Due date

Today was Emílie's due date, and if she had survived, I imagine I would be sitting around hoping to go into labor (although, if she followed in her previous two sisters' footsteps, there would be plenty of waiting left). The morning was spent snuggling under her quilt with the two little girls dragging theirs from their rooms to pile on top. A few moments ago the cheeriest bouquet of flowers arrived at my doorstep from two friends who wanted me know they remembered. I cried, mostly just because I was grateful that someone else remembered. We will hopefully visit her resting place this afternoon, and then, in many ways, it will feel more over than it has.

The "Gravestone Guy" at the cemetery has been strangely elusive, but we finally have a meeting set for Monday, so I am hopeful that our little lady's final resting place will be officially marked soon (it does have a temporary marker, but a strong storm could easily pull it from the ground).

Quotables #8

(C) "Daddy, last night my dream came true!"
(D) "What was your dream?"
(C) "That I would go on a trip... into my own dream!"

(A) "I love my Colette's imagination, her lovely imagination."

(D)"It's important to be careful about the person you're going to marry."
(A)"Yeah, I should be very careful, and sneak into their house to make sure there are no swords."

(C) “I have to wipe my oatmeal up off the table to earn money for a convertible."

(D) "Why are you trying to get that penny?"
(A) "So you have more money and Daddy can retire sooner."

Emílie Josephine

This is the only photo we have of  Emílie while alive. All they could really see was her itty bitty heart beat, but I'm so glad to have it. We thought we had lost it (we gave it to the girls when we found out we were pregnant), and the doctor's office had no copies left. Yesterday, lo and behold, it fluttered down at my feet while I was fixing up the prayer table. 

The other three girls have their birth stories written here, so it only feels write that  Emílie should as well.

We found out we were pregnant at the tail end of January.  This little lady was most certainly a surprise (I've never been able to get pregnant while nursing before!), but I quickly decided I like surprises, and we started dreaming of our autumn baby. The pregnancy was different from the beginning, with a scare at what we thought was 6 weeks, and then a sigh of relief with a heart beat on the ultrasound only a week later.

While I had several weeks of feeling exhausted, and a few days of nausea/vomiting, I was, overall, feeling pretty amazing compared to my previous pregnancies. Because of how different I felt, we were sure this meant that this baby was a boy, and we both thought the name Emil Joseph already fit him. The name Emil was after Servant of God Emil Kapaun, and Joseph is after Daniel('s middle name), as well as St. Joseph, obviously, though I later found out Emil Kapaun's middle name was Joseph as well, and Daniel's great-grandfather's name was the italian Emile.

I was having weekly HCG tests due to the early scare, as well as progesterone shots, though my progesterone was pretty low throughout. My HCG rose steadily, and the week before our next appointment, my doctor told me I could stop having that tested.

At my 13 week appointment, the doctor couldn't find a heartbeat, and he struggled to see much of anything on his old ultrasound machine. This didn't bother me too much at first, as my other three had each played hide-and-seek around this age, and I knew the ultrasound machine was new to the office, but older in years. The next morning, a more sophisticated ultrasound confirmed that our little one had passed away several weeks before, and for some reason I had not started to naturally miscarry.

The loss of our baby, and the hopes and dreams surrounding her has been exhausting and devastating. I am a slow processor of most thing, and I imagine this is going to take a long time to work through. While we continued to refer to her as Emil even through her burial, we did find out afterwards that our Emil was actually Emílie. With my surgery having been on April 20th (Emil Kapaun's birthday) and her burial on St. Joseph's feast day, we still felt that those were the patrons we wanted to watch over her, and she was named  Emílie Josephine ( Emílie is the Czech version of Emily and pronounced much like Amelia, just with an "Eh" sound at the beginning).

I cannot claim to be at peace, because there are so many questions I have left, and will continue to have until I can ask Christ Himself, but we are living life, all while enlarging it to include this sixth member in a different way than we expected. We stop by her grave, the girls continue to debate her name (while we called her Pip in pregnancy and beyond, the girls have also nicknamed her Lollipop, Isabella, and a host of other creative names), and we include her in our prayers. When I pack away the girls' outgrown clothes, it strikes me that she would have worn them. When I rearrange our plans for the year, I realize how centered around her they had become in such as short time. My girls easily accepted their fourth sister, and chat about their grief, but also tell their stories about who they think she might have been, and what they think she is doing now.

I am navigating a world I didn't expect to be a part of, but am only now realizing how many women have been in it the whole time.

WE SHALL FIND OUR LITTLE ONES AGAIN UP ABOVE
-St. zelie martin

Mother's Day 2017

This mother's day, I felt as though I had my feet in two worlds. One with my three darling girls, each who have shaped me as a mama in their own ways. And the other with our little one we buried two weeks ago tomorrow. She, too, has, and will continue to shape my life as a mama, and I am grateful for her life, however short. So, while I know today is about mothers, it is also about the four little people who have made me a mother. I truly hope I never take lightly the blessing each of them is.

To all of you who have beautifully wild babies at home, whose little ones you do not get to hold here on earth, or who are yearning for children, you are loved and thought of today.

Quotables #7

[A] "I want to see Karlie at the ski alley too!!"

[C] "I like Winnie the Pooh instead of the devil!"

 [C] "I'm going to turn on dark."

[C] "This smells like thunder."

[A] “You know that it’s real when they say ‘Once Upon a Time’."

[A]"Daddy, give it all you've got today. You're 29!"

[C] "No! My tummy isn't a heart! I don't have a heart!"

[D]"I'm sorry that your office becomes the sewer of the house, but does that make you a ninja turtle? Because that's really cool."

[A] "My feet aren't used to visitors!"

[C] (as we started to pray over our dinner) "In the name of the Hundred Acre Wood"

[C] "Knock Knock"
"Who's there?"
"Chicken!"
"Chicken who?"
"Chicken tastes like butter!"