A Corner for Avery

I’ve been asked several times in the week how I survived Avery’s first birthday in heaven and I’m still trying to come up with a good answer. The best way I can describe it is much like how I’ve handled everything in the last year and that is I “play it as it lays”. Meaning I keep my expectations low and take things as they come. I didn’t expect to cry all day long and I didn’t expect to feel celebratory all day. I was prepared to do whatever felt right at the time.  I actually surprised myself. Similar to many milestones I’ve reached this year the lead up was…

Sunday May 13th, 2018 was a hot and sunny Georgia day. Jordan made an early morning golf tee time for us and on the way there I remember feeling like I was going to be sick in the truck. By the time we got to the clubhouse, I was definitely going to be sick. As he checked us in and grabbed our cart I ran for the bathroom. I was confused because I hadn’t had all that much to drink the night before and hangovers were the only reason for that level of nausea. I shook it off and tried to enjoy the round.  I’ve never made it through 18…

I don’t write to you often sweet boy, I don’t know if it’s because I think it’s too hard or because I talk to you in my head constantly all day long. When I got pregnant with you I started talking to you all the time, telling you about the world and how it would be when you got here. I like to think that I talked to you so much that you got to skip this broken world and go right to heaven. Broken is exactly what this world is and I can’t allow my heart to harden with it, going dark as fast as the tragedies that happen…

This is an issue I’m learning nearly every loss parent encounters in some form or fashion and I can’t help but feel like it’s an issue we can easily solve. Unnecessary triggers is what I’m going to call them. The formula samples. The social media advertisements. The coupons and flyers for baby products. The need for so many companies to remind me of what I don’t have.  If social media has the power to know I was pregnant, it must also know I didn’t get to bring that baby home.  If companies can know I might be interested in samples of baby products, they should also know that their insensitivity…

One week before I am to return to work and the progress I’ve made is in some kind of gray area, which I’m thinking is how my life is going to be colored from now on. There is no longer a clear good and bad, right and wrong. It all seems to have shifted toward some middle area of being neutral. I’m not the shocked mother to be whose baby just died anymore, nor am I back the being the person I was before I had Avery. The carefreeness of it all is gone, innocence lost. I don’t feel I have a right to say when something is going to…

That’s a lot of words for the small space of a three minute phone call with the nurse from the maternal fetal medicine (MFM) office. I have a heterozygous Factor V Leiden mutuation, a fairly common genetic blood clotting disorder, hetero- meaning it was passed down from one of my parents. It not only causes placental abruption but also slow fetal growth which Avery experienced around 24 weeks. My days will start with a baby aspirin from now on and whenever I do find myself pregnant again, I will require Lovenox injections from 8 weeks on.  The factor V Leiden mutation is associated with a slightly increased risk of pregnancy…

January has been a month of trips to honor Avery and all that his existence has meant to our lives. All the credit must go to my better half who planned both the mountains and this island, back when I was numb from shock of losing Avery. He lost his son too though and he knew we both needed this. When we got home from the mountains I thought surely that was the most peaceful trip we could go on but this past weekend I was proved wrong. Sapelo Island, about sixty miles South of Savannah, is a 16,500 acre island, of which only 434 acres are populated (Georgia Encyclopedia). The…

Avery was born nearly three months ago, it is a pain I didn’t know existed and I’m thrown into this reality that other parents have been facing that I didn’t have the slightest clue about. “I couldn’t even imagine.” That’s what I said to people with stories like mine. How does that help anyone exactly? Why did I think that would help them? Now I know I can imagine if I let myself go there. If I let myself go where the pain is and stay there, I can imagine. I don’t think of it as moving there but as a vacation in pain. Let myself feel someone else’s pain,…

I realize I spend the majority of my life waiting for things to “settle down”. Does anyone else do this? You think to yourself, “Things will finally be calm once [insert life change here] is behind me. Then I can enjoy life.”  For me it’s mostly about moving. Once we move to North Carolina, once I finish college, once we move back to NC. Once we get married, once we get to Georgia, once we move here, there, and everywhere. Once we own the house. Once Avery is born. Then I can enjoy. Then I’ll sit back and be grateful for all that I have.  Listening to the It’s Not…