I just called some representatives for the child loss license plate. But then people started answering the phone......I couldn't talk to them. But I called and left 2 messages for you. I hope that's enough.....

I am going to get both of you tiles at the Rowan Tree thingy too.

I feel so guilty for not doing anything for you. I haven't had a service for you. I said I was going to make a footprint for you and I haven't done a thing. Nothing. I haven't knit someone else a hat. I haven't helped anyone else in your honor. I have done nothing.
It actually makes me sick when I think about it. I haven't done anything for you. I spend all my time and energy trying to stay busy with other things. Pushing my knitting, my scrapbooking, my housework, so that I don't have to think about you. Because I miss you so much that the thought of you hurts too much.
I have to go and talk to a counselor today. I don't want to. I can't explain to this stranger how I feel and how losing you has completely destroyed me and my life. I am so fucked up now.

The Scent of Blood.......

I miss it.

That sounds so twisted, so demented, so......so fucked up. But I do. I miss the smell of blood.

It has taken me a very long time to realize, and then accept, that blood is what my baby girl smelled like. To me she smelled so good, so great. I inhaled her scent deeply from the moment her lifeless body was laid in my arms. I knew I wanted to remember the way she smelled. I needed to memorize her scent because I would only have it for a few, short, desperate hours.

She smelled like blood because that's what dead bodies do. They bleed. Unfortunately, Riley was dead inside me for almost 3 full days before she was born. Her cells began to deteriorate, to break down, immediately. She was bleeding the entire time I had her. From her nose. From her mouth. So yes, my perfect girl.....smelled like blood.

Another mom, who suffered the loss of her daughter, described her girl's scent as sweet sugar. My imagination of this sweet scent emanating from a living, breathing baby makes me ill. Because my girl didn't smell like sugar. Or candy, or baby soap, or lotion, or spit up, or newborn. She smelled like sick, like death, like blood.

I crave it. I hunted for it for the longest time.

And I miss it every day.

Horror in Isle 9

I saw her right away. I always see the babes immediately. Riding around in their open or mercifully blanket-draped carseats. Some are carried by moms, some by dads and some by shopping cart. The worst are the beautifully blanketed carried by arms or an occasional carrier. She was one of the worst.

I could tell from pretty far away that she was a newbie newb. A month old, max. Probably not even that old. Her mom was carrying her in a pink blanket; loving her, snuggling her, rocking and talking to her. The lucky bitch. I know that sounds harsh...the hate I often have for the moms..... I need to be mad at someone. And really, deep down, I'm just jealous.

I avoid her for the majority of the grocery store visit and avert my eyes if ever she, or any other infant, comes anywhere near. I even get stuck down the same isle with her and yet, I turn my back; I keep my composure. I am an isle or two away. Suddenly....she is mewling a newborn's cry and I can't take it. I stand there with my son, just sobbing. I'm trying to hide it (yeah right....everyone knows I'm crying).

Hunter asks, "What that noise?" and I tell him it's a baby. FLASHBACK to my months pregnant. I approached complete strangers with babies to show Hunter our future. I remember hearing cries and looking for the baby. "That's what we are going to have at home!" But we don't...

Logic is somewhere in my brain as I sob and struggle for some semblance of composure. Run. RUN! Get your kid and your stuff and get the hell out of the store. Go now! But I can't. I'm stuck in molasses like a bad dream; I can't move. I'm stuck, struggling, sobbing against boxes of Shredded Wheat as each of her cries rips away my carefully constructed, and false, front. Thankfully they leave the store soon.

I'll never get to hear my babies' cries. And it sucks.

Remnants of a Pedicure

It's weird the things you hang onto after losing your baby. Right after Riley died, I didn't want to shave that weird dark line of hair that grows on some pregnant women's stomach. I didn't want to shower after birth, I was afraid that I was washing Riley off; I was washing off her smell. Anything that had occurred on my body simultaneously with her short life, I clung to. I didn't want to lose it.

Most of that is gone. I still have my stretch marks which I love although they break me. My body is beginning to return to a post pregnancy state. Except for my toenails.

For my birthday in August, my husband bought me a pregnancy pampering package complete with massage, mani, and pedi. I went in for my pampering session when I was 28 weeks pregnant. The manicured beauty of my fingers lasted all of 5 minutes as they always do if you use your hands at all during an average day. At 28 weeks pregnant, repainting my toe nails wasn't exactly high on my list of priorities and as I got larger and larger, it became an impossibility.


After Riley's death I could see my toes again. But I knew the exact circumstances around that nail polish and couldn't bare to remove it. And so it remains.


I know that it won't last forever. And the ridiculousness of it occurs to me as I sit here and cry about nail polish. It feels a bit like my body's last connection to my girl whose nails I will never get to paint. It reminds me of her little finger and toe nails and how red they looked because of the blood pooling behind them; how Mitchell and I thought of her nails as painted and the blood on her lips as simple lipstick. She was all made-up for her not-so-made-up Mommie. Wouldn't her Aunt Kelsey have loved to paint and polish my little girl?

Maybe I cling to it as an indication of time. By the time that nail polish is gone....I will be...what exactly? Better? No. I can't imagine I'll ever be "better." But as nails grow so slowly so do I attempt to heal (Will I ever heal??). So incredibly slow if my journey. So. Incredibly. Slow. I wonder where I will be when that red is finally gone...

Underlying, Gut-wrenching Pain

The pain is always there. Always. An incredibly, ridiculously deep, incapacitating hole that has been carved into me. It's always there.

Somehow I find ways to cover it up. To distract myself from it. Do stuff, stay busy, work, watch TV, listen to books. Anything that I can do to occupy my mind. It's getting substantially easier now to ignore the horror within me, but it never goes away. The river still flows right under the surface. Some days it still rages closer to the surface, harder to ignore.

As soon as I allow myself to look at the hole, to feel the sorrow, it takes me to my knees again and its like I just lost Riley and Liam yesterday. I am wracked with raw, hacking sobs; I am inconsolable.

It's hardest at night. When there is nothing to distract. My pillow is stained with tears and often I fall asleep with wet hair and pillow. Sleep meds are my best friend.

A newborn baby is the most powerful thing in the world. A stranger, she can rip through my callouses directly to that bloody hole and beat on my open wounds just by being carried around in a carseat.

And it's always there. Looming, Waiting for a weak moment. Waiting for me to let down my defenses. Waiting for my eyes to linger too long on a little girl or a baby or a pregnant woman. Ready to rip my to shreds yet again.