How we're doing now

Worn Out. I think that's the only way to describe it. It's almost like we're too tired to be sad any more. We've been sad for the last year and a half; we just can't take any more of it. This time, we were sad for about two days and then we were just done. Didn't have the energy to cry almost.

We feel like we have nothing left to say, and we don't really care to hear people tell us what God is going to do. And we're also not keen any more on hearing stories like so and so lost five babies, but then had three kids. The following analogy I think would fit and describe how we feel when we hear those stories. Let's say you've been in a bad car wreck and you're still a quadriplegic in a motorized chair. Someone comes up to you and says, "I saw this show a few days back about a guy in a wheel chair, just like you, and he said it was the best thing that ever happened to him because now he values life, he's overcome adversity and shown what you can accomplish with determination..." and you want to just drive over their toes and knock their shins. Those stories don't make us feel any better either.

Something we wish we could do better was talk to everyone who wants to talk to us. Many friends call, but we just don't have anything to say besides the same story: lost at 12 weeks, feel OK, very sad, yada yada. If we haven't gotten back to you we apologize, we just have a lot calls which we appreciate very much and don't have time or energy to call everybody back.

That's the hard part. The good part is that we thank everyone for their support. We do love getting the emails and voice mails that say, we're thinking of you, we're very sorry etc. We are so thankful for our friends and family. We're thankful that Rebecca is OK. They went and got the baby out, but no surgery was required so Rebecca is feeling much better this time.

Thank you again for your support. Even just you reading this blog is encouraging to us when we get to look at the stats and see that 2500 different people have read the blog and have visited from all over the world.

Take care, Micah

A little further down the road

Well, there's a couple things we've learned being a little further down the road after William. I'm not feeling very creative tonight so I'm afraid I'll default to a list.

1. We never, ever forget him. Not a day goes by we don't remember William, the hospital, the funeral, ... the loss. We'll never be normal again, it's kind of like getting your leg shot off, you just can't ever go back and be a dude with two regular legs again.
2. God has worked in us, Rebecca and I, through this process. We're kinder to each other and we're much more sympathetic with others. Even if others didn't lose their baby, they may just be having a bad day, fighting with a loved one or who knows, it's always important to be kind to people having a bad day.
3. We don't value stuff as much, a friend spilled a chocolate milk shake on our wedding quilt and instead of getting quite torqued over it, which I'm really good at, we both just said, "oh well, we'll clean it up, no problem." Now we know stuff is just stuff, and that people matter so much more. Our stuff can't hug us, bring us food, help us clean our house, kick us off the couch or love us. It's just stuff.

I know there are many different areas; we feel like totally different people, but these are the highlights I remember right now.

Developments

Well, it's been so long I actually have several developments at once to share. First we got pregnant, YAY!! So we told our families, waited a few weeks, then close friends, waited a few weeks, told everybody, next day, lost the baby, BOOOOOOOO! We lost our third baby at just under 12 weeks.

The doctor said that everything operated "as it should." In early stages of development, cell splitting and what not, if everything isn't going along great there's a sort of auto-terminate feature built into babies, so they tell me. They also tell me this is common, about 20% of all pregnancies end this way.

As horrible as it sounds, in my world this is progress. For the other two kids the doctors said, "we have no idea what happened, this isn't supposed to happen," and "wow, I'm glad you [Rebecca] made it, what happened to you is usually fatal." So now for them to say, that everything operated correctly, self-destruct feature included, it's at least progress. I hate it, and I wish it had never happened, but they say you have to look on the sunny side of life or something stupid like that.