A New Year's Post

We have had a lot of changes in our family over the last year.

The biggest news is our new addition: Maeve Bronagh!

She was born on November 4 and has lived up to the meaning of her name - the cause of great joy!

Her big brothers are completely smitten with her, and she is a very sweet, happy, and easy baby.  Let's hear it for that last part!

Jack is in kindergarten and just turned six in November.  He is a reading machine. He loves building things with Legos, and he just lost his first tooth a few weeks ago.

PJ is four and a half. He is loving preschool and really enjoys drawing pictures.  He is probably the most baby-crazy of the brothers, giving Maeve lots of hugs, kisses, and cuddles.

Tommy is just a few weeks shy of three years old. He is huge, fearless, unpredictable and wicked smaht.  He's also silly and cuddly.  It makes for an exacerbating combination, as we alternate several times per day between wanting to kiss him and duct tape him to a chair for a while so we can catch our breath.

We used most of 2012 to heal and reconnect as a family.  We are using 2013 to make a fresh start.  There are some other exciting changes on the horizon that will help us to do this, but I will have to post more about those later.

Happy New Year from our family to yours!

Getting ready

We've been doing a lot of Christmas prep around here lately. There is so much to do, it's hard to juggle everything. It's also hard to balance the joy of the season with the grief that we're feeling. It was this time last year that we knew we were going to be having another little someone in our family, and we spent a lot of time thinking about what this Christmas would be like with another baby: another stocking to hang, another little someone to be in awe of the lights on the Christmas tree.

It was just two days after Christmas that we learned that little someone was going to be TWO little someones. How exciting that was! So this year, amid the hustle-bustle and the anticipation of the season, there is a sadness about what could have been. And there is so much to do that there are days when I wish I could just sit and cry. Or be bitchy and sad. Just one day when I didn't have to worry about taking care of the rest of the family and could just take care of myself...by just doing nothing. But that's not to be. I was reflecting on this as I was in the shower this morning. The shower is usually where I do my crying. It's the only time I have a few minutes to be alone with my thoughts, to be reminded, as I wash the scars on my belly, of what we went through. Of all that we did to try to make sure that at least Brigid came home safely.  But it still wasn't enough. It was so hard, and if she was here, it would have been more than worth it, but she's not. I realized the other day that I have cried every single day since March 9th. That's a lot of crying. My eyes burn constantly.

Anyway, this morning was a little different. This morning in the shower, I was laughing, remembering something funny that happened two years ago around this time. It was a little respite from the usual sadness I feel while showering, and it was like a gift for the day. Bear with me while I recount this gem of a story:

I was eight months pregnant with Thomas. Patrick had taken the two boys out for something - to Walmart, I think - and I was home alone and able to take a leisurely shower. Something I don't often do. We'd been having trouble with the toilet in our master bathroom - one of those jiggle-the-handle-or-else-it-just-keeps-running problems. Well, I used the toilet and then got in the shower. I was taking my good old time when I started thinking that the sound of the water echoing in the shower was something I hadn't noticed before. Probably because I'm usually thinking of other things and rushing to finish up. Gosh, I thought, it sounds like a babbling brook or something. Very relaxing. I finished my shower and turned off the water. Except the sound didn't stop. I opened the curtain and saw that there was two inches of water all over the bathroom floor. The toilet must have clogged and then continued running until it overflowed - a lot - and was still running.

Quickly, I jumped out of the shower (as much as an eight-month-pregnant woman can jump and be quick) and turned off the water supply to the toilet.  Think, think, think! I couldn't even think of where to start making this better.  I grabbed every towel out of the linen closet and started sopping it up, but there was still so much more.  And now the towels were so heavy and I could hardly bend down to grab them all off the floor. I threw them all, soaked, into the shower and saw that it had hardly made a dent in the mess. Then I remembered the shop vac.  I threw on a bathrobe that didn't even close around my pregnant belly and ran down to the garage to search for the shop vac, calling Patrick on the way down to ask if he knew where it was (our garage is crowded) to make the search easier.  As I got to the bottom of the steps, I could hear the water dripping down behind the walls of the foyer.  I had to be fast or else it would start soaking through the drywall.  We have a huge, industrial-sized shop vac, and I finally found it and dragged it upstairs, still dripping wet and half naked.  By now, the water is seeping out into the carpet of the bedroom as I frantically plug the shop vac in a couple feet outside the bathroom door and turn it on.  Thankfully, it served to eliminate the water in the bathroom quickly and effectively, and I started to calm down a little bit as I saw that I was making progress getting rid of it before it started draining down into the floor and through the ceiling of the main floor.  I took my time and made sure I was getting up as much of it as I could, knowing that there were no more towels to use to dry it up.  I sort of vacuumed myself out of the bathroom and as I got to the door, I started to feel some drops of water on my head.  It was only then that I looked behind myself and realized that the shop vac had merely been sucking the water out of the bathroom and then shooting it up in the air all over the bedroom!  Our entire bed was soaked, along with the floor, the dressers, and the walls and ceiling.  I just stood there and screamed.  I'm laughing hysterically as I type this, recalling the feeling of shock and horror I felt when I turned around.  I didn't have a single dry towel to use on it and I just started grabbing for sheets and blankets in an effort to dry everything.  And then I just started laughing.  I mean, honestly, it was one of those where's-the-hidden-camera moments, you know?  And I sort of just had to laugh or go crazy. 

I think that's really the key to survival.  Recognizing when you just need to laugh.  When everything is so far out of your control and you just can't believe that it could happen like that.  It's been my survival mechanism for most of my life - being able to find the humor in things.  This story sort of parallels our situation with the twins.  The blissful time in the shower is like that feeling of joy about adding twins to our family.  Opening the shower curtain and seeing the mess was like learning they had TTTS.  Working so hard to clean it up was like the surgery and months of bed rest and medications round-the-clock, and hospitalizations to make sure Brigid would be okay.  And then that shock of seeing the water all over the bedroom after I'd done all that work to clean it up was like the shock of Brigid's death. But the situation with the girls is just never going to get to the laughing stage.  And that's hard to accept.  Grief is exhausting, and I'm all kinds of tired.

Meanwhile, we're looking forward to Christmas with anticipation.  We'll be taking our boys to Walt Disney World in January.  It's a much-needed family fun time to help us reconnect and forget a little bit about what happened this year.  We're telling them Christmas morning, and I'm feeling like a kid just getting excited for both that morning and the trip itself.

Jack had his preschool Christmas program this morning and it was so fun to see him up there singing all his Christmas songs that he's worked so hard to memorize.  He only shared one of them with us beforehand and said he wanted to keep the others a surprise.  He's such a smart kid and it's amazing to see him learning new things and enjoying school.

I'll leave you with a few photos from this month.  I can't seem to get the video of the program uploaded to the blog right now, but when I'm able to do that, I'll post it.  It's so darn cute.

Thomas LOVES Santa, so it was funny to see him get shy as soon as he sat on his lap. He is rarely shy.  After a few moments of questioning from the Big Man and silence from Thomas, we said, "Okay Tommy, say bye-bye, Santa!"  Tommy said "NO!  See Santa more!"  He just liked being with him in silence, I guess, and the magic of knowing that the man in red knew his every unspoken Christmas wish.

Or something like that.

Octsnowber

Fun times today in an unexpected October snowfall.

New Post

I wonder when I'll feel like writing a blog post again.

I'm writing this one now, but not because I feel like it. I come on here to update and talk about some fun things we've been doing and then I get caught up in reading the previous posts.  Then I start crying.  I read those posts and think, "How did I write that?  How did we live that?  How did I say we're doing okay when we're not doing okay?"  I mean, I guess we're okay inasmuch as we're not curled up in the fetal position sucking our thumbs somewhere, but there was some numbness to those posts.  Now, the numbness has worn off and we're aching.  A dull ache that we know isn't going to go away for a long time.  I feel like I can't quite move on from the heaviness of those posts to things like Jack's first day of preschool or our family's new puppy.  Or that the other upsetting things that have happened in our lives could even compare to losing Brigid.  Some of them come close, but I don't want to write about those either. Of course, it's having these three little boys to take care of and those other things going on in our lives that help us to keep going.  But sometimes they don't let us have the time to grieve.

So for those of you who have come here and seen no changes and thought that maybe I've gone private with the new posts, I haven't.  I just haven't had it in me.   Not for lack of material, but for lack of emotional fortitude, I think.  But I think maybe changing the look of things and writing a few posts with happy themes will not make me so sad to log on here.  They can put some space between those painful ones down there and the fun times that lie ahead for our family.

Maybe.

So, in addition to Jack's starting preschool (again)

and our new goldendoodle puppy, Blarney,

we have been having some good times together as a family over the last few months.  Here's proof:

This free scrapbooking design personalized with Smilebox

Three little monkeys

These three boys have been so amazing during our entire experience with the twins and Brigid.
Like, really amazing. We have had such a big upheaval in our family from my eight weeks of bed rest, two hospitalizations, and several weeks in the NICU, and they have done such a great job adjusting to each situation.

Sometimes, people ask me if they know what is going on. They know everything except for the fact that Fiona remained in my stomach after she died, came out when Brigid was born, and was buried. I figured I'd spare them the thought of that. But they know everything else.

In fact, in church the other day, a lady who had seen me pregnant a few months ago and then didn't see me for a while asked, "Where's the baby?" Jack and PJ did not skip a beat telling her the whole saga, taking turns talking with each phrase: "Well, we had two babies, but then Fiona died, and then Brigid came out, but it was too early, and now she lives in the hospital, but she's our baby sister!"

I was in tears by the end of the story, both at the flat-footedness of their response and at the innocence of it. I still don't feel like this is really happening somehow. I don't really feel pain about it, but sometimes, when I think about all that's happened to me in the past three months, I can't believe how overwhelming it is. I cry a little for myself, as if it were someone else I was feeling sad for.

But then I get to spend time with these guys.

Jack is learning so much. He's like a sponge. I love to hear how his mind works...and he's always saying what's on his mind, so it's easy to hear.

There are often ants out on our deck and the other day, he saw them and said, "Oh hi, guys."

Then, to me, "They're my ant friends. They know me." Like, "It's okay, Mommy. Don't worry, I have it under control."

Oh, okay Jack.

Here he is holding his old buddy, Hercules.

Then, there's my Peej. He is my little buddy. His smile melts my heart. He's a little bit of a mama's boy, but not so much in the way that I can't leave the house or take a shower or use the bathroom without him crying (anymore). It's more that he just likes to be where I am. And I like that.

We call Thomas our Baby Monster, because at just 16 months, he is 30 pounds and 35 inches tall. He loves books. He is a joker. He is learning to say so many things. He says "thank you" every single time you give him something. He is incredibly easy-going. At the start of my bed rest, before we'd hired someone to come and help us with the boys every day, we had several volunteers coming in to help us - a new person each morning and afternoon. I counted that in one week, nine different ladies went to Thomas's room to get him up from his naps. Some babies might balk at a stranger coming in to get them out of bed (to say nothing of nine strangers), but not Thomas. He didn't bat an eye, and was likely excited to see each of them. He is so sweet.

These boys are medicine. They are like a salve for my wounds. They make me smile when I'm sad, make me laugh when my heart is heavy, perk me up when I feel like I can't put one foot in front of the other for one more day. I am so grateful for my three little monkeys and can't wait to see what wonderful big brothers they are going to be to little Brigid.

A Special Day

Brigid is two weeks old today.

It's hard to believe that two weeks have gone by already, and yet, we've interacted with her so much in utero and spent so much intensive time following her development, that it feels like she's been here longer.

Not because I know her well. I don't. I can't wait to get to know her little faces and movements and sounds. To bond with her like I have within the first few hours of my other babies' lives.

But today, I got to take a step in that direction. I asked the nurse when I might be able to hold her again, and while today was not that day, the nurse did offer to open the top of the isolette and let me get up close to Brigid. After seeing that Brigid was doing okay and didn't seem bothered by the change, the nurse went on her lunch break. What a special experience to have one-on-one time with my baby girl. It was the first time I've gotten to kiss her since the day she was born. I leaned down and kissed her head and then sat beside her with my hands on her head and legs, praying for her and talking to her and singing to her. She reached up right away and grabbed my finger and held on. Because I could see her face better, I noticed that she seems to look a little bit like Thomas at this point. I'm sure that will change, but it was the first time I noticed a resemblance to one of the other children.

Note to self: bring camera to the NICU more often.

Then I remembered that she is supposed to resemble her sister. That made me sad.

Today, Jack and PJ also got to meet Brigid for the first time. We had to get them up to date on their vaccines before they were allowed to come into the NICU, and we did that a few weeks ago. I talked to the nurses about it when I was there, so today Patrick brought them after their naps and one at a time, they got to go in and see her. Jack was fascinated by her little fingers and toes and loved being able to reach in and touch them.

Note to self: bring camera to the NICU every time.

Aside from the lack of photographic evidence, though, it was a very special day with our little girl and we're so grateful that she seems to be doing so well right now!

Trick or treat!

Boo! It's not Halloween, but trick-or-treating took place tonight here in Lancaster County, so we decided to go with the Halloween thing all day, starting with breakfast. Ghost pancakes

and spider pancakes. Sort of. (Octopus, maybe? Sunflower?) Eh, let's stick with ghosts.

I made sure to wear my Halloween finest,

and this guy. . .

(Who, me?)

Yeah, it was time to whip out the Yoda costume again. One of my favorite Halloween traditions. We might have to have one more baby just so we can use it again.

Come on - can you stand it?

Jack and PJ could not wait to don their superhero costumes again, and they had a blast trick-or-treating! Those pumpkin buckets were really heavy by the end - maybe because one neighbor was giving out juice boxes. (Seriously?)

They were actually excited to sit on the porch and pose with their costumes this year, and you might notice that in addition to the muscles in PJ's costume, they're both looking a little buff because I had to put several layers of clothing on them first. It was cold here tonight!

I love these two little guys.

And the way they love on this other little guy.

Happy Halloween!