You may have heard people say “every pregnancy is different; “ if you know anything about me I am stubborn as all hell and ALWAYS have to learn things on my own before I believe anything people say. When I was pregnant with Julia I had 24/7 “morning sickness” my entire pregnancy. Puking multiple times daily I lived on SLEEP, BREAD, CHEESE and SWEETENED DRINKS. My midwives actually told me that when people experience this it is highly likely that it will occur in any subsequent pregnancy. WOOOFFFFFF. I legitimately didn’t think I would ever voluntarily put myself through that again.
Here we are 21 months later and I am 14 weeks pregnant with another baby.
Turns out I LOVE being a mama, more than I ever thought possible. I have said this before and I will say it again, I was never the girl who wanted to get married and have a family. I believed I was lucky to find a career I was passionate about and that was my gift in this life. Well I was wrong, I met Anthony and literally the month before we got married (in my 30’s) I suddenly felt the urge to have a baby.
This video was taken exactly 1 week before we lost my sister.
I sent the video to Rachel and my parents and we all had a good laugh. Julia came into this world without the need to sleep. She never slept more than 2 hrs at a time for the first 7 months of her life.
THAT SHIT WAS HARD.
It was hard on my marriage it was hard on my body, on my job….JUST PLAIN HARD.
BUT, Julia brought so much happiness into everyone’s lives I couldn’t imagine just having one. Once we had a solid 6 months of sleep down (the night before this video to be exact) I told Anthony I wanted to have another baby. . . THAT NIGHT SHE DECIDED TO STAY UP ALL NIGHT…and Anthony and I were reminded how much we loved our sleep.
Seven days later Anthony rushed home from work to tell me that my dad had found my sister not breathing and unresponsive at home in Connecticut. When I tell you that was 15 year long worst fear come true it’s the truth. I fell to the floor immediately upon seeing the look in his eyes as he told me to sit down. I kicked the shelves in the living room and screamed; I lost my shit. I can’t even begin to relay to anyone what my family has been through since Rachel was 13. I thought we made it past all that, we were all so fucking proud of her but as I surreally sat on Facetime with my mom and dad at the police station I knew this was one thing I couldn’t change. I couldn’t change it, I couldn’t control it, I couldn’t make it better. Here I sit bawling almost 7 months later and the fact remains I still don’t fucking believe it.
My life has changed drastically after July 5th 2017. I found myself lower than low and barely able to get out of bed…my body hurt, my soul hurt, I just didn’t feel like myself anymore. I didn’t text or return anyone’s calls…I didn’t want to talk to or see anyone other than my parents, Anthony, Julia and Tater. Any plans for a baby or sex for that matter were GONE. As the months passed, I took time off of work and started to see a therapist, what was truly important to me was rapidly made evident. I saw my parents every single week until they returned back to work and Julia really was the light we needed to get us through this tragic time. We won’t ever “get over it”.
I am now an only child. Yes I will forever be a sister but its hard to explain, when you’ve spent your whole life with a sister who knows every crazy thing about you and loved you no matter what, a part of your childhood dies with them. All the shit we would laugh about, you don’t have anyone to laugh about with anymore. Not to mention my parents losing a child. I love my parents more than anything in this world and they are such good people. Losing a child you battled so hard for, only to see them really turn things around and then BOOM they’re gone. It’s worse than anything you could imagine. To complicate things further, I know that my mom had always wanted more children. She had a miscarriage in between Rachel and I and that is how we ended up 6 years apart.
So here I am telling you Anthony and I are pregnant again. We weren’t trying to get pregnant and we didn’t realize we were for awhile. I have faith that this is a good thing and will only bring our family closer. There is a part of me that is glad this happened because my parents will get to have more time to spend with their grandchildren and I know how much joy Julia brings them. It makes me happy to see them happy. I’m also really scared, like how are we going to do this? I’m nervous because in no way shape or form am I done grieving; being sad and pregnant aren’t ideal when it’s the winter and you already tend to be depressed. But I am here telling you, that we are doing the best we can and this pregnancy has been totally different and it might just be because someone is looking out for me now.
XOXO
Stacey
