Different [34 Weeks]

We should be putting the final touches on your nursery. Stocking up on diapers. Finalizing our plan for introducing Isla to our lively dog. Picking out cute matching outfits for our hospital pictures.

Instead we bought her urn today.

It didn’t hurt as much as we thought it would. It is exactly what we want for her. It’s perfectly beautiful and peaceful - just like her face in our 3D ultrasound pictures.

We also contacted the funeral home today. We’ve been putting it off. My parents were down this week, and I think they gave us the strength to get the tough things done.

Who knew we’d be doing that instead of contacting pediatricians?

Every day we are one step closer to meeting her. But we are also one step closer to saying goodbye too.

We have a better idea of our birth plan now… Thanks to COVID for turning everything upside down, our birth plan is: Jon gets to be in the room. Just Jon. We won’t be able to have our parents in the room with us to meet Isla when she arrives. We don’t know how long we will have her for. It could be minutes. It could be hours.

There is still the possibility that we will welcome her into the world, sleeping. And we just have to deal with the fact of that reality.

It’s so far from the birth plan we had discussed in January. The people. The outcome. Everything is different. We have no control over it. We have no control over anything. We know that’s life - but we would prefer if it wasn’t all happening at once in this weird, sucky hyperdrive.

We’re thankful that we can, at the very least, be together.

We aren’t naive to the outcome. We know what is coming. We don’t know all of the intricate details, but we know that we need to prepare.

We just wish we were preparing for a different outcome… But we’re accepting the reality of it.

We’re still incredibly thankful every day for the gift that she is to us. When we see her face on the ultrasound, smiling peacefully, it fills our hearts with an unexplainable amount of joy. When we hear her heartbeat, it gives us solace.

She is our little miracle.

This week was another reminder that we couldn’t do this without our families. When we are feeling run down and empty, they are always here to fill us back up. We are thankful for a few days spent with my parents to share the joy of Isla’s life. We have loved feeling her kicks and listening to her heartbeat. We are so happy that we’ve been able to share that.

As more of our family begins to arrive in the next few weeks, we cannot wait to share the same joy with them. We’ll need them more than ever in the coming months.

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Our Pregnancy Story