Healthy baby home party!!

What is a Healthy Baby Home Party? 

Seventh Generation's home parties are powered by people like you who are focused on creating a healthy environment for the next generation. Developed with input from non-profit partner, Healthy Child Healthy World, they are a great way to get together with friends, share helpful information, and make an impact!

Healthy Baby Home Party kits are provided to all selected hosts and are filled with educational info about our environment, helpful tips, a fun game, and samples and coupons from Seventh Generation and other favorite family-friendly brands like bobble, American Meadows and Zarbee's Naturals.

What is the Application Process?

• Sign up at generationgood.net to join the Generation Good community, or log in if already a member.
• Accept the Healthy Baby Home Party Application offer on your Generation Good dashboard and complete the application.
• Applicants will be notified by mid-June if they have been selected to host a party, via an email to the email address assigned to their Generation Good member profile.
• All selected applicants will then need to confirm their participation by accepting the Healthy Baby Home Party Mission in Generation Good and confirming their shipping address.
• Hosting spots are open to US residents only at this time. Canadian parties are planned for later in 2016!
• Full terms and conditions are available within Generation Good in the "Healthy Baby Home Party Application" offer.

So many changes

Your brother turned 5 on the 23rd and today was Easter. I have missed you so much this week, I can't even tell you how much. You should be 8 years old. You should be playing big sister. You should be going to school and doing so much. I finally got my tattoo for you. It's a infant loss ribbon with your name above it and a semicolon next to it. It is on my arm above the tattoo I have for your brother. As much as I wanted my journey as a mother to end with you, because I was scared that you'd have more siblings with you than with me, it didn't. I had your brother and he is healthy and happy or as happy as he can be with his life. 

Your 8th birthday

My dearest child,

I'm up late, listening to your little brother sleep, thinking about you. Eight years ago tomorrow was my due date with you. If all medical predictions were correct tomorrow would have been your eighth birthday. You would have been five months older than your cousin. You have two baby cousins who are only months apart and your auntie take pictures of them together to see how they have grown up together. Your auntie and I should have been able to do that with you and your cousin. I should be planning your eighth birthday party. Instead I'm at your cousin's second birthday, holding back tears until your brother and I get in the car to drive home. Your brother fell asleep very quickly and I think about what it would be like to have two of you. Two sleeping children in my backseat instead of one who knows of his sister and talks of her often. He knows you died in mommy' belly and he asks me all the time if we can get him another sister named Kaorie, like you. My heart is broken today and everyday without you. Mommy misses you more than you will ever know. I can't believe you would be eight, it seems like yesterday I found out I was pregnant with you and your father and I were so excited. We told everyone within days and weeks later we found out you were gone. Those were some of the happiest weeks of my life and turned into the worst weeks of my life. If I could change anything it would be to ask them for a photo of you, heartbeat or not. I would frame it and put it on the wall next to all the pictures of your brother through all the years, like any proud mommy would. 

8 years ago today

8 years ago today, I woke up on my friend's couch next to my then husband. We had to get up early and headed to the hospital. It feels like a dream now and I can't even tell you what I was thinking then. Even as we drove I didn't feel like I was miscarrying. I was spotting but that was about it, nothing big, no giant red flags or flashing lights. When we got to the hospital, we went to pre-op and they got me ready to go back. One moment I will never forget is when the nurse asked me to go pee in a cup and then went to do whatever test they do on it. I was talking to my friend when the nurse came back in and looks me dead in the eyes and asked, "Did you know you're pregnant?" Yep, the nurse who was getting me ready for my D&C just asked if I knew I was pregnant. I could have killed her. Instead, my friend calmly asked her if she knew what I was here for and the nurse looked at my chart and looked like someone just smacked her. I was in tears by this point and the nurse excused herself and sent in a new one.

When I woke up from surgery, a male nurse was standing next to me talking. I felt sick from the anesthesia, so he gave me some medicine for pain and my stomach. I felt like I was in a daze. My husband came back and after I was able to keep some food down, they let them take me home. The next few days were a complete haze. I don't think I took my husband to work or watched my niece for at least a couple days after. I was a mess, but after I physically healed, I made myself too busy. I had so much going on so I wouldn't think of what had just happened. After that my marriage dissolved quickly, we divorced less than 5 months later. I swore off ever having kids and started taking the pill religiously.

Getting so close

8 years ago today, we had out final ultra sound with Angel that confirmed that there was no heartbeat. In 5 days it will 8 years since I lost her.

The other day I was filling out paperwork for my rainbow for full day preschool and all I kept think was I should be enrolling my daughter in 2nd grade and I'm not. It's amazing how all the little things I do with my rainbow every day remind me of all I have missed with my angel.

My Angel and my Rainbow

My rainbow is about 4.5 years old now, so I figured he would be old enough to understand about his angel sister. I bought him the book "Someone Came Before You" By: Pat Schwiebert (Someone Came Before You) The book is mostly about a family who had a stillbirth, but since it doesn't come right out and say that, it works for a miscarriage as well. My rainbow keeps telling me that he wants another sister named Kaorie. I keep telling him that in a few years we will look into adopting a little sister for him, since I can't have anymore of my own. 

Since learning about his angel sister, my rainbow has been telling everyone we meet "Baby Kaorie died. Her heart stopped beating when she was in mommy's belly" He has made two women cry and quite a few people very uncomfortable. Talking about babyloss is very uncomfortable for a lot of people, but when a 4 year old tells you something like that it will pretty much stop you in your tracks. I don't want to tell him not to talk about when he feels the need, most of the time he says it, it's completely random. But the looks people give him and the fact that they look like he just cussed at them, I feel like might discourage him. I know that a lot of you will have many different views on this. I feel like I have spent so many years not talking about her, and not including her in our lives that now that my rainbow knows and understands, as much as a 4 year old can, that now is the time to include her in our lives. I know a lot of people will not be comfortable with this and since he is going to full day preschool in the fall, I need to kind of teach him to filter when and where and who he tells about her. I don't need to a call from his teacher telling me he taught the other students that babies die. That's completely up to their parents. I also don't want him to feel ashamed. 

Does raising a Rainbow ever get easy?

Helping Others

So two days ago, I accepted an invitation to be an Admin for a page of Facebook called "Let's talk about Miscarriage". For two days I have been trying to help people who have gone through miscarriages, and it makes me feel so horrible inside but so happy at the same time. I talked to a 21 year old today who lost her baby when she was 6 months along and she just wanted a baby so badly that she keeps having unprotected sex with her boyfriend who doesn't want kids right now. I understood her need to fill that void we all have, that one we feel like can go away with the birth of a child. But I couldn't help but be upset with this women tricking her boyfriend into a baby he didn't want. Not to mention all the STD's she could be exposing herself to by having unprotected sex for 4 years.
Then I realized who am I to judge this women. I tried for months to get pregnant, got pregnant, had a miscarriage and spent more months trying to get pregnant again to fill that void. It's a horrible void. Like it could swallow you whole and leave no trace of the person you were before your loss.

For mother's day, my mom and son bought me a necklace that says "A piece of my heart is in heaven" with what would have been my daughter's birthstone on it. They also bought me a family ring, that has my birthstone, what would have been my daughter's and my son. It's a beautiful ring and it means so much to me that my mom remembered when my due date was. It's amazing to me that she thought to add my daughter to it. Mother's day can be so hard on all of us, but my mom and son made mine a little easier.