Also, you can check out my friend's organization at: http://www.abutterflystouch.org/ They are holding a Walk to Remember in Oregon on October 13th. The walk will be followed by a memorial service.
You can read more about the Capture Your Grief project and what photos are suggested for each day and read more about her story below. Each day she describes what you can try to photograph and what to share about it if you wish to do so.
http://carlymarieprojectheal.com/2012/09/capture-your-grief-this-october-2012-for-pregnancy-infant-loss-awareness-month.html
I will share more about our story during this month. Though our loss happened just over 17 years ago....it's never very far away no matter how much you try to not think about it. I have decided it's time to think through our story again and share what I can about what we have learned and how we have grown over the years. Our son that we lost would be 17 years old. His name is Nicholas Bennett Clayton. He was our 2nd born. More details later....
I'll come back and post a new picture each day on this entry. If you decide to try this project also, just leave a comment to let me know!
Day 1 (October 1st) -- Sunrise
This one I took this morning at home.
This one I wanted to share. My youngest daughter took this picture a couple of weeks ago at the beach. I love how the reflection makes a butterfly-like image around the sun.
Day 2 (October 2nd)- Before Loss Self Portrait
This was taken at Easter in 1995. I was pregnant with our second child, our first son, in this picture. My oldest daughter is in the picture with me. I was about 4 months pregnant at this time.
Day 3 (October 3rd) - After Loss Self Portrait
This first picture was taken in the hospital after delivering Nicky on June 29, 1995. It was a blur of finding out that he had no heartbeat at the doctor's office to going in to deliver him within a few days at the hospital. It was just an unbelievable experience in every way.
This pregnancy had been challenging from the beginning....I realized I was pregnant after 2 weeks of being sick. I had still been nursing my 9 month old at the time I realized I was pregnant! I wasn't eating enough to support the three of us! A few months down the road we realized I had placenta previa and it was bad enough for a time that I was on partial bed rest and had to depend on people to help with my one year old! It was a challenging time but by the beginning of June, I had been cleared as the placenta had moved and it was no longer a concern for delivery or complications from it's location. Shortly after that my husband and I went out of town with some friends. We drove quite a ways and all seemed well.
When we returned home and I was able to rest, I began to notice that I didn't feel the baby moving..... That lead to us going in to the doctor's office for a NST and then they did a sonogram. Our baby boy had died. He was 35 weeks at this point in time... He was 4 lbs and 18 in. when he was born. It was so hard to believe that he had died. We had a sonogram done at the beginning of the month and all looked fine. We ended up finding out that there was a place on the umbilical cord where it had worn down to a thread...causing Nicky not to get what he needed to survive. We were told this was something that only happened in rare cases but unfortunately it can't been seen ahead of time in order to do anything about it.
Needless to say we were devastated and I was afraid with each subsequent pregnancy that something would go wrong again. For years I played the "what if" game....what if we had been able to see it ahead of time and deliver him early...what if we hadn't gone on the trip and had noticed something was wrong in time to save him.... I finally had to let it go and give it to the Lord. Not matter what, He was in control, even if we didn't like how things turned out. We can rest assured that our son is in Heaven with his Heavenly Father waiting for us to join him. We look forward to the day that we will see Nicky again and really get to "meet" him.
This picture is also an "after" picture. This was taken at the birth of our third child, and second son in August of 1996...just over a year after Nicky left us. We were so happy and blessed to have another son but sad at the same time as we were still missing Nicky. Each pregnancy after Nicky's left me afraid that something unexpected would happen again. Thankfully our doctor understood and they took the time to do extra checks and sonograms with all my other kids to make sure all was well.
Day 4 (October 4th) - Most Treasured Items
This picture shows the few things we have to remember Nicky. I included a couple of the pictures that the hospital was nice enough to take of our little boy. I'll probably post a few more of them during this month.
Day 5 (October 5th) - Memorial
These pictures are from the funeral we had for Nicholas and his headstone.
