BamamaPancakes

Nothing prepares you for losing a baby. It feels like it’s been a year since the doctor told us about Abram, and yet it feels like it was just a day. I saw a ‘baby bump’ picture we took in October when we thought it was a normal pregnancy, and that seems like a lifetime ago. When we felt Abram moving less the weekend after Thanksgiving, we knew something was likely wrong. We had braced ourselves for that possibility. Adalyn told me as she was putting her pajamas on Saturday night, “Mama, I think Abram died” when I mentioned him. She didn’t seem terribly distraught, more like she just knew, and I think she might have. We went in Monday morning where Erin let us know through tears that there wasn’t a heartbeat. Amidst every other emotion in the world, there was relief that he had gone in the most peaceful way possible.   We went to the hospital and induced labor, which was surprisingly similar to the girls’. Every single nurse, midwife (shameless shout out for CMG Women’s Center...

I have always written to process. I think it’s wired into me. Because I know how many are so compassionately following Abram’s story, I wanted to share a bit of where we are in this “in between” time. It is strange to be pregnant still. To have the same rounded belly, to experience the same pregnancy symptoms that remind me this was all normal at one point. It’s strange just to be waiting, hoping something will change but knowing how much smaller I am this time, how his kicks are still so light and understanding why that is. It’s strange not being able to change anything, take any action for him; strange to hear all the information that holds no easy answers, so we just ask again, like hearing it a second, third, fourth time will make it sink in. And it does after a while. I know what we are dealing with is rare, but real. This placenta cannot get Abram the nutrients he needs; we know that the lakes within it will only make the flow of nutrients more problematic, that there ar...

November 9, 2016 Dear Hillary, Thank you. All my life, I have heard that Hillary Clinton is too political. She’s too ambitious. She’s too calculating.   I’ve heard every move you’ve made questioned, critiqued, criticized. People always had an opinion. I was indifferent. Before all this, I never minded the idea of you as president, because I knew you were highly qualified for the job. But I never realized that I would become quite passionate about you. Not just “Anyone but Trump,” but you. I learned more about you over the campaign: where you came from, your family’s story, that you’re the kind of grandma who shows her grandson a giant plane on facetime in the middle of the most intense campaign in history. I saw pictures of you when you were my age helping others, saw the pride Chelsea has in her eyes when she looks at her mom, watched you field double standard after double standard, staying calm, collected and a pillar of fearlessness when a bully tried to yell yo...