Conclusion of Capture Your Grief

I made it further in the project this year than I did last year, but I didn't reach my goal of completing the whole project. On October 18, my grandmother, who I middle named Abbie after, joined Abbie in heaven. She was a beautiful soul, and losing her also caused me to lose my motivation to complete this project. There's always next year.

Day 25 - #SayItOutLoud

I miss my baby girl!

I have come so far and grown so much since losing Abbie. I don't particularly like being told how strong I am, because I am not strong because I choose to be, I'm strong because I don't know how to be weak.

I will never apologize for anything that happened during Abbie's short life. I did what I had to do for her. If anyone thinks I handled it wrong, that is their problem, not mine.

Day 23 - Tattoos/Jewelry

Ironically, I, the very tattooed woman, have not yet gotten an Abbie tattoo. Largely for financial reasons, but also because I can't decide what would perfectly permanently represent her.

This is my dad's tattoo. I love it. The night before Abbie died, he was giving J, the nurse, and I a hard time about having tattoos. He made it through 20 years in the Navy without getting any tattoos, but he got a tattoo for my baby girl.

I took this picture last year for this project. The bottom heart is an urn which contains Abbie's ashes. Unfortunately, since then it has been stolen from me.

Day 22 - Words

I love this poem. I thought this image was very fitting, with the pink and brown.

Day 17 - Time

How long it's been since Abbie got her wings.

Day 16 - Seasons

Today officially marks me making it farther in this project this year than I made it last year.

Halloween makes me sad. My due date was October 24. I didn't buy this costume, because what if Abbie was late? I was due October 24, and knew if I bought her a Halloween costume, she wouldn't come until November 1st. Little did I know she'd have been here and gone by then. She would have made the cutest little pea.

Day 15 - Wave of Light

Day 14 - Family

This is our little family now, just Bodie and me.

Day 13 - Book

http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Real-Little-Astounding-Story/dp/0849946158/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&qid=1381714138&sr=8-1&keywords=heaven+is+for+real

Day 12 - Article

http://www.mamamia.com.au/parenting/ten-points-i-wish-every-person-knew-about-the-death-of-a-child/

Day 11 - Triggers

Day 10 - Beliefs

I believe in Heaven.

I believe my sweet Abbie is in Jesus' arms.

I believe I will be with her again.

I believe she is perfect and whole.

I believe she is not suffering.

I believe we, the ones left behind, are the ones who suffer.

I believe that it is okay for me to be angry with God.

I believe He understands.

I believe He loves me anyway, the way a Father does.

Day 9 - Music

This one may seem a little silly. This song has a great bass line, and J played it A LOT while I was pregnant. He'd play it, Abbie would get to moving. I'll never hear this song again without thinking of her.

Day 8 - Color

Abbie will always be all things pink and brown to me.

Day 7 - You now

It has been 3 years since my loss. Most days are okay, but there is very obviously a piece of my heart missing. I have come a long way from the early days, when I'd only leave my house to go to the store or the doctor. I've seen the most growth in the last year. I'm socializing again, spending time with friends again, leaving the house again. I am currently wrestling with the knowledge that as a result of my breakup with Abbie's and Bodie's father I will probably not have any more children. My heart is lighter now than it was 3 years ago, but the heaviness is still there, as I know  it will always be. I am adjusting to carrying the load of my grief.

The new me worries a lot more than the old me did. I am constantly aware of the dangers Bodie faces, and want to protect him from all of them. I fear that I will somehow stunt his development because of the fears I now live with. My emotions are much more raw, at the surface, than they used to be. I am much quicker to tears, I am much more empathetic, more in tune with others' pain. I was very alone in the early days of my grief. I didn't have anyone to talk to who had been there. I try now to make myself available to new loss moms, I don't want them to feel the loneliness that I felt, and I want to help them to see that they will survive, they are not crazy, and what they're going through and feeling is normal for people who are going through what we've been through.

Day 6 - Ritual

It's not a daily ritual, but a yearly ritual. I get a cake for her birthday with a number candle for how old she'd be. I don't light the candle, because she's not here to blow it out.

Day 5 - Memory

This is the best memory I have of Abbie. This was taken between her being extubated and the first time she stopped breathing. That time was a glorious 2 hours, when we had the illusion of a normal healthy baby.

Day 4 - Legacy

Her legacy is her memory.

Day 3 - Myth

Day 2 - Identity

Her name is Abigail Marie, but she's always been Abbie to me.
Abigail means "my father is joy." It is from the Old Testament, "...and his wife's name was Abigail. She was an intelligent and beautiful woman" 1 Samuel 25:3. As an English name, Abigail first became common after the Protestant Reformation and was popular among the Puritans.
Marie means "of the sea" or "bitter." I prefer "of the sea."

I love the name Abbie because all the Abbie's I've seen depicted on television were strong, intelligent women.
She was named Abbie after Abbie on NCIS:

and Abbie from ER:

She was named Marie after my paternal grandmother. Her middle name is Marie:

She was born at 1:22pm on September 26, 2010 at OU's Children's Hospital. She weighed 5 pounds 11 ounces and was 18 inches long.

She was beautiful. She looked so much like me, and her little brother looks so much like her. She had her daddy's cleft chin. She had my family's eyes. She had my hands, my long skinny fingers.

God, I miss her so much. I would love to see who she would be now, at 3. Her brother is giving me a run for my money, I can only imagine she would too, and I'd love every second of it.

Day 1 - Sunrise

#captureyourgrief

Midwest City, Ok 8:10AM

Project Heal 2013

http://carlymarieprojectheal.com/

Last year, I only made it half way through, it was too hard. This year, my goal is to make it through the whole month, and for this to be a healing process. This is for Abbie.

She was all I ever wanted and He took her from me. How could I not be angry?

Abbie's birth story (9/26/10-9/30/10)

My water broke at 36 weeks, a Sunday.  The Monday before my water broke I could not quit puking, there was a little blood, but I knew it was irritation in my esophagus because I puked ALL.THE.TIME. Anyway, to get out of going to work I had to go to L&D. I’m glad I did because it turned out I had a UTI I didn’t know about. They monitored me for like 4 hours, and her heart beat was steady, but because it wasn’t “reactive” they decided to do an ultrasound. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary on the ultrasound, but the doctor called me back afterwards and told me I needed to go to the university for another ultrasound, she thought what they saw was a cyst on Abbie’s ovary, but she wanted a second opinion.

That Friday I went in to the university and the perinatalogist there told me it looked like a cyst on her ovary, and worst case scenario, Abbie would lose an ovary. Doctors should never say worst case scenario to anyone. Anyway, they told me I’d have to deliver at the university Children’s hospital and set me up for weekly ultrasounds to watch development.

2 days later, my water broke. I was nervous, but not freaking out. We went to the hospital, and they hooked me up and all that. The most painful part of that experience was the internal exams and having the internal monitors put in. 3 ½ hours after my water broke, and before I even really started to feel any contractions, Abbie’s heart rate started dropping more and more with each contraction. When her heart rate dropped to 70, I started yelling, “I don’t care if I have to have a c-section, do what you have to do to save my baby.” They gave me the shot to stop my contractions, took me in for the c-section, and about an hour later, at 1:22 pm, I had my little Abigail Marie, 5 lbs 11 oz, 18 inches. The sound of her cry was the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.

They had forewarned us that she’d have to have surgery and that she’d be in the NICU, so we were prepared for that. When she was born she was surrounded by doctors, and she was wrapped in a blanket when they showed her to me. I didn’t get to see what her belly looked like until I was in my room and J brought pictures of her back down to me. Her belly was very distended, like the Ethiopian kids on the Sally Struthers commercials, but they hadn’t told me different yet, so we still thought it was an ovarian cyst. An hour or so later a doctor came down and told us she had free air in her belly which meant probably some kind of bowel perforation, but, again, worst case scenario, she’d have an ostemy bag for a few days.

Because I’d had an epidural, I had to throw a fit to get them to let me go upstairs and hold her before they took her into surgery. At this point, I still wasn’t that worried. I’d trusted the doctors with their “worst case scenario” talk, and thought everything was going to turn out okay. It wasn’t until I talked to the surgeons who operated on her that I realized just how dire the situation was. The first thing they said to me was, “Your little girl is very sick.” What they told me made me go numb. When they opened her up, they discovered that her intestines were “mush.” She had what was called a midgut volvulus or shortgut. They had to remove, they said, 85% of her intestines.

That was the point I knew my baby wasn’t going to survive. One of the doctors told J about a hospital in Omaha that specializes in colon/digestive issues. They contacted that hospital for us, but because of her size and the severity of her condition, she wasn’t a candidate.

The next day, Monday, we met with the neonatologist. At this point Abbie was still on the ventilator from surgery. The neonatologist explained Abbie only had about an inch of duodenum left, and the only way for Abbie to get nutrients would be with something called TPN, which would eventually lead to liver failure. She told us some other stuff too, but it all came back to there was nothing else they could do and Abbie would suffer. They gave us the choice to do what we wanted. I asked if waiting would mean when we had to let her go that she would starve to death. She told me yes. J looked at me and said we need to talk privately at the same time I looked at him and said we have to let her go.

They told us after removing the ventilator, she could live for 5 minutes or 5 days, they just didn’t know. The doctor explained to us that Toby Keith had donated a 2 room comfort suite on the terminal floor and that we’d be able to spend the end of Abbie’s time up there with her in a more homelike environment. They also contacted Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, an organization that takes free professional photos. (Google them, they’re a great organization). We were going to remove the ventilator on Tuesday morning, but my dad lives in California, and my sister told me he was planning on driving out, so we wanted to wait until he got here. My grandma ended up getting him a plane ticket and he was here Tuesday afternoon.

Wednesday morning we had a baptism service in the NICU. They took all the tubes out except the ventilator and the central line and we got to bathe and dress her. The nurse helped us get her hand and foot prints in her baby book and they let me cut a lock of her hair. Around 11 am, they removed the ventilator and took us upstairs. The first couple hours were great. My SIL took a lot of pictures; the NILMDTS guy also got some really good pictures.

At 1 pm, she stopped breathing for the first time. She went for probably 2 minutes without taking a breath, though it felt like forever, and her heart rate dropped to 60. Then, she just started right back up and her heart rate went back up to 120. At this point I kicked everyone but J out of the room we were in and we just sat and held her and watched her for probably 3 hours straight. Her breathing was real spotty after that, and every breath I thought is this going to be the last, is this going to be the last. She was heavily medicated, and, you know, infants sleep a lot anyway, which I didn’t think about until afterwards. Until later in the evening when she started to stir and become alert again, I thought she was basically gone and we were just waiting for her heart to give up.

Other than the stress of that, we had some moments that we’ll cherish forever. The couches folded out and we got to lay down with her in between us, she was alert during this time, and I don’t care what they say about babies not really smiling, it’s gas…it’s not true. My baby couldn’t have possibly had gas, she’d never eaten, and she smiled at me.

It was just me and my mom there when Abbie died. Mom was holding her and I was laying down trying to get a little rest, I hadn’t slept at all since Sunday morning and it was time for shift change, Thursday morning. The nurse woke me to tell me she had to go down for report and the next nurse would be up at 7. My mom said, “She hasn’t taken a breath in a minute.” I took her and the nurse checked her heart rate: it was 34, then 12 bpm, and then she was gone.