Halloween 2019

I didn’t grow up celebrating Halloween. Well, not in the normal sense anyway. My parents would take all of us children (did I mention before that I’m 1 of 9?!") out for pizza and then give us candy before bringing us home, having missed the trick or treaters that surely would have passed by our house on our small New Hampshire town’s hayride.

I didn’t really think much of it, as it was all I knew. I got candy and didn’t even have to work for it! But it has creating a bit of a curmudgeon in me when it comes to Halloween

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Simone's Birth Story

I felt so anxious at this point, it was if I could not visualize a baby in the birth canal, much less being born from me. All my anxieties about losing the baby during pregnancy seemed to manifest in my mind at this point and I began to cry while on all fours. “I’m too scared!” I told the midwife who was at my head, holding my hand. She told me I could do it, that I was strong and I could birth the baby successfully. I began to hyperventilate because I was so anxious, and the nurse and midwife at my head talked me through some different ways to slow my breathing down and relax. I was so worried, but I knew I had to listen to them. I remember thinking “You have to push the baby out, or they’re going to take it out!”

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Week 27: Loving Pregnancy

I recognize that some women don’t receive the opportunity to experience pregnancy, that life is short, and time being pregnant is even shorter in comparison. I have known friends to lose pregnancies, to birth children already in heaven, to care for sick children who pass away, who lose children to accidents. How can I, possibly, in the face of so much loss and heartache complain about heartburn? I choose to remain content, to be thankful for this opportunity, this baby. It is the start of my role as a mother of two, and I need to be flexible and grow as the days bring me closer to that role.

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I'm Pregnant! June 2018

Really, I can't believe it. 10 months after miscarrying it had become normal to me not to be pregnant. Every passing month wasn't necessarily easy, but it was what life had brought my way and I adapted. Two weeks ago, on a drive up North to close on our condo, I realized I had a still small voice in my head, telling me I couldn't do it. I couldn't get pregnant, and I wouldn't. It was on that drive that I decided to stop that thought, to rebuttal back with "I can and I will!". It was hard to change my mentality, after so many months of accepting that I wasn't pregnant and wasn't holding my baby, it was difficult to even think those little words, but I tried. And maybe it was all for a reason, because maybe my body was already in process of being pregnant.

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What To Expect When You Miscarry

Within the span of 48 hours I discovered I was likely to experience a miscarriage and made it to the other side. I became a statistic. I became the 1 in 4 women who experiences pregnancy loss. It was strange to experience this loss because I pride myself in healthy living, and come from a long and fertile line of women. This miscarriage has been an emotional whirlwind, the following months were a complete blur and only now do I feel some clarity regarding the situation. 

In an effort to better equip other women who may either experience a miscarriage or know someone who does, I decided to document what it was like to miscarry, because it was surprisingly traumatic and painful. I even took a few pics, because it was all so overwhelming, and mostly because I had never seen anything like it.

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