Since today is only day 4, I will play catch up, but I will skip day 1 just because I didn't get a sunrise pic that day and I don't feel like cheating on that one. Though I wish I had realized the project was going on. I couldn't sleep at all last night, so I was wide awake at sunrise this morning. I could have at least gotten today's sunrise.
So.....
Day 2: WHO THEY ARE
I'm going to include out first bean in this as well, since the poor little guy doesn't get talked about much. For me, while devastating at the time, my first loss was not the same level of grief and did not have the same impact on me that losing Kayla did. I still think about that baby, I still think about him every August when he would have been born, and I know he would have just turned four a month or so ago. But with him, I found out the great news, and four days later he was gone. My grief was more about the what could have been, than it was actually losing him, unlike with Kayla, where we had a tangible baby to hold, with 10 tiny tiny toes and ten teensy fingers.
I don't even know if he was a boy or not, but in my heart I feel like he was. We had been trying for 7 months...not an incredibly long time at all, but ask anyone who is TTC and even one month can feel like an eternity, so 7 is a lifetime. But it was even harder to endure, because my previously clockwork-like periods went MIA the very first month we started trying. I think I might have ovulated two or three times in that 7 months, my cycles were long and very irregular and while I was against it at first, I couldn't even try charting when I decided to give it a whirl, because my cycles were so messed up, I didn't know where I was in the cycle, or when I might O. I was lost.
On top of that, our times of trying were very few and far in between. Without knowing when to try, It became very frustrating early on, and I felt like we were just closing our eyes and randomly shooting a gun, with almost no hope of hitting the target. Then one day in November, I took an OPK. I don't know why, I hadn't taken one in forever, and I had no real reason to. To my shock and amazement, it was positive. I ran around the house, screaming and whooping and hollering. I had never seen a positive before, it was just so damn exciting. I had no clue where I was in the surge...did I still have a few days till ovulation? Was I about to ovulate that day? Unfortunately we only got the chance to do the deed once after that OPK, but for whatever reason, I felt calm. I wasn't stressed that it wasn't enough.
I decided to take the test exactly two weeks from the day I got the OPK. If that time was like the others, I usually Od about 3 to 4 days after my last positive. So that would have made O day on a Tuesday, making me 11DPO or there abouts when I tested, but I assumed I was further than that at the time. The 2WW wasn't awful, like I said, I just felt like it would be "when" I got the positive, not if. I somehow just knew it would be positive. Was I just optimistic because it was our first real shot at conceiving since we hit my fertile window, or did I truly somehow know? I have no clue, but I woke up early that morning, not being able to sleep any longer, I tested, and got my positive.
I don't think I had ever been so happy in my life. I was beyond elated. I also felt like it was some kind of miracle that I had been having so much difficulty with Oing, and here I just happened to catch it, got it on the first (and only) try, and it was December 3rd, which meant I was somehow so incredibly lucky to be able to announce to our family's on Christmas morning.
But sadly, like I somehow knew Baby B was coming, I also somehow knew he was going. My happiness didn't last long, I was nervous, scared, and anxious. I walked around with a pit in my stomach for days, worrying that something was wrong, despite having no reason to think that. The evening of December 6th I was reading in bed, and I was crampy, as I had been since I found out. That is probably what made me so nervous, but I later found out it was very normal to cramp. But somehow in my case I knew it wasn't. I used the bathroom before bed, and was relieved to see no blood on my pantyliner. But then, when I wiped, there it was. Light pink streaks on the toilet paper. I knew that could be normal, but for me I knew it wasn't. I went to bed that night with a heavy heart.
I woke up the next morning, still crampy. I cannot remember if there was blood on my panty liner, but after a few seconds I looked down and saw that the toilet water was completely red. My little bean was gone. Thankfully, being so early, the physical aspect wasn't too bad. It felt like a slightly more painful period, but emotionally I was crushed. Our little bean was only with us for four days, that December of 2011. We never told our families, not until a long time later when we were still having troubles conceiving. It was so hard to not have their support. We never gave him a name. I know some people do, but for us it just didn't seem right. The following October, when little bean would have been about 2 to 3 months old, I dreamed I was rocking a baby back and forth in a stroller, and it was a boy that was about 2 to 3 months old. My little bean.
A year later, as we approached the one year anniversary of our loss, I got my second positive pregnancy test. It was November 14, 2012. I was happy, but cautiously so. It was nerve wracking, especially those first few weeks. I knew it was likely that my first loss wasn't indicative of more losses to come. Lots of women have a loss or two, and then go on to have a perfectly healthy pregnancy, but still I was scared. I wanted this so bad, so I was afraid to believe. But once we passed 4 weeks 2 days, I breathed a small sigh of relief. And again when we saw the baby's heartbeat, and again when we officially crossed into second tri. For those that don't know any better, it's the safe period. The point where you can pretty much say, you're bringing a baby home in 6 months. But sadly, many of us know differently. It got easier to breathe with each passing week. I did have a few episodes of spotting, the first time really freaked me out, but by the third or so time, I was pretty certain that was just my normal, and things would be ok.
At 18 weeks we had a beautiful anatomy scan, and found out we were having a little girl. Either would have been great, and I had actually been really certain it was a boy. But deep down, I was secretly thrilled to be having a girl. I couldn't wait. We named her Kayla Kathryn. Kayla was my husband's favorite girl name, he told me he wanted to name his daughter that on our second date, 5 years earlier. Kathryn was after my mom, who had passed away 8 years before. I was in heaven. We were approaching the halfway point, and now I really was starting to believe that we would be bringing her home in a few short months.
Then on 22 weeks 1 day, I was having cramps. They had been present for several days, progressively getting worse, but up until now they had always come and gone, and I was told they were normal. But that night they were really making me feel sick. I decided we needed to go to the hospital. I was in labor, my water was leaking, and 12 hours later our beautiful girl was born sleeping on March 24th, 2013, just shy of 18 weeks early. She was born at 10:11am, she weighed 1 lb 1.6 ounces and was 11.5 inches long. She was so beautiful, and looked so peaceful. I was amazed at how much like a newborn she looked, just on a miniature scale. I later learned that she was what they would call a micro preemie. Micro was right. Her entire head could fit in the palm of my hand. Her ears, fully developed, was the size of an eraser head. She had these tiny little lips above a pouty little chin, and the most perfect nose you've ever seen. Her fingers were literally the diameter of a match stick and her little fingernails were the size that a dot of a sharpie would make.
We decided to keep her name we had given her. Never again would I be able to use it for another baby, but above all, it was HER name. Not only had we been calling her by that name for several weeks, we had been calling her that for years, before we even began trying. We would talk about our future baby Kayla often, probably even before we thought about getting married. We didn't get to use her name like we thought, and instead of a cute sign in her nursery, or on a form for her first day of Kindergarten, her name is on a grave stone.
A year later we would learn that her little sister, Emily, born almost a year to the day on March 19th, would practically be her twin. Even in the womb, from the 3D ultrasound I could see that she looked like Kayla. When she was born, I held her and looked down at that same familiar perfect little nose and chin. Emily could never replace Kayla, but I won't lie. Dealing with her death has been 10 times easier since Emily came into our lives. I don't even want to imagine the broken, shell of the person I would be, if we were still sitting here, mourning the loss of our daughter, and never been able to have any more kids. But I think about Kayla every single day. It's been over 3.5 years since we said goodbye, but not one single day has gone by that I haven't thought of her, missed her, and loved her. She was and is our baby, our first born and having Emily will never change that. But I look at Emily, who is 2.5 now, and I wonder. Would Kayla have still looked like her at this age? Is Emily a spitting image of an angel up in Heaven? Emily is spunky, sassy, and funny. She tests limits like all kids, but she is a really good little girl. She was a wonderful baby, she's always slept great aside from spurts here and there. For the most part she is very well behaved, especially in public. So I wonder, would Kayla have kept me up all night for months and years on end? Would she have been a little devil with a shit eatin' grin who I just could never stay mad at? Would she have been that kid whose presence is always known in public? I will always wonder who she would have been.
Here is my sweet baby.
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