I started running again last week. I’m bad at it again. My body feels clunky and stiff but also jiggly and soft at the same time. My once graceful, proud, easy strides are forced now. My legs feel heavy, my breathing is out of sync, my chest feels the strain of trying to control it. Running was once meditation to me. This week it felt pathetic, sad and draining. I haven’t ran since I was in my first trimester of pregnancy. I had bad morning sickness until about 16-17 weeks and horrid round ligament pain. Running switched to long walks for the duration of my pregnancy. I missed running but understood the importance of listening to my body. I couldn’t wait to get back to it, figuring it would provide such a wonderful break to my day in-between breast feeding, changing diapers and doing laundry. Last week it wasn’t meditation though. Continue reading →

Details, thoughts and emotions, even with the best intentions, get easily lost over time. I think thats one reason why I wanted to start writing about Sylvia because thats all we have of her. We won’t have memories of her first words, first steps or her first day of school…but we do have the memories of the hours we spent with her. So I can write and write and write about her, talk about her, cry for her, dream about her, look at the pictures we have of her, touch her little handprints and foot prints the hospital made, wear my dove necklaces and sleep with the blanket she was wrapped in beside our bed, next to the teddy bear my mom got us when we found out we were having a girl (wearing the crown we used for our pregnancy announcement) and the bear the hospital gave us. Instead of posing my daughter this week in some over stylized outfit with some over priced props announcing her four weeks of life like I anticipated doing, I am sitting at my laptop writing about how though it seems like a lifetime ago, it has yet to be a month since she has died.  Continue reading →

Carlos and I are on the wrong side of statistics. We are living every parents worst nightmare. I know how news spreads, how our concerned, horrified and shocked friends, acquaintances and even strangers spoke of us to each other. ‘Did you hear about Carlos and Teresa?!’ We are the couple that people ‘feel’ for but are so incredibly thankful they aren’t us. Many friends told us when they heard the news they hugged their kids a little tighter. Other friends have told us they feel inspired by us. Lots of people praise how we have ‘handled it’ and our strength. About all I can usually respond with is a smile and a ‘thank you’, sometimes fighting tears but often letting them flow. I assure you what it interpreted as strength, I see as survival. Reassurance doesn’t do much when the worst case scenario has already happened. Its bizarre, for lack of a better word, that this is our reality. Over dinner with a close friend two nights ago I described our life after Sylvia’s death like being diagnosed with a terminal illness. Even still, its a terrible analogy. There is nothing that can even compare with the daily impact that a child’s death has, but in my head, it probably comes closest.  Continue reading →

When I was 14 weeks pregnant Carlos and I went to a maternity store out of town during a weekend away. We bought me a couple items for me, giddy with excitement. The clerk asked us if we wanted to be a part of their mailing list. Of course we did! I scribbled our names and addresses down telling them all the details we knew at that time about our pregnancy. Going into that store, telling them our due date and talking about this thing that was happening, it felt like the beginning stages of initiation into the parenting club. I remember feeling like absolute hell from morning sickness, but skipping out of the store with excitement, swinging the bag of our purchases, smiling from ear to ear.  Continue reading →

Thats the term I learned that people use for babies born after a loss. I learned this because only a couple times now have I had the courage to delve into the world of forums and blogs regarding infant and fetal loss. It’s completely overwhelming to me to read of other peoples experiences; each story is just some other version of the most unimaginable event possible. ‘Subsequent children…subsequent pregnancy…’ These are popular topics on support group sites. I have found also that it is something that many are curious to ask Carlos and I about. ‘Will you try again?’ ‘Do you think you’ll have more kids?’ ‘When can you get pregnant again?’ I could see it being interpreted as invasive, offensive, too soon…but it isn’t to us. I interpret it as a way of these people showing how much they wanted us to have a baby too, and they are hopeful we still will want to have more. I interpret it as caring.  Continue reading →