13 Days of Rainbows Opportunity

to be a NICU nurse at a children's hospital takes a very special person. you must be incredibly intelligent. quick on your feet. clear-headed. gentle. patient. kind. optimistic. tough, yet tender.

basically, an angel.

noah spent almost all of his days on earth in the Seattle Children's Hospital NICU. this was his home:

and while he was there, he was cared for by the most capable team of genuinely kind and gracious people.

our nurse, pasha, was one of those people.

this is pasha on noah's last day, getting him dressed up in his bow tie onesie

pasha cared for noah many of the days he was there. she may have known him better than we did. day after day, we literally had to leave our fragile, precious, heart-of-our-heart baby boy in the hands of others, trusting they were caring for him the best ways they knew how. it was the most terrified i have ever been in my entire life times a billion. but the good people at Seattle Children's somehow made it just a little more bearable.

pasha "just happened" to be on shift the day we found out noah had ACD. i remember dr. jackson ushering john and i into a little room that june 18th morning with another doctor (alicia) and nurse pasha where he gently, and straight-forwardly, told us the news:

noah will not survive. it's time to say good-bye.

throughout the rest of that holy day, pasha was completely present with us, answering questions, and comforting our bewildered and tender hearts. (i'm pretty sure NICU nurses spend just as much time, if not more, taking care of the parents, as the babies!)

also on that day, and i don't have a clue how she did it, she made us this beautiful scrapbook to take home. she took pictures. she made hand and foot prints. she gracefully documented a lifetime of our boy in ten, small pages.

this is one of the very few tangible items we have to remember noah. she gave us one of the most precious gifts we could of ever received - not just the kindness she showed us each minute we were with her, but the gift of our boy, to treasure always. i will forever be grateful to her.

i'm telling you all this because tomorrow begins 13 Days of Rainbows, and this year i want to return kindness to pasha, and all the other NICU nurses at Seattle Children's Hospital. there's no way in the world i'll be able to express to her, and all the other angels there, how much we love them and appreciate the ways they make our world better, but i can try.

obviously for 13 Days of Rainbows anyone is welcome to join in the kindness-spreading in any way that feels right for them, but if you're looking for an opportunity, i've got one.

i've decided that part of my 13 Days of Rainbows will be collecting and delivering scrapbook and other spoiling-type items to the NICU nurses at Seattle Children's. 

i have yet to walk back through those NICU doors, to the place our most sacred dreams died, but i think i'm ready.

SO! if you have any of the following that you'd like to donate for the nurses, that would awesome!

*scrapbook paper
*scrapbook stickers

*craft, design scissors
*scrapbooks
*photo paper
*letter beads
*ribbon
*gift cards (michael's, target, starbucks)

*sweet treats (gum, chocolates)

there's a 13 Days of Rainbows box at the Bellevue Presbyterian Church main office to leave stuff, or you can give/send to me. (message me for my address, if you need it.) i'll be making the delivery on DEC 18.

these small items may not seem like a lot.  but as the recipients of what can be created out of them, i know they represent the world. 

if our house was burning down, that scrapbook is one of the few most prized, material possessions we have.

i hope with our gift, others may know that love too.

thank you!!! and have a very, merry 13 days!

13 Days of Rainbows

a year ago, for 13 days over the month of december, we honored noah's life by participating in 13 Days of Rainbows. december 5 - december 18.

here's the blog post from last year explaining how it got started.

it was such a sweet time and filled our hearts with so much love and joy. and i can't wait to start another year. on friday it begins!

these upcoming 13 days will commemorate the life of our would-have-been 18 month old. at a time of the year when there's so much hustle and bustle of the holidays, i feel the void of my beloved boy all the more. this is the second christmas we'll have without him, and it's just as hard as it was last year, maybe harder. i kind of feel like last year we got a "pass" but this year we have to start making the hard decisions like, should we hang his stocking? what will we (or i mean, Santa) put in it? and on and on it goes ...

there's a lot of sadness and grief. still.

but there's also joy. especially when i think of 13 Days of Rainbows. hundreds of people who will be shown kindness and goodness because a little baby boy lived. he brings hope... kind of like another little Baby Boy we remember this season.

so we'd love for you to join us! do one kind deed anytime during those 13 days, or something everyday. totally up to you! follow your heart.

if you need a little inspiration, here are just some of the stories from last year. but also feel free to be as creative as you like!

click here to print or download a cute little card to pass out with your kindness, if you wish. (made by my talented sister in law! she's the best.)

then let's flood Instagram and Facebook with pictures and stories of good being done across the world by using #13DaysOfRainbows to encourage and inspire us all.

later this week i'll share a special opportunity for us to love on children and their parents at Seattle Children's Hospital. so stay tuned for that!

oh, my gosh. i really can't wait.

thank you. thank you. thank you.
...for loving our boy and honoring his life with us.

looking forward to seeing all your kindness-spreading!
and please share this opportunity with others!

merry christmas. with much love.

Costco Hope

life is funny sometimes.

last night this happened:

my husband was in line to purchase some delicious costco treats and miles and i were hanging out saving a table. 

baby was uncharacteristically gitty. like giggling, throwing his head back and laughing type gitty. it made my heart swell with love and pride. then i got a little self-conscious for a second. if there are people around us who just experienced a loss of a baby or who are having trouble getting pregnant, this blatant scene of baby sweetness could be really hard to see. so i kind of tried to tone it down, but miles wouldn't have it. 

too. much. joy.

then it hit me.

you may recall, last summer i wrote a blog post about going to costco and how hard it was to see a happy couple there with a smiling baby. i had forgotten about it until that very moment with miles.

i ended the post by saying, God willing, in a year or so, my husband and i will be that happy couple at costco. giggling with our rainbow baby whilst chowing down on a $1.50 hot dog. and when others see us i pray they find hope.

it gives me goosebumps just reading that again.

my deepest desire is that miles' life is a living demonstration of hope. hope in the flesh.

even at costco. may it be so.

Reclaiming Christmas, Not So Fast

john and i didn't do a christmas card last year. we didn't do a lot of things we usually do last year. didn't get a tree. didn't hang up stockings. in the wake of losing noah, we just had zero motivation or energy. and my heart would sting every time i even tried because all i could feel was his void. i wrote a bit about this tough season on the blog last year.

i didn't know what to expect this year. we have miles, so there was a glimmer of hope to potentially reclaim pieces of the holidays back. but i don't think i expected it to still be so hard... and it's not even thanksgiving.

our last support group was heavier than usual. as john and i were driving home we both commented how everyone just seemed, i don't know, more depressed. there are a number of reasons why this could have been.. it was the birthday of one of the baby girls who had died, that added an extra layer of sorrow. it was also the first really, really rainy, yucky day of the season. weather can definitely play a part. it could have also just been a fluke. my hunch, however, is that it was because the holidays are approaching. we all know it. we feel it. we can't escape it.

i need to brace myself. to be ready. because as i go along my merry little way this holiday season, the grief can hit me like a truck.

it happened for the first time last week.

i'm a sucker for shutterfly. the online card, book and calendar making business which seems to always have a new sale or deal going on that i can't refuse. it usually ends up looking like, "you bought a calendar, these 16 prints and birthday card, now all you have to do is spend 10 more dollars and you get free shipping!" so i rack my brain trying to come up with something, anything, to spend more money on. because GOD FORBID i lose out on FREE SHIPPING.

as i was cruising around the site last week looking for something to spend money on, i came across the christmas cards. well, duh! we could use christmas cards! so i got to work on picking out the loveliest one.

i should have seen it coming. as i looked at all the sample, perfect families with their two or three gorgeous children and their professional family pictures, bragging about how bella is taking piano lessons and tim went on a business trip to new zealand, i could feel the knot in the pit of my stomach twist and tighten.

that will never be us. the professional pictures, maybe. but never light and easy. 

i ignored it, for the moment, and went about the creation of our christmas card.

but the tough questions came. they always do.

should we include a picture of baby isaac? he's a part of our family, and a huge part of our 2014 story. we must. but the only pictures we have are of him covered in breathing tubes and IVs, or dead. nobody wants to see that, not on a "we had such an amazing year of adventure and fun" christmas card.

and how do we include noah? a simple picture of a rainbow, just so people are reminded of him? no, that doesn't seem like enough. a picture of his memorial all decorated for his first birthday? okay. that's fine, i guess. but a little weird, perhaps.

now it asks for me to fill in the names of everyone in the family.

the butlers. who are "the butlers?"

i had to take a break. or maybe miles just woke up from his nap. either way...

when john got home from work i showed him the card. as we looked at it together, i felt sick. i started to vocalize and oddly defend my decisions on what i included and why. and i found myself saying,

we should have been celebrating a little boy turning one. 

and rejoicing about bringing a baby home from louisiana.

i don't even know who to put under "the butler family!" 

it shouldn't be this hard.

how in the hell do you sum up our year on a 5x7 piece of paper?!

and then i doubled over and bawled.

you can't. and certainly not in a way christmas cards are designed - to brag and show off.

so our christmas card is tabled for another year. and maybe forever. it just doesn't feel right. everyone we'd be sending one to knows our joy of miles. knows our heartbreak of losing baby isaac. and understands the void without noah. we don't have to give them something to pin on their refrigerator, especially if it causes us more pain and stress.

the only part of the card that brought me any sort of peace, was the back. and i'd like to share it with you now, because no one will probably ever see it.

2014 has been both tragic & wondrous for our family. Yet in its closing we are reminded, again, the reason God sent Jesus. Our Savior came, not to make our lives easy, but to be our light in the darkness. Love, pure & powerful, has come. "Merry Christmas" not from the pretty packages or sparkling lights, but because our Lord is here - He is with us. 

Million to One

a good family friend once asked my husband and i for some advice on how to support a co-worker of hers who experienced a loss. she explained that it seemed like the woman didn't want to talk about it, but wasn't really sure.

i thought about it for a moment and then answered, she may not want to talk about it because it reminds her that it actually happened.

this conversation happened only a couple weeks after the loss of our baby isaac. and i knew i was speaking about myself.

those first few days of january are like a haze. an incredibly bad nightmare that sometimes i have to remind myself is true.

everything happened so quickly. we were "home study ready" to adopt in september, heard about the adoption situation at the end of december, spoke with the birth mother the next day, and a few hours later were picked to raise her baby. only days after that we got the call that he was born and we were on a plane to louisiana that day.

*to read more about his story go here and here.

i remember discussing names on the plane ride and feeling such anticipation. i was nervous about so much. would the adoption go through? would we be able to take him home in a timely manner? what would the birth mother be like? but, oddly enough, i don't remember being nervous about his health. because he had to be healthy.

it's hard to explain in a way that honors both isaac's life and our role in it, while also being honest. but in the weeks and months after losing this precious baby we had so much hope for, i found myself almost not letting my mind even "go there" and remember. it was just so, so painful and traumatic. the thought that this actually happened to us again. lightening struck again. i actually have held two dead babies that were supposed to be mine. i don't know. there was something in my brain that had to shut it off in order to survive.

because i was pregnant with miles. and if it could happen twice. it could happen three times. you don't play odds anymore when you've been on the one side of "million to one." twice.

i've heard people say, i have two healthy babies. should i push my luck and try for a third?

i'm not sure what that means. like, do we all have these "tragedy jars" and they can only get so full before life doesn't suck anymore? on the other hand, if nothing "bad" has ever happened to you, well...you're due.

i fell into this way of thinking while we were trying to get pregnant with noah. i figured losing my dad to cancer at 8 years old sort of gave me a pass from future hardship. so getting pregnant would be easy, right? it's a weird thing to think, because we all know life doesn't work like that. at all.

why does it seem that some people breeze through life with not a hint of tough stuff, while others just seem to get more pain than their fair share?

i don't know. but what i do know is that it's not our fault when tragedy like this strikes, it's just bad luck. nor did we do anything to deserve any of the goodness-es we receive. that's plain grace.

there's so much more i want to say about all of this, but i'll leave it there for now.

Congrats, Your Baby Died

i meant to blog about this while i was pregnant with miles,
but i never got around to it.

i noticed, while i was pregnant with miles, that apparently in our culture being pregnant is a light and easy conversation topic.

oh, you're pregnant! congratulations!

how far along are you?

is this your first?

i noticed this starkly as i wandered target one day and upon seeing my pregnant belly a complete stranger exclaimed, congrats!!

now i don't mean to sound ungrateful or just plain grumpy, because it was very sweet of her to say, but i couldn't help but wonder why this was hard for me to hear. while i was pregnant the first time with noah, i ate up these congrats and questions about the baby. why was it now rubbing me the wrong way?

but my experience with noah and baby isaac radically changed my view of pregnancy.

most pregnant women are carrying a healthy baby. most. but what about the woman who just went to the doctor to discover her 28 week old baby no longer has a heartbeat? this pregnant woman will continue to carry her child for possibly days or weeks before they induce labor. how would a congrats from a stranger feel to her? congrats on what? congrats, your baby died?

most pregnant women are carrying a baby who they will raise themselves. most. but what about the woman who has decided to make an adoption plan for her child? how difficult that must be to field questions about a baby who you may never get to know, but only have dreams for.

most pregnant women are carrying a baby who lands in a specific, straight forward sibling order. most. but for some of us, there is a gaping hole in our family. i had the hardest time answering the, is this your first baby question. because if i said, no, there would be difficult follow up questions and comments that i usually didn't have the emotional bandwidth to manage. oh, fun! how many? how old are they? you'll have your hands full with 3 boys!

but if i answered, yes, that would be a lie.

side note:  i'm so jealous of moms who can, with ease and seemingly no thought at all, answer the question, how many kids do you have?

oh, madeline is 8 and then i have emily who is 6 and little nicholas is 3. 

if only the general population knew how much time we spend in my support group stressing and discussing how to answer that simple little question, and how much guilt is associated with it. it's remarkable and something i never, ever even had to think about 16 months ago.

in closing, i'm not saying we should never engage in conversation with a pregnant woman, or to just mind our own business. but let's just not assume anything. and let's always lead with sensitivity and grace.

that's all.

Butler Brothers

my birth experience with noah was pretty near perfect, and i wanted our experience with miles to be perfect too. but perfection, in its essence, cannot be made better or duplicated, right? it's perfect. done. so i wondered how it could possibly "measure up."

however, i also wanted the story of miles coming into the world to be unique and different, just as miles is unique and different. a story just his own, yet still perfect.

amazingly, that happened.

a few weeks before miles was born i told his auntie amy that i thought he was going to arrive "fast and furious." and that, he did. even four days late. i sort of half-expected miles to come early because noah did. (noah was due on june 10th and arrived june 5th.) so when miles' due date (june 11th) came and went, the anticipation nearly broke me. i know people go past their due dates all the time, and it's hard. but i can't help but think that my anticipation held much more weight.

i had been pregnant for nearly two years and we had been trying to get pregnant about a year before that. the nursery had been set, then redone, then tweaked, then fussed with, about a million times.

my anticipation was also loaded with fear. would miles be okay? not only were we not 100% sure that miles didn't have the same condition that took noah's life, but i was also heavy with worry about anything else that could go wrong. stillbirth. heart defect. acd. i worried about it all.

so those days leading up to his birth were very, very long. i also wasn't working full time and hadn't been for about a month. my to-do list had long been completed. and then completed about five more times again. i was ready. way more than ready.

beginning about two weeks before miles was born, i kept thinking "it" was happening. my water broke before labor began with noah, so i didn't really know what early labor felt like. however, i knew i was having contractions with miles for these two weeks, they just weren't getting stronger. i would get so excited... then disappointed when they'd trail off. it was maddening.

we even went into the hospital thinking "it" was time. on the evening of saturday, june 14th at about 7pm. and after a couple hours of monitoring, we were devastatingly sent home after still being only 3cm. (absolutely no progress since my doctor's appointment the previous tuesday.)

i went to bed around 10pm that night and got a few hours sleep when i woke up to go to the bathroom. i noticed some blood and just about had a heart attack. shaking, i woke up john and we called the doctor. she said it's perfectly normal and could be that his arrival was approaching. to be safe, she suggested drinking a large glass of ice water and lying down to make sure i could feel him moving. well, it took a very long half an hour as we waited to feel those crazy, miles kicks. with a sense of relief that all was well, john went back to sleep and i tried too, but my contractions were coming stronger. i stayed awake on the couch until about 5am.

my mind was playing tricks on me. was it really time this time? if we went to the hospital, would i be embarrassingly sent home again?

finally i woke john up with an "it's happening."

we sort of non-urgently got ready, showered and were about to get in the car when john suggested we "labor at home" for awhile. i said, "okay."

about two contractions later, and all of four minutes, john said, "i think we better go."

we arrived to the hospital around 7am and i was taken into the "pre-admittance room." my progress was immediately checked.

8 cm.

john and i looked at each other in disbelief. 8 cm!! we were hoping for at least 5 cm. or just something that indicated we had made some progress. but 8 cm. i was 80% done with labor!

things happened very quickly after that. they rushed me into a room. my amazing mid-wife arrived. john called our parents. contractions kept getting stronger and stronger.

at almost 9am i was checked again. 10 cm. we were ready. but my water hadn't broken yet. our mid-wife said she could break it, to speed up the process, or we could wait and it would eventually break on its own. we opted for her to break it.

what i didn't know, was that "speeding up the process" basically meant, after the water was broken, you're going to have the most intense, painful contraction you've ever had, and it's not going to stop until the baby is born.

i was screaming like a monster. clutching the side of the bed. i was officially panicked.

it was at this point my mom raced in.

i don't think the mid-wife and nurses were entirely ready for me to push yet. (she was just getting her gown garb on.) but i remember yelling, "i'm pushing!!!!"

about three-ish pushes later, at 9:04am, he was born.

it was unbelievably intense.

i wasn't really aware when they broke my water, but apparently they noticed meconium in the amniotic fluid. (miles had a poop.) this meant that they had to have nicu nurses there to help with his breathing right out the gate, so i couldn't immediately hold him or see him. so my first look at him he was very, very gray and very silent. but i couldn't really see him behind the group of nurses.

more panicking.

i remembering crying, "i don't hear him crying!!" but the mid-wife assured me they didn't want him to cry just yet, until they knew he didn't breathe in meconium into his lungs. but as john was going back and forth between me and him, he reported back - "he has a heartbeat!"

i don't know how long miles was over on the table, couldn't have been more than ten minutes, maybe? but it felt like an absolute eternity.

then finally, i got to meet the little man that i had been waiting a lifetime for.

though he gave us some scares, he came into the world perfectly, just like his brother noah.

as i anticipated the arrival of miles, the perfection of noah loomed over my head. how could another boy steal my heart the way noah had? everything about noah, and his entrance into the world, was perfect. his dark hairline, his curled lips, his peaceful presence.

but of course, my sweet blondie-boy miles paved a new way to perfection. and though i adore that there are similarities between these two brothers, i'm so thankful they have their very own uniqueness. noah is noah. miles is very much miles.

each of my boys are wildly different, yet divinely perfect.

as is my love for them.