Will's birthday is tomorrow. He would be 4. The anniversary of his death is Saturday.
I have 'lost to February' every year since.
This year, his ashes lay under his tree with his brother Tiger's, gone 7 months now.

I don't know how many hours Tiger was still inside me - but once they gave me the ultrasound that found no heartbeat- it felt like too long. It felt like I should have known- despite the pain of my undetected ripping uterus. It was the same ultrasound that found significant bleeding inside me and got me rushed to emergency surgery. I left this world for a little- to be with Tiger- I remember swimming back. It sounds crazy- but i remember- and the water that brought me back to my life- to my daughter and husband was Will. My boys sent me back. They saved me.

I would do a lot differently. I would have demanded that they send me in an ambulance to the hospital that Will was transfered to before he died- so i could hold him rather than just sing to him over a speaker phone. I would have asked to hold Tiger in the ICU or at least to have had pictures taken. I just didn't know. I didn't know to do this. What I would do the same is actively grieve.... plant a tree, take 3 months to hold a service that was rich and full and healing, bury Tiger's ashes with my bare hands mixing them desperately with the dirt that held Will, dance like a banshee for hours around the tree, and integrate my boys into this new world we move through. I would try for mindfulness with others and aim for awareness and love as I believe my boys would want me to... because they want me to live. This I would and continue to try everyday.

For now the question that rests in ambiguity for me is this: What do I do with the information of two lost children as far as having another? My body can't do it- this is information too. Should I rest here and just create within the family I have? Or do I continue to make space for another child in our lives- a sibling for my daughter, another child for the amazing father that my husband is, another heart for myself to be mother to? I'm just IN this question- everyday. I'm not seeking answers but i do wonder....

Why did my boys come for such a short time? And while there will never be a definitive answer, how will I transfer this amazing maternal energy back into the world? I will ask this everyday for the rest of my life.

Have you done something with this experience, with the love for your child that you never knew was possible? That surprises you? Is there something you want to do?

I have become more calm and more accepting of what our lives are. I accept that some day I will die. That my dog will die, my new cat will die as the old one did, that my mother will die, my father will die, my brother and sister will die and my husband will die.

That that is part and parcel of life. I no longer run from it and while I still fear it some, I acknowledge the reality of the whole life cycle.

I do want to do something. It's not fully taken shape yet. I feel an urge to reach out more, to help others more, to leave my comfort zone. Whenever something beyond normal happens that we reach for - like when we saved that dog from being hit at New Years and turned him over to a no-kill shelter - I think of that as our love letter to Gabriel.

I'm trying to find new ways to write these love letters, these testaments to how he touched me and how I can touch others.

But it hasn't gone far yet.

thank you ladies, these are all wonderful, and I so appreciate your responses. I'm going to ask my doctor about safe prescriptions in pregnancy, something for anxiety. It's funny, I saw some commercial last night for depression, and I swear to you (as corny as it sounds) I was nodding my head at every depressing question they asked (do you feel isolated? don't want to go anywhere? don't want to see anyone? -- yes yes and yes). Sometimes I wonder if this is just grief, if it's normal, or if I've passed some kind of invisible line where I need help. Nothing is clear for me anymore since Henry's death, not even mundane things so this question in particular continues to puzzle me.

I am so sorry, i posted this in the wrong place. Please forgive me Im so embarrassed!!!

I was sitting here wanting to answer this post in particular and instead answered my own that is right below, intending to come here next. Just shows you how scattered I am. But my response to this question is (and it is an extraordinary one because it weighs on me daily), I wish every single day to give something in Henry's honor, its my utmost priority to find some wonderful way to honor him and that gives me purpose. I'm not sure I've found it yet, I still feel so mired in grief that I dont know when I will be able to function again properly sometimes. Some days I just tell myself that if I can smile at someone who is downtrodden or do something small for someone else, then I am honoring him -- and I hope later that something bigger begins to take shape.

I will light a candle for your Will this Saturday, in memory of him, Tiger and my own Will. I'm sorry you have regrets of what you didn't do in those first few terrible days. I think it's impossible to fully comprehend the loss at first, and subsequently, impossible to make it 'perfect' (as if losing a child will ever be perfect). But, actively doing things in memory of your boys every day is certainly a way to continue their legacy. I wonder what is the reason for my Will to have only lived inside of me...and wonder, if we lose Abby, why it had to be that we came to close to the siblings we have desperately wanted for ourselves and for Sam and yet lost them. I understand your longing for that sibling for your daughter.

I think my Will's loss is so fresh that I don't know his legacy yet. I do know that just putting one foot in front of the other every day and choosing to not bury myself in my covers is something I'm not sure I thought I could do if I ever lost a child. As I've mentioned before, I'm a counselor and have counseled women with late term pregnancy loss. I imagine one day (not in the next few years), that I will take my experience and be a better counselor to those women for it.

In a lot of ways, that being unable to have another and the way that everything is set up as far as things like adoption just makes me want to scream. Why can't we bring in another child? Why is it that some of these people can have kids when we would work so hard to make things a good life for anyone, yet you tell me I'm not medically stable enough to be a mother when the worst that could happen is I die around age 50 or so? Which would be after maturity of a child, thanks very much? I'm trying to find a way to accept just making our family the way it is. But it's going to take something different to get there. It's rough, I don't know what to tell you except there's others of us out there.