Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to you my son! Your first one is in Heaven! It's bittersweet for me knowing that you are having the best celebration, but I hate that we have to celebrate apart. I sent balloons up to you and I know they made me cry as I watched them float away but I felt like you would be watching me and your brother wishing you a happy birthday. Landon just laughed and laughed at us letting the balloons go, he loved it! I hope you did too! It's been a year since I got to see your precious face and touch you. I miss you with very part of my being. Happy 1st birthday, my sweet angel!

Waiting.....

Waiting... such a small word with such weight.
I personally am not the most patient person ever, so waiting doesn't come easy for me. Waiting in a doctor's office, waiting on the day to take that next pregnancy test, waiting on dinner to cook, waiting on the next payday, waiting for marriage or to graduate college, waiting on high school to end, waiting to become an adult, waiting on the next thing in life....it seems most of the time we are waiting. Recently I've tried to pray for God to open my eyes to the things/lessons I'm supposed to learn while waiting. I need to take this waiting time to be renewed. I came to the realization that I must be needing to learn something during this waiting time in my life. Like I said, I'm not a real patient person so sometimes I allow myself to get irritated at waiting so I don't see that person next to me in the waiting room (literally and figuratively) who may just need me to offer them a smile or just say a prayer for them, after all they may have just learned they have cancer or some other scary disease. Maybe I could have said a prayer for everyone in there instead of focusing on myself. Maybe I could be just spending time with Landon or Billy while I'm waiting on dinner to cook....I'm supposed to just spend time in God's glory and soak up all I can while I'm waiting. In the small moments of waiting and the big moments of waiting for something to change in our life, I must let God renew my strength.

But those who WAIT on the Lord will renew their strength, they will mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not grow faint. Isaiah 40:31
See, what we do if everything just came exactly when we wanted it and exactly how we wanted it. Life, we think, would just be peachy. But not really, we may get things that would hurt us in the long run. What we think looks good in the moment may not be all we hoped for when we actually achieve it. Ever heard the saying, "thank God for unanswered prayers". I don't think there are unanswered prayers but He does choose how He answers them. Just because you think its going unanswered may mean He is working it out in another way. In the waiting maybe God is trying to give you a new perspective and we have to look beyond ourselves to see it. With Lawson, I was waiting for God to heal him because I just knew there was no other way for it to be okay. But he did heal him, just not the way I was envisioning. He healed him by taking him to Heaven for the ultimate healing.

 Have you ever doubted in the waiting and couldn't see past your own hurt/impatience? In the book of Luke (Luke 24:13-35), after Jesus rose from the dead two of his disciples were debating the happenings and talking about their doubt and Jesus caught up with them. But he did not yet reveal himself as Christ. He let them debate and offered insight, they asked him to stay with them as they reached where they were going. He then broke bread with them and revealed Himself to them. 
And it happened that, while he was with them at table,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, and gave it to them.
With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him,
but he vanished from their sight.
Luke 24:30-31

He knew their doubt and he chose that moment to show them he had been there all along. Isn't it crazy to think of a Savior who does nothing but try and save us from ourselves and yet we still doubt and turn away?
Then they said to each other,
“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Luke 24:32
Its in those moments that we realize those little tugs to do something you're scared of doing, or while you're waiting and aren't sure what's ahead, that Jesus was there all along. Those small signs that He's waiting with you to renew you and prepare your heart for what's to come. Miracles, happenings that we cannot understand or even see occur constantly around us, both good and evil. He may not ever fully reveal the workings or He may let us see how He worked all along in every tiny detail. I believe God  hides certain things from our eyes because we can not fully comprehend His ways.
Even in the waiting and hoping, He will renew us. Sure, I still don't like waiting but hopefully when I look back on this waiting I will be glad that I sought God and that I will see at least some of His work along the way.
That He will reveal himself and I'll be able to say, My Lord, My God was with me all the time.

Remove the thorn in my side

So I have recently finished a book by Laura Story and its called "When God Doesn't Fix It"(She also sings "Blessings", look it up if you haven't heard it). It really opened my eyes to a lot of the things we face all through our lives that we tend to push to the bottom and try to just not look at. Our trials, our pain, our hurt....its all something we have, but sometimes its just that...too painful to bring up. We have to learn to look at those trials as blessings that draw us closer to God. I know with me I focus on just coasting through life without soaking up God like I should as long as things are going great and then WHAM, something stops me in my tracks and I'm left to do nothing but fall back on my knees at God's feet. I'm not saying that I don't kneel to God during good times, but I don't tend to cry out for his guidance quite as loud as when I'm hurting. This passage (2 Corinthians 12:6-9) is what I read last night and it 'stuck' with me.
 Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.   God tells Paul that he will not remove the thorn in Paul's side because His power is made great in weakness. WHAT?! Yep, think about telling all these people about Christ when you've had no trials.
All of us can relate more to pain than we do to everything being in good working order all the time. God takes our pain and makes it GREAT! He brings glory to Himself, yes, but he also heals us along the way if we lay it all at his feet. We seem to want everyone to think we have it all together but sometimes (most of the time), you can really help others by putting your story out there because somehow/somewhere, even if you never know it, someone will hear it that needed it. I have never felt closer to people that have seen/been through the trials that I have. No one's story is exactly like another person's but there is beauty in that also.  I don't know about ya'll but that makes me feel all warm inside when I read/hear something that makes me feel like I'm not alone in this thing we call life.
God wants us to love one another and one of those ways is helping one another even if we think its still painful in the process. In all the times I've gotten the opportunity to share about Lawson or our fertility struggles, I have felt some of that load lifted and hopefully someone else was helped also. I may never know the amount of people that my story has reached, and I don't have to. Because God does, and if it brought him glory, then my job was worth it. If you had told me three years ago that Lawson's death would be a story for me to tell about God's glory, I would have been so mad. God changed those feelings and if He can do it for stubborn old me then He can for you too. I know there are people everywhere who have walked through much worse things than the things I have to lay at His feet, but it doesn't make my story less significant.
I am weak and I have never been more proud to be weak because He is made strong!

Speaking about Lawson

So I was asked to speak at a women's conference in May and I thought I'd share the testimony that I did.....
 

In Jeremiah 1: 4-9,

4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying,

⁵ “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
    before you were born I set you apart;
    I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

⁶ “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”

⁷ But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. ⁸ Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.

⁹ Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth.   

 

I’ll start with telling you a little about me. I am 26. I grew up not far from here towards Huntsville/Gurley area.  My parents raised me in church and encouraged me to participate and I stayed pretty active in church activities all throughout my childhood into teenage years. I felt like I had a pretty good relationship with God as I’ve grown up. I went to a small school where we were pretty much all involved in church and unafraid to express our faith because we all knew each other so much, it was hard to not know something about each other.  I didn’t have a whole lot of “trying” times during my childhood and only a few as I was in my teenage years. I’m just like all of you, I had and have everyday struggles in my faith and have fallen short plenty of times. I know you guys don’t want hear my whole life story because that would be pretty boring. So I’ve given you a little of the backstory but for the most part, as far as testing my faith, I hadn’t gone through a whole lot of struggles. 

I am a wife and a mother. My husband, Billy Prince and I have been married for almost 6 years and I have a very active and stubborn 6 year old little boy named Landon. My husband and I had a few early rough years of marriage trying to juggle one income, me still being in school, having a small child. Just in the last couple years of our life as a young family, we have withstood some very trying times in our lives.

We began talking of wanting another child when Landon was about 2, and for months and months it just wasn’t happening. I started seeing my OBGYN doctor for problems with my cycles and such. After a year and a half of trying, we started on a round of fertility medicine called Clomid. Miracles happen, because within a month on Clomid I was pregnant. I was so nervous, especially during the first couple months, with my background in healthcare (I do ultrasound), I had heard and studied almost every kind of abnormality in pregnancies that could happen and let me assure you that knowledge can be super scary. I prayed and prayed for a healthy baby all through those months, all my time driving back and forth to work was me crying out to God about my fears and asking for His peace. As the pregnancy progressed I began to feel more comfortable that God was going to give us a healthy child. All the ultrasounds had been normal and no other problems. Around my 6^th month I started feeling pretty bad, that was around the holidays because the baby was due at the end of February.  I had started telling my husband that things just didn’t feel right and I didn’t have the peace that this pregnancy was ok. I struggled through the holidays and had my parents stay with me a couple times while Billy was away for work. I started back to a normal routine at work once the holidays were over but I still didn’t feel good. I just kept telling myself it was part of the pregnancy, and I just had a few more months. I could do this! I had a few abnormal liver tests and such as I progressed but I was assured that it would have no effect on the baby and that they were going to monitor me closely. Finally on January 7, I went in to work like any other day and I just couldn’t clear my head and felt dizzy. I went over and had the nurse take my blood pressure and it was super high. I called my doctor’s office and she wanted me to go to the hospital to be monitored. They put me on the monitors and not long after my doctor came in to tell me that she wasn’t too happy with the way he was reacting so she was going to keep me overnight and I would be on bed rest from here on out. She had ordered an ultrasound so that she could get a better picture of what we were dealing with. The ultrasound was done within about 20 minutes and everything from there was almost a blur. The ultrasound showed fluid on the belly and brain and the baby didn’t look good at all. My doctor explained that they needed to deliver the baby now so that the doctors could look at him and figure out what needed to be done. I was crying hysterically, of course, because it was all so sudden and I was only 33 weeks so I knew that we were taking a huge risk. My husband wasn’t there and everything was not going like I planned. But on that same day January 7, 2013 Lawson Drake Prince was delivered within a few hours of me being there, and they knew as soon as he was out that things did not look good. He weighed 5 lbs but he was very sick and they weren’t very certain what all was going on. Let me just tell you that the worst fear of being a mother had come true, my child was sick and close to dying and I couldn’t control it or help him. It’s the most heartbreaking moment I’ve ever felt.

So many questions and no answers, it was literally all in God’s hands because we can only do so much and our human efforts weren’t helping him. Throughout the next few hours, I kept a sort of denial that he would die. I just knew that this couldn’t happen. I can’t really explain except that my brain was in kind of a fog. Like I was standing back watching someone else go through this. As I came up from recovery after the c-section, I was rolled in and got to hold his hand. (That’s the picture that you see.)I spent a few minutes with him, but then we were sent to a room to get settled. But it wasn’t long before we were called back to the NICU. When we arrived, I just stared at this baby that couldn’t give anymore and I just cried and cried. His little body just didn’t have any more power and God took him. In those moments, I didn’t cry out to Him. I was too upset and in that fog that nothing made sense in the world. I wasn’t real in my mind in those few hours. Maybe he gives us those coping mechanisms just to get through. There is so much uncertainty and in that time there are so many things that parents never want to think about. We didn’t even know that he was going to be a boy until right before he was born, so his boy name had just been on the backburner so to speak. We had decided on a girl name for sure, because that’s what our 20 week ultrasound told us.(we even had all baby girl clothes picked out and her bedding was purple gray and yellow) So we luckily had a name already picked and decided God had given us the name Lawson for a reason so it was the only choice. (by the way that’s my maiden name) 

There are a lot of emotions that I went through just in the few short days that I had to remain in the hospital. The worst memories are of course the prominent ones because of my exhausted emotional state. Particularly when you are on the maternity floor after your child has died, the nurses and staff are used to congratulating parents on their newborn, however, with my situation it’s not such a happy situation. There were instances such as the nurses bringing by our menu for the “congratulatory” dinner they provide and having to explain we didn’t want it. There were doctors that came in to check in on me that had not read the fetal demise sign on the door nor my chart and said things such as with your new baby, you will be a little stressed but try to take care of yourself also. Finally I broke down at the last doctor and said “well, my baby died.”

While we were still in the hospital the day after Lawson died I just broke down and sobbed because I wanted to be the one that had been taken so that he had a chance at life. I remember my mother saying to me that I was her baby and that she didn’t want me to be taken just as much as I hadn’t wanted Lawson to die. There was so much anger, so much fear, and so many emotions in such a small span of time. You have to learn to be a whole new person in a matter of seconds. You have to explain to people that don’t know what happened. And then there’s the awkward silence or the odd comment from them. Lots of times people want to be sympathetic and say things like “well God has a reason for everything.” That’s not exactly something I wanted to hear at all. (its hard to come up with anything in my book that is ok to say, harsh I know but there really are no words) Even as you leave that place where your child died, you feel like you are losing control because you aren’t supposed to be getting in that car without your baby. You have to go back to a house that has all the baby things you’ve bought and it hits you that the last time you were here, he was still alive. And eventually that house will get empty of visitors and you have to sit in the silence of a house that isn’t supposed to be silent or sad. Billy and I had to try and think of a way to explain it to Landon without scaring him. There were several times when Billy and I needed some quiet time to grieve, but life didn’t slow down with an active 4 year old. He was still asking about his “sister” and acting really confused about our answers. Billy is a very quiet guy and he tends to hold his feelings in. So I had to try and find a way to still be a mom and wife and comfort them but I couldn’t even figure out how to get through a moment without wanting to break down, much less take care of someone else. 

 The nightmare kept going, it seemed because then came the worst decisions: where do we bury him, where will the funeral be, what kind of casket do you want, what kind of headstone will portray him the best…oh those were some of the most awful decisions I’ve had to make. You forced to make all these decisions while you are still trying to cling to and grasp what has gone on.

 I believe God still stood there with me, as I lost my son, as I was upset, as we went through the funeral and buried him, as I had such a disbelief that I couldn’t comprehend it all, He stood right there and did what He does best. He was with me, when it seemed no one was. Because I can tell you that it wasn’t me getting around, it was Him carrying me.

Dealing with a child’s death is one of the worst things we can experience in my opinion. I believe God gives us that unconditional love and natural protection for our children that’s completely different than the love of our spouse or other family. I think that’s the closest thing on earth to His love for us. So after Lawson died and the funeral was over, I was devastated and I remember laying in the bed and just crying out to Him and being so mad at Him. Why did you give me this child to take him from me, why me, why him, why when we’ve tried so hard do you give these other people no problems conceiving and they don’t care for their children…..any “why” you can come up with, I probably yelled at Him. In Psalm 6:6-7, it says,  “I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.⁷ My eyes grow weak with sorrow;  they fail because of all my foes.” That’s exactly how I felt. I was worn out from this suffering and it took me a long time to want to praise the One who gave me Lawson, and the One I felt like allowed him to be taken from me. I was upset, angry, sad, the list could go on and on. One of my favorite songs that I refer to over and over is “I will carry you” by Selah. The lyrics go

I will carry you
While your heart beats here
Long beyond the empty cradle
Through the coming years
I will carry you
All my life
And I will praise the One Who's chosen me
To carry you

God uses His ways to do things, sure He could have come in and healed Lawson or He could have kept me from getting that virus all together, but His way isn’t our way. Ecclesiastes 11:5 As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.  

When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he didn’t do it when Mary and Martha and the others were expecting him too, He did it in His time because it required more belief in the awesome power of God. Maybe that was God’s plan for Lawson and I, losing him was my way to rely solely on God and allow Him to show me the way and teach others through my experiences. He knew that I would fall, that I would be mad at Him. And He lets us be, He understand our pain. He lets us come to Him. He lets us literally “heave” all those problems on Him and you know what, He gladly accepts them because that means we are calling on Him. I could have kept all that bitterness and anger but slowly, and I mean it took a lot of time and definitely wasn’t easy, I started looking at the good things that He was in all along the way. For example, He allowed my mom and sister to be there at the hospital that day so I wasn’t physically alone, He gave me and my husband time to see our child, He didn’t allow me as an ultrasound tech to find my baby’s heart not beating…the list goes on. To me, my struggles were the worst, and I found myself upset that other people were mourning this or that when I had lost a child and in my mind nothing could compare to that. But to God, our struggles are all equal to Him. Just like a good parent, God hates our suffering. We don’t like to see our own children hurt or suffer and neither does He! How awesome is it to know that our God is so powerful that He can know every emotion we have and every trial that He will walk through with us and yet He still pours out all His love on us…who are we to deserve such love and understanding? After all, Lawson was never really mine at all, for everything that is, is His. The bible says it numerous times,

The world is mine, and all that is in it. Psalm 50:12

For everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. 1 Chronicles 29:11

 I have the faith in my God that I will get to see Lawson again. He just allowed me to have Lawson the small time that I did and I am thankful for each and every moment.

Even now, as I feel like I’ve sorted out the emotions and feel like I’m in a better place with my relationship with God, I still have struggles everyday with those upset feelings trying to take over. We are still suffering from infertility and it has not been an easy journey. However, it is so easy to let the devil come in and steal your joy of today. “Lord, if you wanted me to have more children, you would let it happen” and “are you trying to tell me something by taking our second child”….doubts and questions like this don’t get me any closer with my trust in God. There are many people in the Bible who experienced the things we experience. Hannah suffered for a long time with infertility. She cried out to God and He finally granted her a son. Now I won’t say that God gives every person a child, because He doesn’t. That’s another area in our lives that we do not know God’s exact plans for us. As you can see all through my talk here that I certainly don’t pretend to know God’s plans for the events in my life especially. Sarah also suffered from infertility and Abraham had been told that he would be the father of many nations so Sarah got impatient and offered the servant to him. It resulted in heartache for her as she endured her husband having a child with another woman. She didn’t wait on God’s timing and tried to take matters into her own hands, isn’t that so like us? I know I do that!

We have expectations and although we know He is God, we are still hurt when we feel like he hasn’t met the request like we want.  It’s sometimes hard to pray for His will to be done because we all know that sometimes the Lord’s way isn’t our way and really there are blessings in that. He knows far more about our lives and the way they will play out than we do.

I’m sure you have had your fair share of hurt and times when you are upset with God, but know that he sees us in our grief and hurt. After all, even Jesus wept while He was here on Earth.  There may not be answers to the things you or I struggle with. I believe that He is an almighty God and He can do things that are unimaginable but He doesn’t always answer things the way we want. So the belief that needs to stand firm is that when the things don’t turn out good or how we planned, that one day it will be perfect. And I pray for the promise of that perfect eternity to be etched into our hearts and minds so that we may go on. A quote from Angie Smith’s book “I Will Carry You”, When the wind blows through my soul and tempts me to despair over the lot I have been given, I cling to the truth that the Lord has something better for me. It won’t always be like this. You will know Him fully one day and all the hurts that consume you in this moment will vanish and be forgotten.”- Angie Smith 

A friend of mine told me to look up verses that coincide with days of importance to me and see if a scripture fits that day, so it peaked my interest and I looked and found 2^nd Corinthians 1:7,

And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. I sat and thought about that verse and I knew it went perfectly with his birth and that time in my life, because he shared that suffering with me and He also shared in the comfort that eventually came and still to this day is sharing in all of it.

The bottom line of all that I have shared with you today and I hope that you remember and take away with you is that we are not alone. He walks with us and stands by us when no one else does. He understands more about you than you do. I wasn’t alone in the delivery room, wasn’t alone as I watched the breath leave him, wasn’t alone when I cried tears that I thought would never stop, wasn’t alone when I felt as if my heart was literally going to break free of my chest…I’m not alone now as I think every moment of another positive pregnancy test, as I think about all the love that I have left to give another child…   as I go through every awful and joyful moment of this journey He stands right there. He knows every inch of my journey (my emotions, my struggles, my strengths, everything) because He made me.

 

The two years and the struggle

Well its been quite a while since I updated the blog. A lot has changed for our family and extended family in just a short time. I won't go in to all the specifics but God has had a way of showing me just how precious time is and how fast time with the ones you love and cherish can slip away faster than you can blink. We have been through a lot in just a few short months but God has pulled us through (literally may have pulled me at times). I admire the strength He's given me to step forward each day and choose to go on. He has given so many others that same strength, they just may not realize its Him.
My husband and I had some conversations about grief and the way people handle things. God gave us each a special heart and mind so that we would and could use them in the ways that we choose.
Our fertility problems have not gotten any better and this February will be a month that I've been going to a fertility doctor for these issues and unfortunately God has not chosen for it to be our time. There are so many mixed emotions about this for me, as with most people. I know that God allowed me to become pregnant with two beautiful boys and one was taken from us here, but I get so angry sometimes that I don't understand His plan. I may never know His plan and some days I accept that and it feels right in my heart and other days I feel furious that I don't have a reason. God knows the plans He has for me and most days that's comforting to know that He is in control and not me, and other days I cry out to help to give me peace. Secondary infertility is something a lot of people don't understand. They don't understand how I can get pregnant once or twice and not get pregnant again whenever I want to. Its hard to explain but sometimes my body won't do what other women's bodies do without them even knowing it. I have made a choice to go forward from here and eat healthier and make better choices for my body this new year. It may not help but it can't hurt me. I want to know that I'm doing all I can to get in the right place to carry a healthy baby if God chooses to bless us again.
Happy New Year to everyone and I hope that each of you are blessed this year.

Well the day came...

The day I've been worrying about came and went. The day my oldest baby started kindergarten. It makes me sad that he doesn't seem so little anymore, but I was and am so proud of the way he seems to be embracing school. He's pretty much a quiet kid and I was a little worried with him not knowing anyone and being scared, but he seems to be adapting without a problem. Children seem to have a knack for fitting in and going with the change better than adults.
 I did good and didn't cry until I got about halfway to work. Then I broke down and had a good cry thinking of all that Landon will be learning and seeing and that I will never get that "first day" with Lawson.  No first giggle, no first steps, no first words, no first day of school and that breaks my heart. Billy made the point that Lawson had his first day in Heaven and that it had been so much better. Which is so true, but as a mother I wanted those pictures of him and those sweet hugs as we left him to start his first big adventures. I will miss out on all those firsts that he would have had if he was here with us. I miss him terribly and will always wonder what he would have been.

Lots of things about him and our situation have been constantly on my mind lately and I'm not sure why. I'm sure its the stress of all these changes and fertility treatments, and Billy being back on the road traveling. It doesn't make it easier, that's for sure. Its been a constant battle lately of trusting God and wanting to give up. Have to keep in mind that I may not understand His will but I need to accept it because He knows more than I do.

That all familiar feeling

Last night my husband and I sat and watched the new lifetime movie "Return to Zero". I had heard about it through various sites that I follow on Facebook that deal with infant death. I knew that I wanted to see if this movie would quite portray the way it feels to have something so precious taken from you. I was surprised at the reality of the emotions, and the way it showed the overwhelming way that it becomes a part of every aspect of your life. That baby and those feelings are a part of you for the rest of your life! There is no escaping the way that it tugs at your heart when you see things that remind you of him or when its quite and all you can think about is that baby. Of course, because its a movie, some odd things take place that had nothing to do with most people's journeys. But overall the film made me laugh and it made me cry. I remembered feeling like I was mad, sad, confused, and overwhelmed all at the same time. I remember crying and wanting to scream because there was no other way for my body to let out all those emotions. It physically hurt for so long. Yes, physically, I didn't even know that was possible. I felt like my heart was ripping open. And still I know that my heart will always have a piece missing. I still feel him everyday and think about him almost constantly. The what-ifs play in my head all the time, even though now I can calm them a little. No one knows what to do when you have to bury your child before you even get to think fully about their life. One of the things that they ask you in the hospital is arrangements for your child. I don't know a single parent that has decided what they will do when they bury a child. Where do you want him buried, is he to be cremated or buried....all the questions and you want to do nothing but scream at them to just let you have time. But time isn't what you get when this happens to you. Time is stolen. There is no time allowed to spend admiring each part of that little being, or time to watch them grow. It all happens so swiftly and time is not your friend.
People say that I've been strong and really no one sees the parts of you that fall apart and will never be put back together. Everyone will handle their emotions differently and for a while I felt as if I might not come out a better person. I still know that I am a little more bitter than I thought, but that's a part of me now too. I knew that going on through life was my only choice and I had to accept that as a mom that lost her child, I will NEVER be the same and that's okay.
 Towards the end of the movie, the mother of the stillborn baby says, "The thing that no one tells you about is the relationship that begins after they die." ......Oh how true! You have a connection and love with that child that no one else will know. They can't see it because he isn't here physically, but its like your child is still a part of your body and your whole being. It takes a place in each part of your life.