More than One Child

The day before I was going into the hospital to have Walter, Loli and Uncle Stephen came over to give Walt his congratulations-for-being-born outfit, which I will show in another post. It was a little onesie that said "baby brother". Lori is always very thoughtful with her gifts, and she gives me things that I didn't even know that I wanted!

This little onesie was so special to me because I wanted to include Magdalena in the celebration just as other parents include their children in the festivities. The problem that I faced was that I didn't want Walt to be living in Magdalena's shadow and to take the attention away from him. Even as I make his scrapbook, I don't write all of the feelings that I had while pregnant with him because I never want him to feel like I didn't love him as much. Before having Walt, Noah and I discussed a lot about what we would say on Walt's announcement because we were torn with how to word a lot of what had to be said. Neither of us was ready to just write our (Noah and Julie) as though Magdalena was not included, but we didn't want her name to distract from celebrating Walt. This sounds so simple in words, but emotionally it was so tough. When I asked Lori (because big sisters are supposed to know everything) she told me not to worry with those details until after he was born, and the reason she said this was because she had the phenomenal idea that by dressing him in the onesie for his picture it included everyone. Not everyone will approach this difficult situation the same way, but this was good for us.

Most of the things that I do for her are really done to help Noah and me deal with our loss of her. She is not in heaven worrying over having a "big sis" shirt on the day Walt was born. I know this in my mind, even though my heart says that I don't want her to feel left out. Noah and I want to include her in all that is happening in our lives to help us deal with how much our hearts long for her to be with us. Before going into the hospital, I looked everywhere for a big sis balloon for her, but I had zero luck finding the perfect one. Noah and I talked it over, and I ended up making a sign to have solid color balloons to attach to it, and he agreed that he would put it on her grave the day Walt was born. Noah wanted to be sure that it was perfect, so he took my sweet friend, Kim, and her husband with him. No one else knew we did this or where Noah was going when he left the hospital. It was done to help us to remember her on this special occasion.