My Cervix.

Went in for my 26 week appointment on Tuesday. Everything with the baby is looking good and healthy, besides the fact that he is breech. However, when my doctor did a cervical scan, he found that my cervical length is shortening. At my 22 week appointment it was 4 cm and on Tuesday it was 2.8 cm. The doctor felt like putting in a cerclage (stitching my cervix closed) was more of a risk than benefit at this point. He thought that the risk of infection and it possibly causing premature labor are too much to risk at this point. Instead he ordered for me to be on strict bed rest until I deliver. No sitting, and only getting up for the toilet.

While my doctor was giving me my bed rest rules, and some panic was starting to set it, it was hard not to get up from my chair and lay on the floor in his office with my legs above my head right then and there.

Next week I go in for another appointment and will also be getting steroid shots for the baby's lungs.

Rusty flew down to be with me the night I had my appointment and has been getting me all my meals and with me since then.

If you know me very well, you know that lying in bed all day is not very easy for someone like myself. However, after everything we went through with Olive I'm willing and ready to be a vegetable for as long as can help this little guy stay inside.

last photo before bed rest.

Grateful Tears.

This morning I woke up to an e-mail in my inbox from our friends Michael and Heather who we lived near and met in Thailand. They moved back to the States last December after some complications with insurance and an emergency back surgery for Heather for a herniated disk. Though they never met Olive, they often asked about her and sincerely cared about a season of life that we never even knew each other in.  They are currently living in Grand Rapids, MI, and when I opened my e-mail this morning and saw a photo of Olive's grave with these beautiful hydrangeas next to it the tears started pouring down my cheeks into my cereal bowl for the next 20 minutes.

It's been a while since I've cried Olive tears, so maybe that is why it felt hard to stop them from coming back on and off throughout the day.  Living so far away from her grave on a days like her birthday are hard because the first thing I want to do is go and sit with her body, clean her stone, put fresh flowers there and talk to her.

To know that two of our friends go their car and drove two hours on a wet dreary day to find her little graveyard in between the cornfields of northern Indiana meant so much.

I'm realizing that some of the tears I've cried today aren't just sad ones, but grateful tears for the friends and family I have in my life. For those who remembered her birthday this week and wrote or called me just to check in...for friends like Michael and Heather who drove to put flowers on her grave. For my Aunt Anna who also visited her grave with flowers.  For those of you who have followed her journey silently and with your prayers...

On Saturday friends and family gathered in Seattle to support "Team Colleen" (Rusty's mother) in the Brain Cancer Research Walk. In Michigan, Rusty's sister Stacia organized a walk for those in the area and the tears returned when I saw that our friends Brad, Jill, and Elizabeth were there to walk along with our cousin Sarah who drove hours to be there. As a family we have been once again overwhelmed by the love and commitment of friends and family to walk alongside us in another journey we never anticipated or wanted to take part in.

So today there were tears mixed with loss, but also gratefulness for friends and family who, even with an ocean in between us, still remind us how much they care. You too are irreplaceable, just like little Olive Hope.

Olive's 2nd Birthday.

Two years ago today you were born.
I wonder what you would be like if you were still with us. 
If your hair would be straight like your dad's or curly like mine.
If your eyes would have been blue or green. 
If your big toe was going to be disproportionately large like your father's.
I see my friend Sarah's daughter Rouen and my niece Aubrey who both have birthdays close to yours and wonder if you would be as chatty and silly as them at this stage. 
When you were still with us I wondered all these same things, thinking only time would tell. 
And now you're gone. 
And I'll never know the answers to my questions until I meet with death and find you again. 
Until then, know that you will never be forgotten or replaced, and that I will always carry you in my heart.

Reflections on the Crisis in the Horn of Africa

Reflections on the Crisis in the Horn of Africa