On dreams

Lately, I have been remembering dreams again. I remember them so vividly these days. They are all about parenting, mothering an infant. Most of the time, I am nursing and holding a wee babe. The babe is nestled in the crook of my arm, and we are staring at each other, the baby is nursing and laughing and smiling. The baby always has dark, curly, brown hair, and a gorgeous smile.

I wonder if this is Jolene coming to me?

Is this a different child who is waiting to be born from me?

I don't know which, all I know is a I have an overwhelming urge to parent and love and mother an infant. Maybe it's my hormones?

My postpartum hormones telling me you should have a baby right now, you should be nursing, so here you go, a child who is in your dreams... I don't know...?

Today

I am here, I am breathing, the sun rose, the children woke up, the dogs needed to go out, the rooster began his good morning song. The coffee was brewed, lunches made, kids on the bus. And here I am.
Life goes on. And, I miss her, I miss my baby. She should be here laughing at me and eating oatmeal.

Life goes on, and I am sitting here thinking about how life does go on. Is it time that changes things or is it life that just goes on? I still have a heart full of love, still have a heart full of sadness, yet I am here breathing. That is kind of amazing to me. The fact that I did not melt away.
I still feel anxiety attack me in the middle of the night, it shakes me awake and I lie wondering why? Why me, why her? Why us? I am working really hard on noticing when anxiety creeps in and takes hold of my mind, it is such an unhealthy feeling, I begin to question all that I am, my marriage, my self. I am here, my heart is pure, it is love, it is sad.
What is is that heals us, is it waking every day and greiving? Is it waking every day and loving through grief? It is shaky, it is groundless, it is not here or there, who am I now that I am recognizing "this me?" This me who knows how horrible death is, this me who knows that death comes knocking on my door, death comes and I watch death kidnap my child from my arms, my belly, my heart, my dreams.
All I can think is have I loved today? Have I shown the world that I have loved? I am going to keep trying, keep showing the world my broken, loving heart. It is exposed and I have found it again.
I think I will go throw hay to the hungry horses, scatter some scratch for the chickens, go to work, and just keep breathing.

My husband

I wrote the poem below this post and I shared it with my dear sweet husband. Here is his response, via text because he was in the OR working.

"She is watching over us. I am sorry I could not protect her. I let you down. I am sorry."

Those words
have me
in tears
My heart is
broken.

He truly does grieve different than me. How am I surviving this? Am I surviving this? Is this how life is to be?
Is my heart going to be broken forever?

Thank you for listening, whoever is out there.

Where's my baby?
Is she warm?
Is she safe?
Where is she?
She's here,
Oh, she's so tiny,
her skin is peeling
off
oh, look at
her fingers, they're long and pretty
where is my baby
I closed my eyes to see if it was
a nightmare
but when they opened
I wondered
Where is my baby?

The one whose body I made
Whose body bumped me and nudged me
The one I held close
In my belly
In my arms
In my head
Where's my baby
When you find her, could you please find my heart
It has been missing too since I cannot find her, my baby

Friends

I just read a wonderful post by stilllifewithcircles called a Brave New World. It was so wonderfully written about who our friends are and who we are after a devastating loss. It was about having some friends who simply are either too anxious about their own stressful lives to act compassionately towards a friend, or are not compassionate at all, and ultimately letting those friends out of our lives. It was about having really good friends who acted appropriately after our babies died. They were the ones who were wonderful and compassionate and said, "I'm sorry." I think most people just fit into the too lazy or preoccupied by their own lives to recognize another person's pain, or they are too saddened by terrible news they don't know how to respond. So, I try not to take it serious when a friend behaves in a bizarre way towards me after the loss of Jolene. But, as with many devastating life altering events, I became a new person. I changed. I know who my friends are, I know who I want to be around, I know who I think maybe its best that we're not friends and I also know that there are some people who cannot imagine that bad things happen to good people every day all the time.
Just the other day, a mother of one of my child's friends in school saw me and came up to me to give me a hug and say how sorry she was, she even cried with me. It was so nice of her. I thought that she either did not know about our baby or did not know what to say because this was the first time she has said a word to me in months. I was a bit baffled by her behavior at first, but then a light came on for me that she understood, she had compassion for me and my family, she just did not know how/what to say.

My wish and hope for today is that I choose compassion and joy and light.

Who I am

In addition to being a mama and wife, I am also an avid animal lover and rancher. We breed and raise gorgeous quarter horses in Colorado. We have 7 chickens and had three dogs, our dog Jesse died a couple of months ago. I love getting my fresh eggs everyday and feeding my horses, it takes a lot to go out in the middle of a blizzard and freezing temps to feed animals, but I do it because they depend on me. I love them all. Animals have really helped me throughout this period of grieving my baby. Even a couple of days after my c-section, I continued their care, with the help of a lot of people. But, cleaning stalls, throwing hay, and riding have been my therapy.

I tried breeding my mare Josie a few years ago, and she lost her filly at 10 months, a beautiful red dun filly. A horse is pregnant for 11 months, so her filly was born early and was stillborn. She was gorgeous, a perfect little horse with a beautiful head and good conformation. We did a necropsy that very day with our vet, we cut her open and looked at her insides, her umbilical cord was twisted and had fluid in between the twists and knots in the cord. Other than her liver looking odd and her lower intestines looking odd, they looked congested, she looked perfect. The results came back a week later and they concluded that the baby filly died due to a twisted cord a "cord accident."

Josie, my mare had birthed her dead baby by herself in a snowy field and stood over her lifeless body and protected her, that was how I found them together, there was the afterbirth still hanging from Josie and her sweet baby in the icy ground. I burst into tears for her and what I remember from that day was how her whole herd grieved for the baby when we took her away to be examined and buried, all their heads hang low and I remember how Josie called to her baby the entire night, none of them ate their hay and they just looked sad. My heart broke open for her that day, she will always be with me.
Fast forward a couple years and now its me who had the baby die, and now my mare Josie is helping me through grieving my baby.


This is Josie.

2010

Happy New Year! Goodbye 2009, hello 2010.

Maybe a baby
maybe not
all I know is love
all I know is change

I miss you baby, I miss you little Jolene, you've inspired me to grow, to change, to live, I just wish you were here.