Celebration of Life

The day I found out about the loss of our baby I was 4 1/2 months along. My family and I were one week shy of finding out the sex of our baby. There was so much we were looking forward to. Our two girls (8 & 6yrs old) were at some pretty FUN ages to be super involved with the whole process. This moment for them was huge. After they have been begging and begging for another sibling the moment was finally here. They had already been planning our gender reveal party. Yes! Two little girls planning a party. They made sure we talked about it and at times I would find the two of them sitting at the computer looking up ideas and creative ways to announce if the baby was a boy or girl.

We set our date, sent out as many texts as we could to all of our friends and family with the idea of sending out invitations next. So when we received the news about our loss I knew our girls were bound to ask us if we knew if we were having a boy or girl. So, I asked the doctor is there anyway we can find out if I had a boy or girl? She replied with a "Yes! We can do a blood test and you will know in a week."

Having experienced a still born 3 1/2 yrs prior to this we had the gift of knowing the sex of our child which is a girl and named her, Annabelle Grace. So this moment was very special as we know so many people don't even get this far in the process. Our children in Heaven are very much a part of our family and although we don't get to watch them grow on earth we still have experienced them in ways that are so beautiful just as if we had the gift to be with them. They have shown us glimpses of their personalities and glimpses of a their beautiful life that we very much feel a part of.  It most certainly does not replace having them here in our arms but they have given us a new pair of eyes to see life in a completely different way and that has been what is so beautiful. 

My husband and I were on the same page about finding out the sex of this baby because we knew this would add more beauty of our family and an even deeper connection that we had already been experiencing with this child. Sure enough when we picked the girls up from school that day and shared with them the news of out loss. Our six year old after shedding lots of tears said "do you know if it was a boy or girl and are we still going to have our party?" My first response was "actually honey, we will get to found out if we had a boy or girl in one week but we won't be having a party." She was excited to know that we were going to get to find out BUT she was sad about not having a party. She said "but I want to tell everybody. When we do find out can I still tell all my friends?" Oh my goodness my heart just sunk...I just hugged her and told her how much I loved her and her sweet spirit about wanting to still share with people. 

As we anxiously waited six days later...August 30, 2017 my phone rang and it was the specialist doctor I had been seeing throughout my pregnancy. The news we were looking most forward to had arrived and here I was anxiously waiting for the reveal. She said "the results came back and it looks like you had a baby BOY."As my heart sunk into my chest, I knew. I knew we had a boy. I had already had two dreams...one prior to my pregnancy and one during and both dreams I saw a little boy. Oh, so many mixed emotions. It is so hard to try and switch the thoughts from what you were already planning for to then trying to reason with what was reality now. I let it all out. I mean ALL of it. I called my husband to share the news and thankfully he was at a place in his day where he was able to come home and we could walk through this together. When he walked through the door I voiced all my frustrations, my anger, my confusions and disbeliefs. He held me and let me sob. Nothing made sense. I was searching for some kind of comfort in knowing this was going to happen but instead all I kept saying was "my dreams were so real, I held my son in my arms, I saw me deliver him, I saw Mylee (my youngest) holding him and feeding him a bottle. This shouldn't be what's happening." With broken hearts, just minutes later my husband and I couldn't help it though, we looked at each other with a very honest excitement and said "WE DID IT! WE MADE A BOY!" We laughed of course but went right back into shedding more tears. 

Now, with the question..."what are we going to name him?" There was this name that I loved while my husband and I were dating. The name was ETHAN. The story is, I met my husband's youngest cousin who was about 7yrs old at the time and his name was Ethan and when I met him there was something so so special about this kid that I told my husband (boyfriend at the time) "if we ever have a boy I want his name to be Ethan." My husband never said no so when we were talking names I said "ya know I never looked up the meaning of Ethan." So we did and WOW when we did, was it ever so fitting. 

Ethan means: Strong, Solid, Safe and Consent. 

If you watched our video in the blog post from August 28, 2017 you will understand why the meaning of this name Ethan was so fitting. In the video I share about how we have built a solid foundation as a family after the loss of Annabelle. Annabelle's loss shook our entire world. I explained it in the video that when we went through our loss with her our life had felt like a house that has been destroyed and really that is pretty much what happened in our lives. Everything you could imagine was destroyed. So, here we are more than three years later and experiencing a whirlwind of the emotions all over again and the one thing we kept saying was how much we have grown and learned and how our foundation is so solid. Those words Strong, Solid, Safe and Consent have been so evident both physically and mentally. Nothing about this kind of a loss is easy. In fact just the other day I expressed to my husband how going through a stillbirth and now a late term miscarriage feels so lonely. But isn't that how going through tragic moments in general feel like anyway? 

For me the lonely part is walking around with the idea of no one has any memory of this child but me and my family, and no one knows the depth of this hurt and pain unless you have gone through this type of a loss. One day you have a body that is changing within a pregnancy and then when you loose the baby you are still dealing with so many different changes connected to your pregnancy but now there is no baby. Nothing seems right. It really is a mental and physical roller coaster. There are only a select few that I have learned I can share my thoughts and emotions with. I have to be careful. I have learned it is very uncommon for people to talk about a loss. Even talking to people who have gone through it can be tricky. I know loss in general can be like this but I guess what I'm trying to say is I have nothing to show from it so I have had to find outlets on how to cope with handling going on with everyday life by still embracing these changes my mind and body are still going through. 

A few ways I have learned to cope with what I go through is to not only sharing through blogs and pictures but I have also learned how to listen to my kids. They seem to have just the right ideas and the right thing to say at the right times. Children are quite amazing. They have required me to listen more and more as I pick up on all this. So thats what I did. My six year old daughter's voice kept ringing through my head..."mom can I still share, can we still have a party?" Deep down inside I wanted all of that too SO the light bulb went off in my head and said why not? Why not, still have our party and make it a Balloon Release Party. SO that's exactly what we did. 

We ordered 100 balloons and friends and family gathered with us and we released every one of those 100 balloons. It was so beautiful and so overwhelming in a very good way. We took 30 minutes to embrace this moment and that 30 min we will never, EVER forget. It meant so much to us that so many people would even show up for something like this and honor a life that never took one breath. Before we released the balloons my husband and I shared at the party how we believe that at the moment of conception life begins and every life serves a great purpose. Sometimes we have to wait for that purpose to reveal itself. We have learned the more we become aware of the purpose we find beauty. We choose to see beauty in the process and as hard as it is beauty is there. It is there in our everyday moments and that it what we choose to hold on too. Annabelle and Ethan live with us and I get to experience a glimpse of Heaven on Earth because that is how beautiful and how special those moments are to me. So here we are wanting to share this moment with you too. I would like to say a big thank you to friends Christian Frank who captured all the photos you see and Kristin and Brooklyn Merwin for capturing some video footage of the night. 

So many magical moments happened this night. One that specifically happened was captured by my friend Kristin Merwin. As she was videoing the sun displayed something we had never seen before and I hope when you watch it, it brings hope to whatever you are going through. 

Trust me it is so hard to celebrate in tragic moments but the message that lays so deep within me and my families hearts is to share that Beauty is EVERYWHERE. Become so aware that you notice the beauty that is right in front of you. The earth is always speaking to us and I believe our loved ones spirits never die. They speak to us through ways that catch our attention. If we just open our hearts up to believe we will then open up our eyes to see. 

Try it. Beauty awaits just for YOU. 

Thank you for joining and reading about the story of our little Ethan Ryan Dobmeier.