Thursday, October 24, 2013

Sophia Elizabeth

A friend of mine from Copper's gym class lost her baby last week. She was 20 weeks pregnant. The funeral for her little girl, Sohia Elizabeth, is today. She didn't know anyone who had gone through what she is going through. Now she does.

Julia Ann's funeral is on Sunday.

I personally know 5 women (1 cousin, 3 friends, and myself) who were pregnant this year. Two had healthy babies and 3 lost their babies. None of the 3 losses were in the 1st trimester. 2/3 to 3/4 of miscarriages occur in the 1st trimester. The odds were in our favor.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Julia Ann

I visited a friend in the hospital today. She was scheduled for a C-Section to deliver her full term baby the beginning of this week. On Sunday the baby stopped moving. When they went to the hospital to hear the baby's heartbeat and check on her, the baby was dead. My friend had her C-section on Monday morning to deliver her beautiful little baby girl. Everything was fine until Sunday and then the whole world crashed down around them. You know that saying "I can only imagine what you must be going through"? I really missed being able to use that line. Instead I said, "This is so fucked up and it's going to keep being fucked up for a while." The loss of their baby doesn't necessarily open the wounds of my loss of Hawk, but it makes their pain way too real for me. I hate knowing what they are going through and knowing the decisions that they are being asked to make and knowing how each step in this process of having a stillbirth to burying their baby is going to bring them to their knees at every turn. They have been able to spend these past few days with their daughter. They hold her and caress her and I'm sure when all their friends and family finally leave the room, they talk to her. My friend and her husband are going home today. They are going home without their baby girl. Their pain is unbearable. It's not fair how the odds can be so stacked against one person. Her first pregnancy ended in miscarriage and she went on to have two beautiful children. She shouldn't have lost her last baby. Aubrey's sister has lost 6 babies. Theses statistics are just so wrong. So much loss is not supposed to happen to one person. She went her entire pregnancy thinking, knowing, that everything was going to be okay. How could it end like this? Tomorrow they will plan a funeral. Soon their little girl, Julia Ann, will be buried in Fairmount Cemetery with Hawk. My friend and I have been pregnant together twice. The first was with her son Jay and I with Copper (the kids are 2 months apart). The second time we both lost our babies. Again they would have been two months apart.