Fitting

I was driving home from visiting a friend today with the kids when I saw the cemetery and decided that I needed to visit. I was supposed to visit yesterday but didn't.  So at the last moment I got off at the exit and went. There was a new monument right in front of Noel's grave, a crucifix, and no it wasn't for Noel. I honestly don't know the reason its there yet, but it seemed fitting.  I went today and cried yet again, and none of the kids wanted to visit today so I left the hang out by the car. But it was good to be there alone, even if my attention was divided.

You see there are little things, little moments that sometimes give me glimpses of grace and other times they are bits of sufferings. Both, well both share in Jesus, and thats grief journey I'm on, both part of my cross as I was reminded today on my visit.

My oldest in his 6 year old grief has basically uttered one sentiment for his lost sibling. He didn't get to know what he liked.  And if I sit with this for a minute, I tear up, because in his limited understanding of life and death, he understands so much. It is sad that we didn't get to know him, and while I am glad to have an intercessor in heaven, I am sad about not knowing him too.

A few weeks ago a friend and I were able to have dinner and chat and she theorized that maybe so many Catholics end up with miscarriages because they need intercessors to help them get through this life as a Catholic. A while I'm not sure about the theology of it all, I do know that I do have two intercessors in heaven now, and as I thought about it today, I realized just how hard it really is at times and how much of a grace it is to have people in heaven praying for our family.

Because I had traveled this road before, I struggled with knowing that I had to go through all that losing a child entails yet again.  At times it seems harder, but other times, its odd and it feels like maybe its a grace pause.  Like for so long I have been working on either being working towards something or being afraid of a new life coming too soon, that this time where I know I can't do anything about it, I get to step back and see what's in front of me in a new light.

So whether it be that I am reminded of losing Noel through my hair falling out or other effects of my hormones, I'm thankful that I got to know him and love him for as long as I did.  I already think he's interceding and making me stronger and for that I'm thankful.

Two weeks later

I'm still sad.  I still don't get to bring a live baby home, but life has returned to its normal amount of chaos at least for the children. Driving is hard if I'm by myself, because by myself, I think and I sob.

This week we got the pathology report and learned it was a placenta separation issue, and that sent me spiraling for a bit.  I want to say that I won't have this fear of a repeat next time around if there is a next time but I know somewhere it will be there.

Some things that are different now, heat doesn't bother me like it would if I was pregnant. I get to teach a full class of chemistry next fall. I may consider starting Ephraim with kindergarten this year since he's a borderline birthday and he's interested anyway.  I don't feel pressured by myself to give up nursing the toddler.  She nurses minimally, but somehow that is comforting.  Someone is still growing by me.

I think that this tragedy is helping me to figure out boundaries a bit more.  I realize I'm vulnerable and I need to turn off the people who could hurt me right now.  The people that think I need to be all better now or not be sad, the people that need to explain instead of just sitting and listening or just being there.

I'm thankful for this greater sense of church that has come about in this whole experience.  As a convert who came with a lot of baggage, this sense that people can actually be there for you is amazing.  The fact that people actually care about you and pray for you and send you cards and meals and will take your kids for the day because you can't figure out life, its just really good. It makes the hurt and loss just a little more bearable. Thank-you all.

And lastly, I think because this whole experience brings up all the feelings from 7 years ago when I lost my first baby who we named Edmund where I miscarried in a stadium bathroom. I'm thankful that I have a place to go visit Noel and be still. I need that. There's a lot of chaos in my mind still but going there helps me to know that God is watching out for me and for my little family.

So I sift and I wait and I pray to trust in the slow work of God, because that is what is going to get me through.

Bury the dead

I definitely didn't think I would be doing this particular act of mercy in this year of mercy, to bury the dead.  And yet somehow I am.  And maybe, maybe this feels like a bit, because well it was just a little baby, not more than 3-4 inches long. Just a little over 13 weeks along when he was delivered. I delivered him and saw him, this little tiny person, so beautiful so st peace, so unaware of the turmoil constantly inside his mama's head. So, this what I need to do, what our family needs to do.  Because this little one, even though so little was already so loved.  And I can't imagine it any other way. Tomorrow, we bury him.  We named him Noel. Our little Noel Kurak, we love you so much.

St. Noel Chabanel was man that struggled with so many things as an early settler to North America. He couldn't handle the new environment very well, and yet he knew he was there, and he didn't know if his circumstances would change any time soon, so he decided to follow the will of God anyway, even though it was tough.  Oddly he said this and then was martyred the next day, but he didn't know that was going to happen.

Somehow this reminds me of our little saint now in heaven. Because for a long time on the inside I was grappling with this pregnancy, some things were said to me that were like a knife in my heart, and so I wasn't wanting to shout with joy that I was carrying new life, and so I kept coming back to this Saint, because he was in tough times but saw God's greater hand at work. I'm not sure I ever really came to grips with everything 100% before tragedy struck, but I think that's gotta be okay. It's where I was at, God was there with me in my struggle. And maybe that's what I need to see in this overall,  in this loss of a life that I never get to see grow up.  God is here, even if I don't understand it.  Even if its painful and sad and is long and is going to take a lot of time to heal, he is here. And because he is here, I can do his will.

And so tomorrow we bury our son, so little, so loved, so precious to us. I don't want to be doing this, I want to still be growing a baby, but this is God's will for me, for our family, and I am going to find him in the sadness of it all.

Sadness part 1

I think to say I'm sad feels just not enough. There's this whole sense of vulnerability and rawness and its just so very hard. I don't think I even want to put a name with it, but just to know its there.

This year was already hard enough, Helena was diagnosed with an extra membrane near one of her aorta heart valves and just coming to terms with that was enough.  You see the week I found out I was pregnant was the same week I also had to bear the heaviness of my kid maybe not being okay.  There was a lot of emotion, happy and sad.

And then this week happened. I was not warned by anything. I was nearing 13 weeks and I was just beginning to tell people about a baby coming. I was thinking it was okay to do that and not have to untell everyone just a few days later.  I thought I was going to meet my fourth live baby healthy and happy come this November.

 I woke up on Tuesday night with blood soaked underwear, but felt nothing, there was no warning sign of anything being wrong.  Yes Monday had been a rough day, but we all have those. Last time I miscarried it started with a little trickle and then got worse.  This time wasn't like that.  I felt fine and pregnant going to bed but that changed. I don't even know how to write the next part, except to say that there was sadness and flashbacks and me calling a friend, and Keith calling the midwife.  She was so calm and said if I wasn't in any pain I could wait till morning to get checked out.

I cried a lot that night, I texted friends who I thought would listen. One happened to be up in the middle of the night and was kind and listened. I couldn't talk, but I wrote.  I cancelled appointments and called off work because at least one thing had changed, and unlike last time where I tried to go on and ignore everything, I knew that I couldn't this time. So I didn't.

I called the midwife, and for a bit because of how the bleeding was she wasn't convinced it was a miscarriage, but she thought at the very least I needed to go in and see an OB to get Rhogam due to my Rh negative blood and having a significant blood loss and hopefully he would give us good news with a ultrasound.  So as soon as his office opened I called and I got a standing appointment for that afternoon with knowing that we would be waiting since we were last minute.

There was a lot of not knowing what to do with myself.  A friend came over and brought food with her knowing I probably didn't eat and she was right, I didn't.  Food never appeals to me when life is rough. She sat with my while her kids played with my kids, it was nice.  And then another friend just happened to be in the area that day and said she would come over to babysit the kids when we needed to go to our appointment, she didn't have anything pressing and just wanted to help.

And you guys, that's the one thing that I feel that God was there.  Because lately, when I'm struggling, I remind myself that God is there in that moment. That I'm not alone, and at this moment I could feel God's presence in the way that people were willing to come and help and be there for us.

So we went to the appointment, and it was a bit of a drive to this particular doctor, and the one thing that kept coming to my mind was that I couldn't will this away.  That no matter what, the outcome would be the outcome and while I was hoping that it was just a bleed from the placenta lifting, I had no idea what we would find out.

The OB came in and he was really kind and funny, and oddly he brought in two med students with him that day too, and at this point I've come to not care about those things, but I'm sure it was awkward for them, since I would think for the most part they haven't experienced the ups and downs of being in the field yet. But the doctor, he was really nice and just had a comforting presence.

As soon as he did the ultrasound, he was sad to say that he didn't have good news. He instead had to tell us our baby died and it looked like it died a few days before.  There was no heartbeat and it had stopped growing. Even though at this point my heart already had some sadness, at this point my heart offiically broke.

Divine Mercy

This year has been all about mercy.  I mean it was declared the Year of Mercy by the Pope, there was a book on Divine Mercy that two lovely ladies put out that is a must read that I got a chance to check out earlier this year. And then there was the constant reminders whether in penance or spiritual direction to carry out mercy. That hasn't been a bad thing either. Mercy is an awesome thing. So when Divine Mercy Sunday came around and a friend recommended seeing the film The Original Image of Divine Mercy, I have it a second thought and ultimately went for it dragging my husband along to see it.  The history in the movie was really good, the subtitling could use some spell check and we could have done without the celebrities or at least let them really speak, but overall it was a good story to watch. I especially liked that you could see how in it Jesus and his mercy could not die, despite human efforts to do so, the hope of Jesus lived on even if by a small number of people.  That was a pretty powerful thing to watch. 

The whole time I was watching the movie, in the back of my mind I was contemplating what divine mercy really was. You see, I struggle with things like pure definitions and hardly ever accept them as is.  I mean I've spent hours trying to understand grace, I think I have it to something I understand, but I still think about it at times. Mercy is no different.  I think partially it may be because of my upbringing and there being different vocabulary for things.  I began to think about why mercy is so hard for my head to wrap around, and I came to conclude that its because its so vast, and while we carry out our little part, God's part in it so big it maybe isn't something we can put in words. In my feeble words it would be to be forgiven when we don't deserve it. Perhaps a free pass. 

And then it made contemplate what this would be in my upbringing, my protestant one.  Because while not having divine mercy, the all encompassing thing, there is a sense of mercy.  And to me that would come in when a person has that first come to Jesus moment, because there is that belief that once Jesus comes in to your life that all your sins are forgiven. So in turn this would for sure be a moment of mercy.  The difference then between Catholic theology and the protestant theology is that for Catholics, this isn't a one time deal.  We at least should recognize that we are in constant need of God's mercy, because we are that much infiltrated by our human weaknesses that causes us to screw up and sin. 

So its not that protestants don't have mercy in their vocabulary, they do.  Its just that its viewed differently.  And I think one of the really appealing things to me about Catholicism and perhaps one of there reasons it makes people feel uncomfortable, is that we understand that it is a constant battle between grace and pride. And that when that pride wins we need to run to the arms of Jesus over and over to receive that mercy and start anew. I remember in converting that protestants were worried about me becoming a bad Christian in being Catholic, and to that I say if relying on and recognizing the need of God's infinite mercy is being a bad Christian, then I am guilty.

A Nursing Update: 25 months

It's been a little while since I think I've done a nursing update with Lena, so I thought I would do just that. Currently, we are still nursing, but the volume has decreased drastically.  We had a nasty bout with mastitis that somehow motivated me to start weaning.  Or maybe it was that she was over 2 and she was showing signs that she could handle it too. But there's nothing like the flu like symptoms of mastitis to make you reevaluate how things are going.

So currently we nurse only 2 to 3 sessions per day.  One at the beginning of nap,  one at bed time and the other may happen at wake up for the day like it did today, or in the middle of the night or in a moment where its just needed.  But to go from 8ish nursing sessions to this feels like a different life, and a different baby.

And she is a different baby, or toddler rather.  She used to not be able to sleep in her own bed very well, but sandwiched between her brothers in her new room it seems to be going better, its not fool proof and at times she does wake up, but it seems more and more that if she does, she just finds her way over to my room and bed and curls up next to me not insisting to nurse. This is so different from how she was the first two years of life, I'm not even sure what to say.  But the curling up next to me, I find endearing, because she is definitely still snuggly and that it doesn't come with any other expectations than that I can handle that.

I want to say her appetite is better with decreased nursing, but I have to say its still about the same. Honestly, I think at least all my toddlers are just toddlers about food, sometimes they eat it sometimes they don't.  The one thing is she does seem to finally like cow's milk.  So that's at least something different.

She's able to be comforted now just by touch and this is really nice as well.  That screaming 20 month old that would not except anything but nursing is no longer here, and in some ways I'm sad, but in some ways I'm glad to be through this stage as it makes taking her places a bit more manageable.

And that is where we are at, still nursing at 25 months, but much less and so it feels weaning has begun if only by circumstance and a little bit of maturity on her part.

Other nursing updates
More about Nursing, Dear Lena

Nursing My Toddler

On Ben's 6th Birthday

Dear Ben,

Wow! You are six.  Sometimes I'm amazed we made it this far and kept you alive and well this long. You are my oldest kiddo and I know with that comes a lot of me making mistakes with how to do things with you.  I'm extra grateful for the mercy and grace God bestows on me and you with our relationship.

You've had some ups and downs this past year, with an awesome trip to NYC that you loved and then unfortunately being hospitalized for a nasty virus.  You started kindergarten and you blew through your math curriculum in a hurry. You climb and fly and can charm the pants off of anyone you meet.

Your favorite thing to do is to rattle off the Dinosaur A to Z song from Dinosaur Train sometimes as a duet with your brother.  You have such a thirst for knowledge of dinosaurs that I'm sure you know at least 100 different species. Your favorites are the sauropods.

You are the best big brother as you help your younger siblings out with things they cannot do, but also in that you look out for them too.  You also are a really good friend and try to include them always in your play schemes.

You started to be more adventuresome this past year, whether it be in foods, or taking a class on your own, or trying a new sport out (soccer). You even have been more open to trying some new movies out like Inside Out, Land Before Time, and Pete's Dragon to name a few. You have the most excellent memory when it comes to playing out scenes of whatever movie or show you have watched is.

Thanks for being you, we might not always understand each other , but I am so glad that God had me be your mom.  I don't think I would have grown as much as I did in the last 6 years if I didn't have a you. So thank-you.  I've enjoyed this time we get to spend together and learn about each other and from one another.  You are an excellent Benjamin, even if I am biased in saying so since I am your mama. I hope you grow in this next year to be an even better Benjamin than you are today. I love you to the moon and back.

Love,
Your Mama