Thank you to Fern for sharing her story in honor of Miscarriage and Infant Loss Awareness Month. If you would like to submit a piece please email cari@twentysixandfour.com. Fern Chasida Rabinovitz, aged 51, originally from New York and living in Israel since 1988. Wife, mother, friend, reader, librarian.
Thank you to Krista Cox for submitting such a beautiful piece. This is the first guest post in honor of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. I am still welcoming any and all types of submissions for the month of October if you would like to make a guest post. E-mail: cari@twentysixandfour.com
October was proclaimed National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month by President Ronald Reagan in 1988.
Some days I struggle. Most days I can put Ava into a safe place in my heart and hold her there while I continue living a life with purpose and full of happiness, but some days I can’t. Some days I just hurt too much to come out of the shadows, and when I wake up in the morning I wish I could go back to sleep until the pain was over. Some days I just really struggle. And though those…
It’s been over a year and I still don’t go more than a few hours without thinking about Ava. Some days I feel OK, “normal,” like myself again. Then there’s days that I still feel like I can’t function. Like the other day at work. I completely lost it. I got triggered by a patient and I couldn’t recover. As soon as I would feel like I was close to being able to get through the day a different patient…
365 days after Ava died I woke up to the sounds of birds chirping and trees rustling in the wind. The sun was barely starting to rise and everyone else, Travis, Logan, and my dad, were all still asleep. I burrowed deep into my sleeping bag letting the relief wash over me. I had made it. I had survived the worst year of my life, the first year after my baby died. I closed my eyes and drifted off to…
We left the hospital on Thursday and buried our daughter that following Sunday. The days in between are somewhat of a mystery in my memory, but there are a few events I’m certain of. The first was the preparation for Ava’s funeral.
When I first arrived at the hospital I was terrified of the uncertain future we faced. I had no idea how long we would be staying and I was preparing to be trapped there for months if it meant saving our baby. I remember spending the drive to Denver brainstorming up ways I could keep my job by working remotely from a hospital bed, and trying to come up with childcare plans for Logan. At some point in our drive,…
I haven’t written in awhile and there are still a few parts of Ava’s story remaining that I haven’t shared. These are the parts and the details I want to put down on “paper” before too much time passes and I forget them. For the next few posts, I’m going to continue telling the rest of Ava’s story because I need to make sure it is complete. If not for your sake, or hers, then for mine… After spending a few days…
After a cold and dreary few weeks, it now officially feels like spring. The snow has long melted and almost overnight the grass has turned into a bright, lively green after what felt like weeks of rain. The tree branches are full of swollen buds with the promise of new life to come. The sun is shining, the clouds have cleared. For months I have been longing for the sweet smells of fresh cut grass and morning dew. I walk…