9 Months

Dear Everett,

You would have been 9 months old today. Can you believe that? 9 months! What a big boy you would have been. I have no doubt you would have been wearing at least 12 month clothing (possibly 18 month) right now!

Your daddy, Lilli, and I miss you so much. Lilli talks about you all the time. She is such a great big sister to you. She wants to make sure people know who you are and that you are important in our lives, even if you aren't physically here with us. It still hurts so much inside when we think about you and how you should have been here. But not to worry, we are doing big things all because of you.

Lilli regularly informs us that you are growing up in Heaven, and so does your cousin Ethan. I think they might know something... Feel free to continue to visit and play with Lilli in her dreams. She really loves it when you do that.

Loving you and missing you so much,

Mommy, Daddy, and Lilli

Mom's Day

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and it started off on a good note with Lilli and Dave letting me sleep in! When I woke up, depression somewhat set in with the fact that it was my first Mother's Day without our Everett. This time last year he was alive and kicking like crazy inside me.

Lilli greeted me with a card and gift, that Daddy help her make. In cards she likes to draw special pictures for people, and my card was no different. She draws the pics then tells you, or whoever is supervising, what it is she drew. On my card she drew what she referred to as a "toy thing" for me. Next to the toy thing was an oval with a small circle in the center. She drew eyes and a smiling face inside that circle and colored it in. She told Dave that was "Everett in mommy's belly". That brought tears to my eyes. A lot of tears. She's finally getting what happened in 3 year old terms. She tells people that Everett had an accident inside mommy's belly. And for now, that's really all she needs to know. But at least she understands those words.

As the day moved on, the depression slowly got better, as I thought about what a lucky mom I am to have my Lilli here with me on earth. I thought about all the joy and beauty she brings to my life and what an amazing kid she is. I love both my children very much, and feel so lucky and blessed to have both of them touch my life!

~Steph

Scrapbooking

I bought my very first scrapbook yesterday as we have sooooo many things from Everett, his funeral, etc. I had things scattered around the house in a folder, bag, laying on a shelf, you get the idea. It needed to be in a centralized location where we could get to the items without having to go on a scavenger hunt! So I went to Target and found a beautiful scrapbook meant for a baby boy. I was able to personalize it with Everett's name on the front, along with a picture.

I started pulling all things Everett together yesterday afternoon and came across all the cards we were given when he passed, and started reading them again. I hadn't done this since they were received. It brought me back to all that fresh heartache and sadness, but also made me remember how much love we were surrounded by when we needed it the most. As I looked at the huge pile of items I realized that there weren't nearly enough pages in the book to hold everything I wanted in there.

Lilli talked about Everett almost non-stop yesterday. I'm not sure why, this was before I decided to scrapbook his things. So last night we took her to the cemetery. It started to cloud up on the way there and looked as though a storm might be coming from the west. This had been one of the first semi sunny days we've had in a very long time. I'd spent most of the month of April fearing we'd need to build an ARC to survive all the springtime Indiana rain that literally seemed never ending, and now it had moved into May! As we got closer to the cemetery I looked up at the sky and said, "OK Everett, I hate going to the cemetery when it's cloudy and grey, how about helping us out a little"? And low and behold a few minutes later, the clouds passed and the sun came back out again. Dave turned to me and said Everett was such a good boy for listening to his mommy! I agree!

I think taking Lilli to the cemetery and explaining how that is where Everett is physically helps her to understand the finality of death. It's not a lesson you want your three year old to have. Later in life, yes, but not at three. We were out running an errand yesterday and Lilli started talking to a woman we were waiting next to. Lilli warmed up quickly, as usual, and told her (on her own) that she has a brother. Then she asked the woman if she had a brother and the woman said she did, but that he died a very long time ago when he was a tiny baby. Wow! Then Lilli told the woman that her brother lives in Heaven too! The woman replied with, "maybe your brother and my brother are playing together". Lilli looked at me and smiled and said quietly to me, Everett's not going to be in Heaven anymore, he's not going to die anymore. He's going to play with me and come home. Then spent one of many times in my day where I had to try and explain that couldn't happen and why to her.

After the visit to the cemetery we headed to our local JoAnn's and I got some extra pages to add along with colorful paper for the background of our book. It's a very low tech, no extra stickers, fancy scissors to cut the paper or any other bells or whistles. Everything was on sale! I spent the remainder of my evening putting items together on the pages and once I started I couldn't stop. I would have finished last night, but I ran out of the items I needed to finish it up. I'll give you a little peak of what it looks like:

~Steph

Sadness (Part 2)

In my previous post I told the majority of the details that made up our birth story for Everett.

When I read my friend's post about her sister, last week, who lost her baby to stillbirth, for a VERY brief second I had run through my head, "that's so sad, I'm so thankful nothing like that has happened to us". But wait, it DID happen to us! It's almost like a protective mechanism people develop when they hear tragic news about something. I'm invincible. Nothing bad will happen to me, it always happens to other people. Until you hit reality at some point in your life, it happens to us all, where we do finally realize that we are not invincible. You hear from people, life is fragile, live every day to it's fullest. It's hard to understand how incredibly fragile life is until you've had something so precious, so wanted, so beautiful ripped from your life in a matter of seconds.

The days that followed after Everett died were surrounded by family and friends. We got most of the "final" details taken care of the day I was released from the hospital. We stopped at Costco to purchase an air mattress for people to sleep on, stopped by to grab some donation envelopes for a charity we picked where people could donate to in lieu of flowers, went to the cemetery to take care of those arrangements, went to the funeral home to take care of that stuff, and went to the florist to pick out an arrangement for the table. The funeral home was AMAZING (and, on a side note, our very first sponsor for Run 4 Everett). You expect them to be great, but not everyone we dealt with on this day was, for lack of a better word, nice. The funeral home walked us through the entire process and were so warm, and caring. We decided to have Everett cremated as the thought of looking at a tiny, infant sized casket horrified me. I just couldn't do it.

The next day we spent "writing" the funeral service for Everett with another amazing person, the Chaplin who preformed Everett's service. He did such a beautiful job with everything and listened to me blubber through all my tears.

Then came the day of the funeral. At first, it was just family who was present. I remember sitting in one of the parlor rooms going over some final things with the Chaplin and feeling a major panic attack coming on. I looked over at Dave and told him, I can't do this as tears welled up in my eyes. I can't bury my child, I can't sit through a funeral, I can't breathe, I can't do THIS! You don't bury your children! I took some deep breaths and crying seemed to be a good release for all the emotions. We then went into the funeral room and friends and extended family had started to arrive. Dave and I stood up at the front where people could come to pay their respects. The line got longer and longer, and longer. It was unreal. There were close to 100 people who came to our son's funeral. I immediately felt a surge of strength as people wrapped their arms around us, cried with us and were just there for us. The service started and it was perfect. I didn't want it to be very long, because I didn't think I could handle sitting through it. But all the right readings were read, short sermon was delivered, and our letter to our baby boy was read:

Dear Baby Everett,

Your daddy and I loved you from the very first moment we found out we were expecting you. Over the months you grew inside of me we got to know you, your personality, your sleep and wake cycles, and your strong feet, which would kick me regularly, and we loved every minute of it. We could not wait to finally meet you.

Our hearts were aching and broken beyond belief when we found out that your heart stopped beating. Daddy, Lilli, and I will always treasure the moments after you were born that we got to hold you and spend much needed time with you. You were our perfect, beautiful little boy complete with so much hair!

We take peace and comfort in knowing that you are with the angels and all your great grandparents, who love you so very much, and will take care of you until we see you again some day. We will always, always love you.

Love forever,

Mommy, Daddy, and Lilli

The grief process fully set in after everyone else returned home and "back to normal". I think that's when my anger kicked in to full gear! And so much anger there was over what happened to our little boy. In the beginning of the grief process we were just trying to function and cope minute by minute (literally), then hour by hour. My brain wouldn't shut off, especially when I desperately needed it too (at night). All the events that transpired those last few weeks Everett was alive, then everything that happened at the hospital kept running through my head like the scariest nightmare you've ever had. It's was constant. It just wouldn't stop or go away, no matter how hard I tried. I was determined, at that point, to face everything head on, as "it", the grief, was grabbing hold of me anyways.

I sought out support in my friends. So many wonderful friends who were willing to listen to me ramble over and over again about whatever it was I needed to talk about. I also sought out support in an amazing therapist, who I still see, and of course, my grief group. It's specifically for people who have lost a baby. The other moms, and dads, I've met in there are incredible people. Some are further out in the process than I am, and others have just joined with fresh wounds.

So many people have told me, and us, how strong I am, how strong we are to be walking this journey and doing what we are doing. But what people don't understand, and don't want to understand, is that you really aren't given much of a choice when something like this happens. Especially when you have another alive child to take care of and think about. You do what you have to do to function each and every day and put one foot in front of the other. Literally. Some days that meant letting go of hygiene, food, or talking and that's OK. In the beginning Lilli was still in pre-school part time and I chose those days to let myself fall apart as much as I needed to, whether it meant staying in bed most days, crying or sometimes screaming. It also consisted of (obsessively) compiling research on what happened to Everett, and what could be done to prevent this from happening to another baby, another family. Then on the days Lilli was home with me, I tried to keep some level of "normal" for her.

At the end of December Lilli was home with me full time and I no longer had the luxury of my "fall apart days". She still sees me cry from time to time and now she's used to it. She used to feel like she needed to do something to help me when I was sad, but I explained to her that sometimes people get sad, and just need to be sad for a little while and that's OK. I don't want her to feel like it's her, a three year old, responsibility to make her mommy feel better.

Each day, slowly but surely gets a little bit easier to handle. We still have such an ache in our hearts for our beautiful baby boy, but feel the weight in our chest gets a little bit lighter as time moves forward.

~Steph

Sadness (Part 1)

Last night I learned that a friend of mine lost her nephew this week to stillbirth. Another full term, beautiful little boy, lost to a cord accident. Dreams shattered for yet another family. I went to my monthly support group last week and we had four NEW families present who had losses just within the last month, and apparently there had been a total of 13 losses in the past month alone at the hospital where I attend my group. This is just one of many hospitals in our city. How many other losses had there been at the others? It would make me crazy to try and think of it, so I won't.

With all these new losses surrounding me, I can't help but think about those days, or weeks, leading up to Everett's death and everything that followed. I remember how terrified I was every time I was admitted to the hospital. I remember feeling scared, and lonely, and so unsure of what was happening around me leading up to the weeks before Everett died. Then the day came where we thought our dreams were coming true and he would FINALLY be delivered and they couldn't find his heart beat.

I haven't written about what we experienced in the moments after learning that our son was gone, for a couple of reasons. I wasn't ready to go there. I wasn't ready to put myself back into feeling that pain, that unbearable, awful pain we experienced when I made my doctors tell me out loud what I could already see on their faces. The horror of the words spoken out loud to us. I knew it in my heart he was gone before they said it, but I needed to hear them say it. All Dave and I could do was cry in horror and shock and hold each other. I remember crying to the point I felt like I could no longer breath, and just saying no, no, no... saying, how could this happen, he was just alive this morning, I heard his heart beat this morning, I felt him move in the lobby this evening, how could this happen?!? Then I said it, We were so close! I was supposed to be induced right then and there. We were so close to him being here, and he was gone.

We had a Chaplin come in and visit with us for a while before they started the induction process. He did a blessing over Dave and I and Everett and then we were left to start the induction process. I begged my doctor for a c-section. It was too unbearable to think about going into labor and delivering my dead child. I just wanted him out of me. But they wouldn't do it. Too much risk for an "unnecessary" surgery. I started having contractions on my own very shortly after it was determined Everett's heart was no longer beating. Kind of like nature was taking it's course. I still had to be induced in all the typical ways, cervical ripening, pitocin drip to speed up contractions, and then the hook to break my water. After my water was broken things moved very quickly. In fact a little too quickly. They did a slow drip on my epidural, which had to be performed twice (ugh). The pain meds hadn't caught up with the level of pain I was in from the contractions. I begged for them to give me something. I was screaming out in pain and agony. Pain from the contractions and agony from what was about to happen. I kept thinking throughout the labor process, Maybe they made a mistake, maybe he will come out crying and screaming and things will be OK. I think part of this was hope that I needed to hold onto to get through the delivery process and part a protecting mechanism in my brain to help me deal with what was going on.

It was finally time to push. I pushed for what felt like an eternity. One of the few times in my life where I felt so incredibly weak. I was weak from emotional distress, weak from all the meds being pushed into my body and weak from going through labor all night. I just wanted it over with. I wanted to see my baby boy that we wanted so badly to be in our lives. I remember asking my sister, who was there with us during this process, if she could see his head. I needed to know it was almost over. A few more pushes and he was partly out. I had to wait, yes wait, for him to come the entire way out so my OB could inspect him to see if there were any obvious reasons for why he died. Then Dave watched as his cord was unwrapped (tightly) from around his neck and there was the smoking gun... Those two cord knots in his umbilical cord. My OB stated they were the tightest he had seen in his experience.

Everett was placed on my chest, just as Lilli was when she first came out. For a brief moment I forgot that he was gone. I just marveled at this beautifully, chubby, red headed little boy, who in our eyes was beyond perfect. He had skin tears from being gone for several hours and going through the birthing process and his lips were a dark shade of purple, but that didn't matter to us. He was ours and he was beautiful. The nurse took him and cleaned him up. Just like any happy and anxious mother I was excited to hear his birth stats. Then they let us know he was 8lbs, 1oz and a very long 22inches. What a big boy he was.

My in-laws arrived with Lilli to meet Everett. Lilli didn't understand that her brother she had waited so long to meet was gone, she didn't understand why everyone was so sad, and crying, wasn't this supposed to be a happy time? She held him and wanted to see his feet. She LOVES baby feet. We unwrapped them from his blanket and she touched them. Everett was still slightly warm at this point. Another Chaplin came in, one I had seen just weeks earlier while on the high risk unit when I was feeling so scared. She baptized Everett with his Mommy, Daddy, big sister, Nanny, and Deda (Deda is Serbian for Grandfather) surrounding him. My parents arrived by plane from out of state that evening and got to spend some much needed time with their grandson too.

I remained in shock the remainder of my hospital stay. Going into "crisis mode" and doing what needed to be done for our son. Making funeral arrangements, contacting the funeral home, florist, letting friends and family know what happened and what the tentative arrangements were going to be, things like that. The middle of the night when I was in the hospital was the hardest for me. I was moved to a different unit, so I wouldn't be around other happy new moms, and have to hear baby's crying. Although I did have to experience that while in labor and delivery. I could hear a mom giving birth to her alive baby in the room next to me. It was unfair and felt a bit torturous at the time.

The unit I was moved to was quiet. They put me at the end of the hall away from people and I felt a lot like the red headed step child. It was as though I hadn't been pregnant the entire year and everything had been erased. Except that it hadn't. When it was time to go we got a box of mementos some nurses had made for us. It was in a box they had picked out, with (of all things) a sail boat on it. Everett's room was sail boat themed and they didn't even know that. We said our final goodbyes to Everett, after spending the next morning holding him and rocking him in my room. I asked to clip some lockets of his beautiful hair so we could have that to touch later on, and I'm glad we did. As we rode down the elevator with my nurse she held our box of mementos. There was a well meaning volunteer in that elevator ride with us, who kept commenting on how beautiful the box was and what was it for, etc. Our nurse just tried to get her to shut up, but in a polite way! And then we exited the hospital, empty handed and the epitome of broken hearted. Tears welled up in my eyes as we left the hospital with no baby in hand.

~Steph

Part 2 to come later

Update

Run 4 Everett is now only 116 days away. That's just over 3 1/2 months! But who's counting? Me! I'm counting! We've had a few registrations so far, but still a long ways to go to make it a successful event. I am hopeful we will get there with the participation! We've had some final sponsorships come in this past week and hope to be winding down with that soon so that we can get our race brochures printed. If you are interested in registering for Run 4 Everett, or would like to make a tax deductible financial contribution, feel free to visit our website at run4everett.com. You can register by clicking on the race info tab, then clicking on the online registration link.

Dave and I are incredibly grateful to so many people who have helped us with the event, either through sponsorship, general donations (many of the folks we do not personally know), or support in other ways. We would like to thank each and every one who has helped us out in one way or another. Without you and your support, this event would not be possible.

Easter was yesterday and my sister got married the day before. It has been a busy week surrounded by family. I am pretty certain this is the first Holiday that I haven't bawled like a baby. It helps me to know that our beautiful baby boy is surrounded by love and got to participate in awesome celebrations up in Heaven.

We hope all of you had a wonderful Easter, or day if you don't celebrate. And hope to see many at Run 4 Everett!

~Steph

Peaceful Evening

So my husband has been out of state for business all week, and we survived just fine last time. Why should this time be any different? Well, it was. My three year old decided to have major behavioral issues all week, blaming it on missing her daddy. There's no excuse for her behavior this week, missing daddy or not. Everything seemed to come to a head Wednesday with bad behavior out in public, downright embarrassing actually. After a long timeout at home, some silent treatment by me, taking away several of her prized possessions, and several talkings to, I decided to take her to the park to meet up with a friend of mine and her children. This was not a reward for her bad behavior, this was for MY sanity. I needed for her to run off all that extra energy and be able to go to sleep extra early. Maybe some fresh air would do her some good.

Things seemed to be going according to plan. She was running, and climbing and generally just happy, something I really hadn't seen all week from her. She wanted to swing and laughed as I pushed her higher in the sky. Then it happened. Her little behind slipped out of seat of the swing. She was mid air as it happened and she grasped desperately to the chain of the swing. It was like a slow motion event happening right in front of me that I couldn't do anything about. Then she let go. She landed head first on the padding below the swing. I was horrified! I scooped her up and held her tight, feeling for bumps or other signs of trauma. There didn't seem to be any. She cried briefly and was up and running before I knew it. I consulted with my friend about whether to take her to the hospital to get checked out. We both decided I probably wouldn't sleep a wink unless I did.

I took her to the ER and she was seen very quickly. Outside of some scrapes and bruises she seemed just fine. This was her first trip to a hospital since we lost Everett and she was terrified. In Lilli's mind, sad things happen at hospitals. Her experience was turned around with some awesome nurses and a really compassionate ER doc. He listened to me and didn't treat me like the crazy mom I probably appeared to be. He left it up to us if we wanted to do a head scan, as she wasn't exhibiting any signs of a concussion and the radiation exposure isn't a good thing unless really necessary. He told us there was only about a 1% chance that it could be something more serious than what it appeared. I looked at him and explained that didn't give me much comfort as I have experienced first hand the 1% statistic and briefly explained what had happened in our lives 8 months prior. He understood. He didn't treat me like a crazy person. He left the decision up to me. Ugh... I had no husband here to confer with. I got some extra reassurance she was most likely OK and decided against the head scan. I also watched her like a hawk all night and had her sleep next to me just in case. I hoped I had made the right decision.

By morning it appeared I had as she was fine, bouncing around as usual, no headache or anything. She was in a much better mood all day Thursday. I had a chat with Everett Wednesday evening, asking him if he could have a little talk with his sister while she was sleeping, about her behavior. It must have worked. All on her own she told me in the morning that she wanted to go visit Everett. She picked up a toy saxophone she had and said she wanted to play him a song. We hadn't been to the cemetery in months and it was a beautiful day. So many things had to get done before we would go and in the evening we headed over to visit Everett.

As far as cemetery's are concerned he is in a beautiful one. It's well kept and it's quiet, even though it sits right off a busy road. And where he is over looks a lake and the western setting sun. In the evening it almost looks like the lake has glitter in it from the sun sitting lower in the sky. It's beautiful and peaceful.

When we learned Everett had died I was searching my brain as to what we would do with him. Not in your wildest nightmare do you think you'll have to plan a child's funeral. All I could think of when we learned of his death, was that I didn't want him to be alone. My husband agreed. Both my grandparents on my moms side are gone and they are buried in a mausoleum, close to our home, overlooking a beautiful little lake and the western setting sun. I wanted Everett with them. We asked the cemetery if it was possible and it was. So he was placed next to my grandmother's casket inside the wall. This gave me peace. I know he is surrounded by love in Heaven, but I wanted him physically next to someone who would have loved him very much on earth and is probably loving on him everyday now.

It's funny. I thought in the beginning I would be at the cemetery all the time visiting with Everett, but as it turned out I rarely go. I don't feel I have to be there to be close to him. I feel him in my heart and all around me every single moment of every single day. I can't explain the feeling, other than I know he's there and he's happy. So to me, the cemetery is a place where he just physically sits, not where he really is. I feel I can be close to him and talk to him almost anywhere. One thing I hate about going to the cemetery is I can't visit with crying. And I mean really crying. Probably what Oprah would refer to as the "ugly" cry. I try to hide it from Lilli, but she has gotten somewhat used to it. It just feels so, final. Seeing his name on a wall with a date, makes it that much more real. Not that it hasn't been real for a little over 8 months now. It's been very real. There's just something about seeing that name up there...

As we concluded our visit we said goodbye to Everett and Lilli wanted to "hug" him. So she gave a great big air hug to him. Then she wanted to touch his name on the wall so I hoisted her by her legs up high to reach his name. She gently rubbed her hands over it and told Everett she loved him. We got back to the car and she said she had to give him a kiss. Once again she got out of the car, went close to the wall and both kissed our hands and threw the kisses as hard as we could up to Heaven to reach him. This, of course, made me cry even harder. She asked if I was sad and I told her yes. On the way home it was quiet in the car and Lilli said she wished Everett could be at home with us and she missed him very much. I told her I did too. After the week we had it was a nice way to finish a beautiful, peaceful evening.

~Steph