Pregnancy

It's hard to look down at the huge incision that was made to birth your baby, and know that it's a permanent battle scar. Take heart mama, you are not alone. Treat it like a trophy, and embrace it!

I realize that our NICU stay was short in comparison to what a lot of other families go through, but those 12 days we spent in the NICU were the longest, most emotionally draining days of my life. I got to the point where I literally couldn't cry any more--I didn't have any tears left to shed.

One of the first things I learned when I had my daughter is that nothing can prepare you for those first few weeks postpartum. No one tells you how much of a sleep-deprived, hormonal mess you are. You ride the waves and manage to keep swimming, but it isn’t until you get through it that you realize you weren’t fully functioning as a human being.

The truth is that once you lose a baby, you are not the same. Each of your children, whether they make it to babyhood, childhood or adulthood, changes you. And while you have been rocked, changed, rearranged and never to be the same again, by their loss, something you never wanted, the change that happens in you doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

I always used to wonder how people could “not know” if they were pregnant. It seems so obvious. But then it happened to me. I remained in a strange denial for a few weeks before I even took that pregnancy test, even when the symptoms were all pointing in the direction of Baby Land.