Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Pregnancy After Loss: Waiting for My Heart to be Ready


Today, my dear friend Sarah is sharing about her journey towards a rainbow pregnancy. Sarah's daughter, Evie Caris, was born just over a year ago and went to Heaven a few hours later. You can read more of Evie's story on Sarah's blog, Life and Grace.


One night shortly after my daughter died, I was rocking my toddler son to sleep. Tears streamed down my face as I mourned the fact that I would never get to rock my sweet girl in this special chair as I had her brother a couple of years before. I was just heartbroken and remember thinking, “I just want a baby!” But almost immediately after those words came together in my head, this thought followed, “I don’t just want a baby ... I want my baby. My Evie. The one that was just taken from me.” And I felt that way for a couple of months. I needed Evie to be my baby. I needed to remember her sweetness and daydream about what could have been and allow the sadness of missing her to rob me of sleep. I needed her to be the only baby on my mind for a while and not allow another pregnancy to prevent me from grieving her and remembering her as I needed to.

As the new year rolled around about two months after Evie died, my husband and I started talking about adding to our family. He would be graduating from his master’s degree program at the end of that year and wasn’t too keen on the idea of having a newborn as he was trying to study for and pass finals. And I had planned, as my new year’s resolution, to train for and run a half marathon in Evie’s honor that spring. I thought that being in the early stages of pregnancy and trying to train for a half marathon didn’t work together so well. So with those two things in mind, we decided to start trying for another baby after I ran the half marathon, which meant the baby would potentially be born just after Josh passed all of his final tests. We were both very happy with the plan.

I don’t regret waiting to try for a rainbow baby – not at all. I feel like my heart needed it. And once the time came to start trying for another baby, it was springtime – the flowers were blossoming and the trees were turning green again. The rebirth of beauty in nature felt reflective of my mama heart – after the harshest of winters, I was ready once again to bloom.


To read all the posts in this series, click here.
____________________

Thank you Sarah for sharing your story. Has anyone else felt similarly - that your ehart wasn't ready and some time was needed before it would?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

beautiful <3

David Rieke, DMin said...

Thank you for sharing your heart with us Sarah and Larissa. I am Evie's grandma. We will always miss our dear Evie. Each person is unique and precious, and no one ever takes the place of another. I long to hold her and kiss her sweet face, and hear her say, "I love you Mamma." Since Evie is in heaven, I am more excited to go to heaven - To let go of this earth and meet my dear loved ones there. I actually get butterflies thinking about it, because I am so excited.

Larissa said...

I can relate to that excitement... I definitely long for Heaven more since Ariella died than I did before. I know sweet Evie will be just as excited to see you.

Post a Comment

 
Blog Design by Franchesca Cox