Ellie Martin Holmertz

Our daughters name is Ellie Martin Holmertz. Martin is my maiden name, it would have been the middle name either way, boy or girl. I wanted our baby to have a bit of both families in her name since she will not be here to know her family.

Knowing we are losing a daughter is incredibly hard. I find I am in tears more often than I was before finding out she is girl. I figured that was coming  because now every time I see something girl related I know that is something that I will not get to experience, that Ellie will not get to experience. Before, when we didn't know boy or girl, seeing baby/kid things was not as hard because we didn't know which we were going to lose. And now we know.

Our counselor wants us to write letters to her...even starting to draft a letter in my head brings me to tears.I don't even know Ellie and I love her more than anything. I miss her already. I try to imagine what she might look like at 1 years old, on her first day of kindergarten, on her wedding day. The thing that seems to be hardest for me is thinking about her going to Heaven...I know that sounds odd. You would think knowing she will be in a better place with loved ones we have already lost would bring me comfort and joy. All it reminds me of is that she will be there and not here with us.

If anyone is willing to do some research for me I would appreciate it...I want to know the percentage of Anecephaly babies born alive after a c-section vs. vaginal birth (assuming I go to full term). I plan to talk more about it with my OB but I want to know what is out there on the web but I am scared of what I might see. I also want to know what the top of her head will look like, will there be skin? Or will we be able to see the wound?
I did find these % when I was being brave yesterday...
7% died in utero 
18% died during birth 
26% lived between 1 and 60 minutes 
27% lived between 1 and 24 hours 
17% lived between 1 and 5 days 
5% lived 6 or more days 
from www.anecephaly.info (I did not look through this website in detail)

This info goes against some stats that our OB told us...

Here is our beautiful daughter.

Here is her profile. It was really hard to get pictures of her face, she wanted to hold her arms in front of her. 

Here is another profile, a little more wavy and hard to see. You can see her one arm is up and she is touching her forehead. 

It's a girl! You see her butt, her two legs going to the left, and then nothing between her legs... : )

Love you Ellie!



Our basement.......
Here is the before

The future family room.

Will become bathroom and bonus room

Laundry room/storage will remain unfinished.

And as of today!!!

The family room 

The hallway to the bathroom (on the left), bonus room at the end of the hallway, and then laundry room on the right.  Eventually the wall on the right will have built-in shelves. 

We'll get glass walls for the shower. 

Happy Saturday. 

uff-da

uff-da doesn't really do justice to how I feel after this week. My parents were in town for a couple days (which was not part of the uff-da) which was wonderful! My mom was able to help in my classroom for 2 days, so nice to have another adult in the room for a couple days.

So either pregnancy brain is in full swing or this weeks jammed packedness (I know it's not a word, just go with it) momentarily stopped my brain from thinking clearly. Sunday while at the grocery store I forgot my pin...meaning Jason and to bring me a check (our grocery store doesn't take credit). Monday morning I woke up at 2:30 and couldn't fall back asleep...fast forward to 6:40am and I backed into my parents car, Happy Monday to me! I had to get report cards done and finish an assignment for grad school...all on Monday. Tuesday I had so much random paperwork to do at school to get ready for our field trip on Wednesday and then get some stuff together for grad school before leaving for home...only to learn that my homework hadn't properly saved!! err. Made it to class just in time Tuesday. All through class my mind is making a list of what do I still need to do to get ready for the field trip. Wednesday night I had to organize all the random stuff for parent-teacher conferences on Thursday. No time to think!

I made it to Friday!! Along with all of the other junk that was going on my mind kept thinking ahead to Monday  and finding out the gender of our baby...I am so sad and I don't even know why. boy or girl. I will be so sad either way. I can't even begin to imagine what it will be like to see our baby again in an ultra sound. I want to look but I am afraid of what I will see. I am afraid of falling apart after learning what the gender is. Knowing if it is a boy or girl is something that just thinking about brings me to tears. 

I have been thinking about the funeral a lot lately. We are half way through the pregnancy and I don't want to have to make a lot of decisions after we lose our baby. I want people to know what we want and how we want it so we don't have to be asked. I want balloons at the funeral...birthday balloons. I want to celebrate the BIRTHday of my baby because we won't get to truly celebrate a birthday. Sometime before the burial of baby I want everyone at the funeral to be able to release a birthday balloon in celebration of our baby. 

I have also been thinking about where we will lay our baby down. I don't have any family buried here and the thought of burying our baby next people I don't know scares me. I know Jason has family here that he loves and misses but I don't know them. It makes me so incredibly sad to have to make that kind of decision. I don't want to hurt other people with that decision but it needs to be something that makes both Jason and I comfortable. 

Ok, wipe my eyes. On to exciting things! Our basement! We are getting so close. Our bathroom is done!! We need 2 glass walls for the shower but we will take care of that a little later. All the doors and closets are in. Majority of the trim is done. Lighting will be finished Monday or Tuesday next week. We will hopefully start carpeting in the 2 weeks or so. I promise I will post pictures soon.  

It's Friday night and not even 7pm and I am exhausted. Story of my life. If someone asked me what my bedtime is...I don't think I can say 9:30 anymore. It is more like 8:30. I miss caffeinated coffee! One cup a day just isn't enough. I have decaf but it just isn't the same. Not to mention I have to be careful how much chocolate I eat...not fun. 

house projects

We have been renovating our home since the day Jason bought it, 3 years ago. Finishing the basement has been the longest project. In the last month or so we have really started to see progress, Jason is down stairs putting the first coat of "Gentle Rain" on the walls! We had a tile guy here earlier today working in the bathroom. But where there is renovation there is trouble....tonight for example, I went downstairs to check on the progress of the painting and closed the door behind me as usual to keep our two fur babies out of the basement.

I took a couple pics to send to the parents and went to go back up stairs and was greeted by a locked door! This stupid door knob is on backwards. Apparently the previous owners liked to lock their teenage son in the basement...not sure why else you have a lock on your basement that you lock from the outside. There is no pin hole to unlock on the basement side. So Jason had to use the few tools we had down there, including a paint roller, but just the handle portion and a handle of some other random tool to pound the pins out. We got out a few minutes later. I then spent a half hour watching youtube videos on how to remove old door knobs...this door knob is seriously messed up. We have replaced every door knob upstairs so we're not amateurs at this. I eventually gave up because I had grad school to work on...but instead here I sit typing this.

Jason had a meeting about life insurance at work today... coincidence, nothing to do with the fact that we will be losing our child later this year. Jason was told what life insurance we could have for a child and how much it would cost each month. We are conflicted. This is not something that has even crossed our minds. Money isn't going to solve our grief. Money won't bring my child back. I just got passed the morning sickness portion and am waiting to feel the first movement and we are talking about life insurance...and we can't even use the "what if..." when considering child life insurance because we know "what".

I am 17 weeks pregnant and just want to try to enjoy the pregnancy the best I can.

The mini bump...I couldn't stop laughing when I saw the bump. This was the first day I had worn a semi-tight shirt since I could tell I was starting to show.

Well I suppose I better actually go get some homework done.