Images from the Austin candle lighting for Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Day.

I had canceled the event due to rain, but at the meeting time, a rainbow appeared, so I un-canceled it.

 I got to meet people I’d only known through my web site.

Big sisters light candles too.

The park at Palmer Events Center with its amazing lighted fountains was an ideal location — serene and beautiful. We will definitely meet here again next year.

Light a candle for babies lost to miscarriage and stillbirth at 7 p.m. in your local time to create a continuous wave of light around the world to remember our lost little ones.

Several years ago, one determined mama and some friends went on a mission to get this day officially recognized in all 50 states.

She succeeded.

Both here and on my web site at www.pregnancyloss.info, we make sure that this day does not pass unnoticed.

IF YOU ARE IN AUSTIN, TEXAS, we are meeting at the lighted fountains at the new park by Palmer Events Center at 6:45 to light our candles together. Feel free to email me at deanna@austin.rr.com to coordinate.

I light candles for

Casey Shay
December 1997 to April  1998 gestation

Daniel
June – July 2001 gestation

Emma Hope
August - October 2001 gestation

Here are the girls at our candle lighting in 2007, where we floated our little lights on Town Lake.

Ten years ago today, at this very moment, I sat in a waiting room at my obstetrician’s office, flipping through baby magazines and occasionally glancing at the pregnant women around me, trying to decide who was the farthest along, and if I was above or below the curve in getting too fat, too fast.

I was 20 weeks pregnant. I’d just taken a half day off at the high school where I taught. As I walked away, my newspaper staff was making a big chart on the board, and all my students were placing bets on whether I was having a boy or a girl. I was instructed to call the room after my sonogram, and they’d be there to answer and announce the winners. Many a Dr. Pepper was riding on the outcome.

My husband John came out of the coffee shop with bottled water just as they called us back. I commented as I stepped on the scale that lately I had felt skinnier, which I thought odd. I had been so concerned about it that a few days ago I’d gone to the nurse’s office at my school to be weighed.

“Nope, you’re growing plenty!” the nurse said, jotting down the number. I felt relieved and sat on the exam table. She pulled out a Doppler to get the baby’s heart rate and I automatically tensed. She had struggled with this at both my previous visits, so when she kept moving it around and around and found nothing, I didn’t worry as much as I might have.

“No worries,” she said. “We’ll see it during the sonogram.”

But when my doctor arrived seconds later, rather than after what was normally a lengthy wait, I knew something was wrong.

And when his first words were, “Try not to worry,” this set my pulse flying.

He immediately flipped on the machine beside us and laid the sonogram paddle to my exposed belly. He grimaced as he worked, and John held my hand tightly. I was already crying, but not really noticing as the moment was so intense, so long, so agonizingly slow.

Finally the doctor said, “There’s no heartbeat.”

The rest of the words sort of slurred in my mind. The baby was measuring out at 16 weeks, so had died shortly after the last visit. I remembered that sonogram so well, his heartbeat and the shifting of his shoulders making us realize he was alive, so alive, and going to be with us soon.

The rest of my story is well documented on the site. You can read it here.

So much has happened since then. My life has gone in many new directions. I quit teaching. I had surgery to fix my uterus. I had two lovely girls among complicated pregnancies where I lost other babies. 

But today is about little Casey, the reason my Facts about Miscarriage web site exists. It has been a long labor of love, at times causing me great anguish, but mostly being a source of strength and pride and comfort for both myself and the wonderful mothers who come here–this site takes 25,000 hits every day. 

I am doing a number of special things to commemorate this day.

Early this morning, I created a Facts about Miscarriage Facebook Group that women may join so that we can create a community of women united in our losses, to tell our stories, leave our pictures, and find each other. If you belong to Facebook, join the group and invite others. If you don’t belong to Facebook, take a look at it. It’s sort of a “myspace” for grownups, with fewer glitter graphics and pounding music, but all the utilities for sharing as much, or as little, of your life as you like. Feel free to friend me there.

I will also add to my Miscarriage Sympathy Card series. The first one was a baby sliding down into clouds. This new one will include Casey’s sonogram. A third one, later this summer, will include Elizabeth and her angel twin Emma. To check on those, you can always follow this link.

Hug your kids today. Some of us never get that chance.

It’s hard to imagine a creation system where it is natural for healthy babies to die in their sleep.

It makes you question each religion, every set of beliefs. Maybe the science types are right–it’s all just dust and atoms, chaotic and non-linear.

But faith has its place, and we cling to it out of desire and need. Only through God do we dream of meeting our loved ones again, so loss becomes our salvation.

I tell this regularly to people dealing with unspeakable grief. We must strengthen our faith, not lose it. And Faith is key, especially right now.

My long-time friends’ daughter Cordelia Faith lived for three months and three weeks. We will miss her, most especially her parents and twin sister, all our lives.

Rest well, sweet Corey.

Cordelia Faith

March 14-July 5, 2007

I hate the cold. I shiver uncontrollably in misery. And normally I like the rain. It sings in my stove pipe and makes me want to curl up and read.

But cold and rain. It’s just not Christmas to me.

I’m supposed to be working on Baby Dust, but the rain just pours and the cold seeps in, and even my flannel pajamas and flannel sheets and the continued cranking of my heater to 68, 69, 70, 71, are not helping.

I found out via a Christmas card that the husband of a long-time friend of mine died this summer. How did I get that out of touch? What sort of ego-centric island have I lived on? I imagine her receiving her holiday card from me a few weeks ago, addressed to both her and her dead husband, and thinking–wow, she didn’t keep up with us at all, did she?

I remember my first pregnancy, signing up in a giddy fervor at every maternity shop for their customer lists. As my belly grew, I loved getting the diaper samples, the powders, the baby catalogs.

But then, baby died. The mail became a mine field. My husband tried to shield me from it by throwing things out before I saw them, but still, the trash was stuffed–Pampers, Enfamil, Gerber.

Were my friend’s cards like this for her? Every envelope addressed to both of them a reminder of what she lost this year, with a good kick from her so-called friends for good measure in their ignorance and lack of keeping touch?

I recall walking down the hallway of the high school where I taught that terrible year. I still felt fat–I didn’t lose a lot of weight right away just because they took the dead baby out of my body. But one day, I felt a little slimmer so I wore an old dress, slightly fitted. As I passed a boy I had taught the previous semester he looked up and said, “Ms. Roy! You’re too skinny! You better go feed that baby before he starves to death!”

I remember stumbling, falling into the wall. I did not acknowledge his comment, just kept going in my klutzy way–an acute lack of coordination is always my sign of distress.

He hadn’t known. And I tried not to hold it against him. But today, nine years later, sitting here in the cold, listening to the rain, by myself, feeling rather full of self-pity, I remember his name, his posture, the desk, his red shirt, his haircut, and the tone of his voice.

And probably, my friend, my poor friend of 20 years, knows the color of the envelope, the font of the address, the way the label landed slightly askew. And it stabbed her. I stabbed her. She’ll forgive me, but she won’t forget.

My grandfather died last night. He’s the guy standing on the right side of this picture in the flowered shirt. I took the image in March when we visited their nursing home in Wichita Falls.

He had been in a lot of pain, and just had surgery the week before. He hadn’t been able to eat in weeks. His passing gives him ease from all that.

Tomorrow I assume I will leave town, depending on the day of the funeral. It’s a hard time of year for me–I have 10 holiday shoots booked this weekend plus NaNo, a write-in I was in charge of and a photography class. But these things happen when they do. We rearrange our lives in honor of the lives that passed before us.

I wish before my grandfather died I could have told him to pick up our little baby Casey–well, gosh, I guess he’d be 8 by now and embarrassed by that–so maybe pat him on the shoulder, ruffle his hair. I’m always anxious when someone passes from this world to the next. It’s my chance to send along a message, my love, my missing my babies.

But because of all the good things in this world–love, support, care, empathy, understanding–I’m sure my grandfather already knows.

I remember the gubernatorial race between Ann Richards and Clayton Williams well. I worked at the Daily Texan, and my friend Janel got the glam job of covering her race while I had the ho-hum work of Phil Gramm’s re-election bid. This was November 1990.

I had covered a lot of Clayton Williams’ campaign, most notably the protests after his joke about rape, told to reporters on a hunting trip. For Halloween that year, we all wore Clayton masks cut from the newspaper, because nothing could get scarier than him being governor.

But still, he had money, he was a good ol’ boy, and political correctness had not really hit Texas with a hard heel. He pretty much said what he wanted, acted how he pleased.

As the night wore on, my race ended early with a landslide for Gramm. I was able to finish quickly, but with the governor’s race in a dead heat, we knew it would be a late night for everyone at the paper, so I wrote my story out in longhand in the passenger seat while Janel drove across town to Ann Richard’s campaign headquarters. We knew we ought divide our time at Clayton’s HQ in case he won, but we just couldn’t bear it if he did, so we hoped heading to her camp would somehow tilt the scale.

The euphoria when Williams finally conceded the race is hard to describe. Paper flew; people cried. Janel and I, objective journalists that we were, screamed and hugged, then pushed forward to try and get close enough to ask a question. I finally let her go on through and held back, just smiling and watching everyone celebrate.

It didn’t matter that it was 1 a.m. by the time we got back to the newsroom to file our stories. Everyone was down at the offices, jubilant and relieved. We stayed up all night, thrilled and excited that the clever witty brilliant woman had proven that “A woman’s place is in the dome.”

We’ll miss you, Ann. If only you’d have beaten out W in your re-election bid for governor. Think where the world might be instead. You’d have made a mighty fine president.