Changing the nursery

It's been a rough week. We decided to redo your nursery, baby Stella, to get ready for your baby sister. Even as I type it…it sounds silly. Get ready for your baby sister? Aren't we already ready? Didn't we just do this? For you? The answer is yes, we did just get ready for you and we're still ready. We literally have everything a newborn baby could possibly need. We're just missing the baby. So how are we supposed to "get ready" and prepare for your baby sister, when nothing needs done? It's just another challenge on my heart.

The decision to redo your nursery didn't come lightly. Why take apart a perfectly beautiful nursery, decorated and put together with so much love, so many dreams, so many hopes? A nursery that has never been used. But it was made for YOU, baby Stella, and you aren't coming home to use it. Doesn't your baby sister deserve her own perfectly beautiful nursery, designed just for her? We decided yes, she does. And with your help and guidance, we moved everything out and got it ready to paint. It was difficult and bittersweet, but we felt we were doing the right thing. Then, the last thing your daddy did was take your name off the wall. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. It's over. It's really over. You're gone, you're never coming back. The nursery is no longer yours. I obviously know you've been gone, but taking your name off the wall just seemed so final. So, "time to move on," just like that. But you'll always be our first baby girl. It was always your nursery first. Thanks for letting us share it with your sister.

Then today we decided to go to Buy Buy Baby. I used to LOVE going to there while pregnant with you. We had some coupons, and I thought let's just go find some stuff to buy for your baby sister. Again, we need nothing, but I guess I was trying to satisfy my "need" to prepare and get ready for baby girl. It turned into an uncomfortable trip. We wandered around trying to force ourselves to buy things we don't really need, while trying to avoid the sales people asking us about our registry (which we obviously don't have, because we don't NEED ANYTHING). By the time we left, with nothing, I was in tears. What's the point? We don't need anything. And if we do, we don't know what, because we've never had a living baby before. And then my mind goes to the darkest place of all…we shouldn't buy anything more, because what if this baby dies too.

29 weeks pregnant. 8 weeks left. 59 days to go. We pray for peace, courage, and strength to make it that far.

Stella's perfect nursery

Baby girl's nursery-on it's way to perfect

10 months

As I laid in bed this morning, wondering how the last 10 months have happened the way they have, baby girl was rolling and jumping all about. As if to say, "I know what day it is mommy, and I know you're sad, but I'm here and I'm alive and well." And hopefully in just 80 short days, our lives won't feel like they are constantly on the verge of falling apart, again. Maybe in 80 days, the hole in our hearts won't be quite so deep. Maybe.

I have such a hard time believing our life is what it is. In the last 10 months, we have been forced to learn how to live without our first baby girl. We are still learning how to live without her. I feel like we will spend the rest of our lives learning how to keep going, how to keep surviving with this hole in our hearts and this void in our lives.  I feel like I'm always on the verge of a meltdown, on the verge of losing it, just trying to keep it together. Like any little thing might send me back into the deep dark hole. And a lot of the time, I just feel like I'm faking it. Faking that I'm ok, that life is ok. It's a wear out, a wear out I've lived with for 10 months, that I'll just have to keep living with. Our lives are so different. So different from what they used to be, from what I imagined they would be. And so very different from our close friends and family.  It hurts hearts my heart to realize this, but it's just another thing we can't change, that we just have to keep learning to live with.

One thing I do know, I would not have survived the last 10 months of this heartbreaking journey without my husband, without Stella's daddy. It's difficult to feel blessed when your world has turned upside down with tragedy, but I am blessed. Blessed beyond belief for having the husband I do. Many marriages don't survive the loss of a child. I think the divorce rate is close to 80% for couples who have lost a child. But I can honestly say, our marriage has never been better and our love has never been stronger.

Help us to continue on this journey without you, baby Stella. Help us to work on making a difference in the lives of others this happens to. Help us make you proud, while we hold your memory close to our hearts, and plan your memorial golf tournament. And especially help us bring your baby sister into this world alive. We want to know what a 10 month old baby girl is like. We need to know what it's like to be parents to a living baby girl, too.

Were you helping your baby sister say hello with a rainbow? Rainbow from our viewing deck. We love both of you baby girls.