Maternity Photos and More

Sometimes I miss being pregnant. 

You might think my next sentence might be something about how I don't miss the indigestion or my CrAZy swollen ankles or the other very uncomfortable discomforts of pregnancy. 

But . . . 

. . .  I sort of do miss those things because it meant that Ella was there.

About a week before our babies came, my friend asked if she could take some pictures of my kids. Photography is one of her hobbies and I was happy to help her practice. =)

She told me she usually likes to do maternity photos around 37 weeks, but she said since we were all there we could take some anyway. If you've been reading my blog you already know that I didn't make it to 37 weeks. 

I've never done maternity photos before, but I am so.glad.we.did.

I love seeing how happy I looked that day.  

Here are some of my favorites:

He still absolutely LOVES those babies!  BOTH of them.  (But that's a post for another day.)

Here are some of my other favorite photos she took that day:

I SUPER love the red barn in the background and of course I lubby those girls in the picture.  =)

Sammy.

(What else can I say?)

Pure joy!

How could I not post Abby's beautiful face? So beautiful!

I love what the wind is doing to Eliza's hair.

And just so you can see how swollen my ankles actually were, I am very bravely including this one:

This isn't actually my ankles, I just stumbled across it when I was looking for the one with my ankles, but I just really like this one.  (If you don't know my family, this is me with all my sisters and my poppy at Eliza's baptism in March. That's a pretty happy papa!)

I have some great photos with my mom and my sisters, too.  But I'll have to get mom's permission before I post those.  =)  I've heard it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. I'll have to mull it over.

And for the grand finale.  Drum roll please. . . . . . .

Here are the swollen ankles I told you about, those wrinkles aren't usually there and I was totally SHOVING my feet into my shoes. This photo is also from Eliza's baptism in March. (I should do a post about that.) I am 30 weeks pregnant in the photo.

*Disclaimer, we don't usually put Sammy in SANDALS with socks for formal family photos!!  Yikes! I don't think we remembered to bring his Sunday shoes with us.  Oops! Also not sure what he is doing with his face, but he makes me laugh.  =)

Have a WONDERFUL DAY!

What do we tell our other kids?

We didn't know how to do this.  There is no instruction book that I am aware of.

How do you tell your kids that their baby died?

I still don't know how we did that, but we did.

After we had spent a night at the hospital Ryan went home and picked the kids up at a friends house.

Our plan was to tell them about Baby Ella first and then take them to see Emma.

We brought them all into my hospital room and closed the door.

We weren't sure what words to say. But it was really important to us to not hide anything from them.  We decided to be completely honest about what had happened.  It was only a little tempting to maybe not tell them about the twin that had died to protect them from the hurt, but this was their sister, too.  We thought we would want to know so even though our kids are young we felt we owed them the same respect.

We both felt that they probably didn't need to see her or hold her, we felt this was the right choice for us.  I had been visited by Social Workers who were kind enough to listen to my story and were supportive as we made decisions pertaining to Ella.

I don't remember who told them or the exact words we used, but I think the conversation went something like...

"Do you know what a twin is?"

Eliza says "Yes."

We hesitate a little, unsure of how to tell them, but we say, "Emma had a twin.  There were two babies. But the second baby died. She died in mommy's tummy a little while ago. You have two new sisters, but one is already in heaven. Would you like to see some pictures of her?"

"Yes."

We showed them the photos.  Her hands. Her feet. Her face.

She was in a sweet little blue dress that someone had lovingly hand smocked.  There was a tiny white hat on her itty-bitty head.  Her skin was red, wrinkly and very delicate.

Our three year old said he was a little scared to look at the pictures.  She was red and he told us he had never seen a person who was red before. He told us she looked like a bear.

We told them they didn't have to look at the pictures but if they ever wanted to we would always be happy to show them.

We asked them if they had any questions.

They didn't.

We asked them how this made them feel.

"Sad."

We told them her name was Ella.

They were so brave, they didn't even know how brave they were.  To this day I haven't seen them cry.

We thought it would be comforting to see Emma after we told them about Ella, so then we took them to the Intensive Care to see her.

Sammy having his temperature taken

First photo.

(It was hard to know what to write for a caption under this photo, I thought do I put "First picture with all our kids?"  because it is, but it isn't.  I just chose "first photo.")

They are so in love with their little sisters!