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Someone’s Missing

The backseat of my car is strangely quiet – the ride curiously devoid of its usual symphony of animal imitations, tired cries, and gleeful toddler babbling. I turn the radio down to listen for sounds of rhythmic breathing or the gentle pop of a soother falling from my son’s sleepy lips.

It is completely quiet.

It is then, with my car enveloped in relative silence, that the panic decides to strike. The feeling is not unfamiliar; my chest tightens and I am slapped with an inexplicable feeling of alarm.

“Someone is missing.”

The thought springs unbidden to the forefront of my mind, anxiety overruling logic. I have forgotten someone, I have left them behind.

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Baby Loss: After the First Year

“Do you still have bad days?”

The question lingers in the air as I quietly debate how best to answer it. I’ve had to answer this question more frequently of late – it seems to be yet another by-product of the passage of time.

It’s been twenty months since I lost my sweet baby boy; twenty months since I felt his final kick goodbye and wailed over his tiny, breathless body. There are days when these moments feel like a lifetime ago. But there are days too when my heart aches and I miss that little boy more than words can tell.

People are naturally curious as to what the grieving process looks like now – a year and a half after loss. Most individuals have heard that “the first year is the hardest” and wonder what happens after that. Do I still grieve? Is the one year anniversary some magical line drawn in the sand that erases all grief? Do I still have “bad days?”  Read more

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“Baby Boy” Baby Shower

Remember when Baby Showers used to be a lot simpler? Back when a group of women would sit in a circle, tie balloons to the new mom’s chair for decoration, and watch as she opened up a pile of presents? We’d eat cake, guess which melted chocolate bar had been smeared inside the diaper, and go home with a couple clothespins clipped to our sweater.

But thanks to the wonderful and all too time consuming invention of Pinterest, things have changed. Now a days, even the once-a-year party planner is expected to channel her inner Martha Stewart, and quite frankly, it’s all a little daunting to live up to.

When it came time to organizing a Baby Shower for my marvelous friend April, I struggled to come up with a simple to execute, budget-friendly theme. So I decided to go back to the basics: a good ole’ “Baby” themed Baby Shower. (The fact that we knew her little one is a boy helped to refine the colour scheme a bit.)

And I have to say that I love the way this party came together. Cute. Simple. Budget-friendly. What’s not to love?

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8 Ways to Support a Grieving Mom

“I lost my baby too.”

I’ve heard these words over and over again. The stories may differ but the heartache remains the same. These are the quiet confidences whispered between grieving mamas; a single sentence that binds us together over stripped wombs and ragged hearts.

The day I lost my son, I found myself joining an unexpectedly large group of mourning women. They were all around me and until then, I’d never even noticed.

Statistically speaking, 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage – but despite this staggering figure, it can be difficult to put faces to these numbers. As a comparatively quiet group of mothers, it’s sometimes easier to ignore their loss rather than figure out how to approach them.

But how do we respond when a grieving mother shares with us the crushing pain of infant (or child) loss? How do we offer support for the friend who calls us in tears from the hospital? How do we walk alongside mothers in the midst of such heartbreaking grief?

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Forget Me Not

The Forget Me Not’s were dead.

Arriving home from a weekend away, I discovered my meagre assembly of potted plants withering and wilted on the balcony. With the faint smell of basil still lingering in the air, I looked at the shriveled leaves and dried dirt with aggravation.

This had been my first attempt at livening up our micro-sized balcony with a bit of greenery. It was our third summer without a backyard vegetable patch and by late Spring my fingers had begun itching to get back into the dirt. But despite my best intentions for fresh veggies, my forgetful “mommy brain” combined with an intense summer heat wave had not been doing the plants any favours.

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Family Update

Dearest interweb, blogosphere, and beyond,

You may have noticed that it’s been a bit quiet over here lately. I promise this neglect is not intentional, simply a byproduct of nasty flu bugs and family emergencies.

Over the past week, we have made three separate hospital trips (one for each of us): twice for dehydration and flu symptoms, and once for a baby who decided to try and back-flip out of mommy’s arms and onto the living room floor.

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Nine Tips For Parents of Babies in the NICU

When you dream of being discharged from the hospital with a healthy, full-sized little one in your arms, it can be crushing to suddenly find yourself in the organized chaos of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

Most families never plan on spending time in the NICU. The average mom is unprepared and unfamiliar with this strange world of beeping monitors, bubbling oxygen machines, and gowned hospital staff. And when you factor in a little baby that’s not doing so great, a few postpartum hormones, and a ton of stress, it’s no wonder that it can feel particularly overwhelming.

That being said, here are a few tips that this NICU mommy wishes she’d known in advance:

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Strolling with a Celebrity

Strapped into the five point harness of my baby stroller is a mini superstar sucking on a dinosaur soother.

That’s right – I have been given the highly sought after and seriously underpaid job of chauffeuring a little celebrity around town in my Graco buggy.

At least, I’m pretty sure there’s a celebrity in there…

Because how else can you possibly explain the unfathomable amount of attention given to the tiny human chewing on a toy giraffe?

Anytime we leave the house, we have to tack an additional half hour to our schedule for spontaneous “meet and greets.” We barely make it out of our apartment elevator without being mobbed by a herd of cooing grandmas and cross-eyed strangers pulling silly faces. And forget about the days of messy ponytails, sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt – my little passenger ensures that there is no longer such a thing as running a “quick errand without seeing anyone.”

Clearly the only plausible conclusion is that I’m carting around a blue eyed, button nosed, internationally recognized superstar.

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this is motherhood {too}: a journey through twin-to-twin transfusion

Note: This post was written for Michaela Evanow’s blog series on “This is Motherhood (Too).” This article was originally posted on Michaela’s site on August 10, 2015. 

I was eight weeks pregnant when the ultrasound technician turned a grainy screen towards me and pointed out not one but two little miracles. And in that moment, with two hearts blinking on the screen and cold jelly oozing down my belly, all fears dissipated. My husband and I could only marvel at the God who delights in giving such sweet surprises.

Amazed, we stumbled out of the appointment with a fistful of fuzzy ultrasound photos and the reassurance that One greater than ourselves was holding this pregnancy in the palm of His hand.

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When the Happiest Day of Your Life isn’t Happy

Sitting outside the hospital with my empty, saggy tummy and watery eyes, I watched family after family proudly and ever-so-carefully carry their day old newborns out to the car. With every step the beaming parents radiated a wave of pride, nerves, and pure delight. Caught up in a world of wonder, they smiled broadly in my direction, inviting me to join them in this brief moment of bliss. And while I desperately wished to share in their excitement, to feel something, I couldn’t seem to get further than the fake smile twisted on my face.

This was their happiest day. But it certainly wasn’t mine.

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10 Things Motherhood Has Taught Me about Baby Poop

Warning: This post is disgusting and squishy and most certainly not for individuals prone to queasy stomachs or an overly active gag reflex. If you’re currently chowing down on lunch, you’ll probably want to save this post for later…

Congratulations! You’ve just brought a milk guzzling, sleep stealing, poop machine into the world. Sadly, gone are the days when you can simply pass the bottom heavy baby back to its mother for a quick change. You are now the parent! It’s time to grab some zinc oxide cream and a gas mask because you are about to wrestle one squirming baby out of an obnoxiously tight sleeper that’s erupting with half-digested carrots.

Ah yes, the joys of parenting… Who knew there were so many wonderful things to learn about babies? Because standing knee deep in a pile of fermenting diapers, you are now an expert on pimply bum rashes and oddly colored excrement. No one can say that having a baby isn’t informative. This, however, is one subject that you probably wish wasn’t covered so extensively…

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