Dylan Day

I read a beautiful post last week over at A Glimpse Inside about the one-year mark of losing her daughter.
This inspired me for the tittle of this post.

What to call today? Dylan's birthday? The day he died?
It is both. I don't want it to be either.

So Dylan Day is a beautiful way of naming today.

T and I spent the day at home. We spent most of the morning doing nothing, just being together.
We went and got some balloons and some beautiful flowers in a white basket.

After picking the boys up from school we came home so they could write something on the balloons for Dylan. I wrote something on our balloons.

We went to see Dylan at the cemetery, put some new flowers on his grave and sent him his balloons

The boys asked me where the balloons were going. We said they were going to Dylan in heaven.

We took the boys out for dinner tonight.

There was nothing to celebrate.
But as of this year, Dylan Day is a day which we will always spend together, doing something together, just being together..... and remembering our baby brother, our precious angel.

I love you Dylan.
I miss you more than the words I write here, more than I could ever tell you....

Tomorrow.....

One year ago today I was still happily pregnant.
Little did I know it would be the last day. Little did I know what kind of hell we would go through within 24 hours.

One year ago today was just another day, a Monday. I had the day off (as every Monday) and I spent it at home. I picked up the kids after school and got dinner ready.....

I don't really remember the specifics of that day. It wasn't a special day.

I do remember telling T that I didn't really feel the baby move that day. But I was only 22 weeks, maybe it was early to always feel him.
Now I keep thinking that if maybe I had gone to the hospital that day everything would have been all right.

I had listeria. They told me that even if they would have found it before Dylan died, they wouldn't have been able to save him. And the chance of them finding it was small, I know that. I wasn't sick. Didn't even have a cold. The only reason they found it was because Dylan died and they really went looking for something in my blood. It took them two days to find it. I don't know why I think they could have saved him. I know the facts they gave me and those facts all point to it already being too late. Even the day before we lost Dylan.

But how to get my head around that?!

Even now, almost one year later, these thoughts go through my head quite often. More often these days as we approach the one-year mark.

Part of me just really wants to go back to bed right now and stay there till the 1st of February. Not that that would change anything. But maybe sleeping through it all would stop my brain from dwelling on it....

T and I are both home tomorrow.
Tomorrow will be spent at home. Just us. Remembering Dylan. But trying to forget that one year ago we went through hell......

Really??

Two days before the 31st I get a letter from my doc saying my PAP smear wasn't good and I should come in for another test.

Really???!!!!

Could the letter not have come a couple of weeks earlier or later? Did it have to be now???

I have an appointment next month and it's not the first bad PAP smear I've had, so I'm not really worried.
It just really sucks that I got the letter today.

One more week

One more week until the anniversary of Dylan's birth and the day we said goodbye.

This date was so far away for such a long time and all of a sudden it's approaching hard and fast.

January 31st will never be the same. It will never again be just another day. It will always be the date on Dylan's gravestone at the cemetery. It will always be the day I wish never happened and will never forget. It will always be the day we held our beautiful son in our arms and had to say goodbye.

Saying goodbye to a child is not natural. It is something I never imagined I would have to do. Something I have been wishing never happened for the past year.

Here I am sitting on the couch thinking back about that day and reliving it like it was yesterday.
Here we are still trying to get pregnant again and me wondering wether we should just not try anymore....

I have all these blog posts from last year which I haven't yet dared to re-read. I have been drawn to them though, thinking about how I felt when I first started blogging.....
I want to read my past posts, but am frightened to read them. Afraid I will relive it all again.

Will things be different after next week?

I don't know. I don't know what to think about the 31st, or how to handle it.
X asked me what date it was last week. I told him the date/ He then thought about it and said to me that it's almost Dylan's birthday. And he asked me what we were going to do on Dylan's birthday.
Maybe we should celebrate it as a birthday. As we would X's or L's birthday.
I love my boys when they say little things like this. Dylan is their brother and even though he's not here with us, they think about him and want to do something for his birthday.....

So I think we will spend the 31st together, all 5 of us. And do something fun. Together. And Dylan will be with us. As always.

Dream

I dreamed I was pregnant. Very pregnant. Like 8 or 9 months pregnant.
I also dreamed that the baby wasn't moving a lot and I was panicking and scared. Scared that I would lose another baby.
I then pushed my tummy a couple of times and the baby moved. And I wasn't panicking any more.

I remember this very vividly. As if it really happened. It took me a little while to properly wake up this morning and realize it was only a dream. Even now, a couple if hours later, it still feels so real.

I can feel the pregnant tummy and the feeling of having a baby move. And being frightened...

Is this what a future pregnancy will be like? Filled with panic and fear??

The boys

My two big boys..... they are a major handful at times, but I love them to bits.

Last year, when I was pregnant with Dylan, we had told them they would be getting new beds and moving into X's bedroom together because the baby would get L's bedroom. We only have 3 bedrooms, so we had always planned for the 2 oldest boys to sleep in 1 room when there was a new baby.

When we lost Dylan, the boys each stayed in their own room and we never mentioned it again.

In the past few months, both X and L asked us a couple of times when they could go sleep in 1 room together. And when they would be getting the new beds we had promised them last year.

So, I convinced T it would be a good christmas present for both of them to get new beds and move into 1 bedroom together, which they still wanted.

Between christmas and new year's I spent a couple of days painting the room and moving things around. We then assembled their new beds and I even wall-papered a wall! (that was a first and so not as easy as I always thought it was!!)

Doing this actually took my mind off a lot of the emotional stuff going on with the holidays, so it was a good thing I decided to do this.

Here are some before and after shots:

This was a Cars-themed room (red, blue and road-grey). X chose this when he was 4....

Now they wanted something for big boys. So it's surfer wallpaper with greys, green and a bit of blue.

The boys love their new room. I'm proud of the work I managed to do in a couple of days' time :-)

Now to just make them understand that they need to go to bed and not play when it's bedtime!

New Year

2012 has ended. 

The year in which we lost Dylan will never be again. 

Should I be glad this year has ended? Then why does it make me sad?
Logic tells me I should be glad this year is over, the saddest, hardest year ever. 
My heart tells me I want to stay in 2012. I want to stay in the year in which we lost our angel.

We have gotten through this horribly sad and hard year. And we survived. T and I survived. We are here together. And we have our two beautiful sons with us here.

I don't know what 2013 will bring us. 
Will we get pregnant again? I don't know. I don't know how long I will keep trying or if I will get help if we don't get pregnant by ourselves. I don't know when I'll think of myself as too old to have another baby.
I don't know a lot of things.

I do know that we will get through it all together, as a couple, as a family. And with our friends.
If 2012 has taught me one thing, it is who my friends are. Our friends IRL were there for us when we needed them most. And they are still here, every day.
2012 was also the year for me to start my blog. It was not a happy time in my life, but I can't imagine life without my blog now. And more important, without all of you. Thank you for being there for me.

Happy new year. 
May all your dreams come true in 2013....
xx