God's Plan

It has been a long time since I have been able to post on here. Derek and I finally bought our new home and moved up to Prairie Grove in NWA. It is such an amazing feeling to be in our own home instead of apartment living. Even though I am overwhelmed with joy and feeling incredibly blessed about being able to buy our house, I have a bittersweet feeling because Emmalynn is not a part of this new journey. We packed all of her things into the spare bedroom closet that would have been her nursery. I just don't have the heart to go through her things yet. Is that healthy? Probably not but even after 8 months without her I can't face the boxes of her things. The idea of giving her stuff away feels wrong. I know she will never use them here on earth and we have no need for them right now but I have hopes for being able to use them again soon. While we were in the hospital, the idea of bringing Emmalynn home was a big part of what kept me sane. I had bought all of the things she needed to come home, my mom and I spent an entire day decorating and organizing the nursery and doing laundry to ensure her clothes were clean and ready to go. The longer we were there the more we realized if she did come home we needed to be close to the hospital because we knew we would have regular doctor appointments and check ups multiple times a month so that is what took us to Conway. This was never really our home though. Derek and I have wanted to live in NWA from the start and have always talked about planting our roots here so here we are.

Next week would have been her 1 year birthday here with us and this has made me go through a whirlwind of emotions. Just sitting in the classes I am in now, which I was supposed to take last summer but couldnt because of being on bedrest, has made me extremely sad. It sometimes feels surreal to be back in class and part of me feels resentment because, at this point, I was supposed to have graduated, obtained my license and be home enjoying our 1 year old daughter. Instead, I am trying to finish my degree and mourning the loss of our daughter while attempting to move on with our lives. I am not only sad, I am mad. Mad at what could have been...what I thought should have been. I am so thankful for my father in law Don who let me have these feelings without guilt. He told me while in the hospital that it is ok to be mad at God but to do it with open hands and release my feelings to Him. I know He has a plan and a purpose for all things and I have accepted it with the belief that good things will come out of our experience, but I still have times of sadness where these beliefs are hard to lean on. No one has the book with all the answers on how to grieve...we all do it differently and sometimes it can be overwhelming and lonely making the loss seem worse.

Carrie Underwood's new song, See You Again, sings so true to my heart. It starts with pain of her slipping away but ends with hope and faith that I will see her again. Emmalynn is with us all the time in the stars watching over us and sending us her love. This new song comes on the radio and I try to sing to where Emmalynn can hear me but the words can barely come out. This week I should be finishing up getting supplies for her 1st birthday party and seeing which of her little friends will be coming to help celebrate but instead I'm facing the 31st with sadness of what should have been. To try to get through the rest of the month I am going to post my favorite memories we had with her. Even if our time with her was short, it was filled with mommy/daddy bloopers, baby cuteness, parental learning, family and relationship growing. We were tested, entertained, and transformed in a matter of 118 days so I will turn my mourning into a sort of celebration of life.

My absolute favorite memory is captured in this picture. Look at that smile....so sweet and her outfit is so adorable on those cute polkadot sheets. Now imagine an hour prior changing her first outfit of the day because her good ole diuretics made her release what seemed to be a pound of fluid all over her sheets and outfit. That was an easy fix. Now fast forward another 20 minutes and imagine standing around in our private room talking to one of our favorite nurses, Lisa, and getting a wiff of something not so pleasant. Obviously we blamed Derek at first because lets be honest, he's a boy and anyone who knows Derek knows this isn't a far fetch to accuse him. But he denied it so I looked next at my little angel. I thought surely she just tooted being the cutie patootie she is but was I oh so wrong. I lift up her blanket and I see the beginning of the biggest blow out I have ever seen. At this point she was only 5 pounds so you can understand my shock when I see what is waiting for me. I undo her onesie and I see that my child had not only filled her diaper, but she had pooped up her front and down her back. Derek took one look and started to literally gag from the smell. It took us at least 30 minutes to scrub her down, change her sheets, and change her sheets again because she pooped on her first set of new sheets as soon as we put them under her! Talk about breaking us in right! After we were all done this was the look she had until she fell asleep. I would change a hundred dirty diapers a minute every single minute for the rest of my life if I could see this look on her face every single day. We got a bit of normalcy in a world of chaos and we got to be parents in a funny situation. I got to experience what other parents get to experience with the man I love most in the world. Priceless. Even on the worst of days, I can go back to this memory and find the strength to smile and I am reminded of the multitude of blessings we truly have had before, during, and after the hospital. Who knew a dirty diaper could do so much :)