems to happen. It's so annoying. It seems to always be Nathaniel's stuff that breaks or is lost, not Abby's.

We're still waiting on our Nathaniel bear from Molly Bears. We were told that it would be in production by October 31st, but that's in 2 days and I haven't heard anything. I know it will be here soon and it will be way sooner than I had originally thought, but the waiting is hard.

I have an idea of what we will do for next month's Nathaniel Day. It won't be as much as most months. Dave is working. It's a Thursday. Abby has story time at the library on Thursdays so we will go to that. It's in the late morning so we will probably have lunch somewhere and then do our Nathaniel Day activity. We might have some friends join us this month. It's fun when other people can participate too. 

1 Million Likes

When I started this blog I decided to put a Facebook like button on the page. I don't look at the actual website very often so I don't see the stats that show up there frequently. It really doesn't matter to me anyway. I just write. If one person is impacted by something that I wrote that's enough for me.

I remember a few months back, maybe a month after I had started the blog, that I had looked at the home page and was up to about 8000 likes. I thought that was a pretty high number. I don't know that many people. Then a few days ago I looked and it was up to well over 900,000. Wow!

Now I wonder how long it will take to get to a million. (A million people have seen my blog!!!) A week? A month? A year? It really doesn't matter, but it's fun to guess.

6 Word Stories

I came across a blog about grief the other day. In it there was a post about writing six word stories. There was a list of things to write about. There were 11, but 1 isn't so applicable to our situation since we never got to know Nathaniel. I decided to try to come up with something for the other 10. It wasn't easy to find the right words when I could only use 6. So here they are.

A six word story:

1. about your loved one:  Never got to know him here
2. about the death:  Heard last heartbeat. Emergency surgery. Gone.
3. about you before he died:  Hating pregnancy. Ready to meet him.
4. about you after he died:  Not as strong as I seem
5. about a good memory:  Abby reading him lots of stories
6. about something that makes you mad:  Must breathe to get birth certificate
7. about something that gives you anxiety:  Anxious about everything. All the time.
8. about something that gives you hope:  I will meet him in heaven
9. about how you feel about death:  Too young to know this much
10. about your loved one's best quality
11. something you wish people knew about grief:  We'll always miss him. Every day.

Busy Start to the Summer

Time has been flying by lately. It seems like it was just May. Now it's July.

June was an eventful month.

• We said goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa and their truck and camper. 
• We went swimming.
• We went to the farmer's market.
• We went to a museum for Nathaniel Day.
• We went to the pool.
• We went to the farmer's market in the rain.
• We celebrated Father's Day.
• We went swimming with Grandma.
• We met with the high risk doctor. 
• We went to our grief group meeting.
• We went to the library.
• We went swimming.
• We celebrated my birthday. 
• We played at the park.
• We watched a movie at the library.
• We went swimming.
• We took the train downtown. 
• We went to the art museum.
• We went swimming.
• I saw a play. 
• We went swimming.
• Abby stayed with Grandma and Grandpa for the weekend while Dave and I drove to Minnesota and back. 
• We went swimming with Grandma and Nick.
• We had a picnic at the park.
• We went swimming.

I think we are getting good use our of our pool pass this year. I just looked and we went 10 times in June.

In the midst of all that I also managed to exercise nearly every day and post on here. I'm pretty proud of myself. 

Writing Through Tears

Today at the Stillbirth Summit there was a writing workshop. We read a poem and then everyone chose a line and started free writing from that line. It was interesting to hear what other people wrote. I didn't share mine then. I didn't think I would be able to get through reading it. (Tears were dripping off my face while I was writing it as they often are when I write.)

I thought I would share it here. Maybe it will be helpful to someone else. So here it is.

You are mine. You will always be mine. I will never forget you. I won't let others forget you either. You will live on through me and our family and the things that we do for others and the words that I write for others to read. You will have a legacy. A great legacy.

We had you for a short time, but I will see you again. I will live with you forever. I can't wait for the day when I get to meet you for real. I get to see your eyes and hear your voice.

What will I say to you? I will tell you how much you were loved and how you were missed every day for the rest of our lives. I will tell you about your family and all the other people who loved you so much though none got to meet you. 

I will have an eternity to make up for the lifetime that I missed with you here on earth.

Something to Say

I thought writing a blog would be hard. I don't normally write. I don't usually journal, but since Nathaniel died I have. There are things I need to get out of my head. If they stay there I can't stop thinking about them. Sometimes I can't sleep because of all the thoughts in my head.

When I started this blog I didn't know how long I would be able to keep it going. I thought I would run out of things to say quickly. I haven't. I have plenty to say and I keep coming up with more. I am always thinking of Nathaniel and often do things to remember him. Since this blog is about him there is always something to write.

What is even more surprising to me is that people are reading what I have to say. Lots of people. Every day. Some of these people are people I don't know. I'm glad. I started this blog for them. I wanted to spread the hope that we have to as many people as possible.

Thanks everyone for reading. Come back again.