I love you Madilynn

My heart aches for everyone you will leave behind my sweet angel. I know that there is no greater place than heaven and you have so many people up there who will love you and rejoice when they see you but the ones who will still be here on earth will weep for you and miss you terribly. I never imagined something like "anencephaly" was even possible but I guess you never pay attention to things until it effects you personally. In my heart I longed for you and I rejoiced the day I knew you were starting to grow inside of me. My love for you started before you were ever conceived and oh how it has grown. I don't want to imagine my life without you princess. I don't want to think about the "could haves" I want them to be possible. I want so much for you but reality tells me ill never see it. How will I tell my heart to stop aching for you....how will I tell my tears to stop crying for you. if my dreams will be the only place I can see you again how will I stay awake. The hurt will last a lifetime. I know im being selfish but I can't help it...this time I deserve to be selfish because I want to keep you not bury you.
In just a few days I will hold you in my arms and I will feel your perfect skin against mine. I will admire you and all your beauty. I will treasure that moment for the rest of my life and will always long for the day ill hold you in my arms again.
Daddy and I are so blessed. No matter what happens you have already done so many positive things in our lives and the lives of our friends and family. Everyone loves you so much darling and they haven't even met you yet.
I love you Madilynn Anahera Brown

Our last week

As I lay here watching Madilynn do back flips and side jolts in my stomach I can't help but think about how much I will miss seeing her roll all across my tummy. I've never been one to enjoy the awful side of pregnancy (constant desire to throw up, heart burn, horrible sense of smell) I do enjoy the feeling of her move and the constant attention I get from my husband about how much he loves seeing me pregnant. There will be many things I will miss about this pregnancy, if I could I would carry her forever but sadly I can't. Next week our sweet girl will make her grand arrival. I am beyond happy that God has blessed me with this much time with her and blessed me by letting me carry full term. I have had the perfect pregnancy, Madilynn has done everything against the books. She has no abnormalities other than the Anencephaly. I don't have extra amniotic fluid. She sucks her thumb, gets hiccups...does everything "they" say she would never do. She is our amazing fighter. I will deliver her at 40 weeks and I'm so glad that I have had this much time with her. God picked Phillip and I to be parents to this beautiful angel and we are truly honored. He has placed a special girl in me and has helped us through all the good and bad times we have seen over the course of this pregnancy. My strength comes from God, without him I could never walk this path.
I have always tried to keep my head held high and from the outside have succeeded but on the inside I'm just broken. My feelings have always been all over the place and I don't know how I will be next week. How will I manage to cope holding my baby girl and having to give her back to The Lord. Nobody should ever have to say goodbye to such a precious gift. My heart aches for the events to come next week. It aches for the moment we will watch her take her last breath. The day we will place her beautiful outfit on her and place her in her casket. It aches for the day ill have to watch my husband carry her tiny pink casket to the spot we will lay her in the ground.
Cuddles and kisses will have a time limit. The physical will be replaced with memories and pictures. My heart will hold what my arms cannot. I wish time would stand still for my angel. I wish the minutes would be years. I wish a million things.", but most of all I pray for peace and comfort.

Late nights, wondering mind.

As I lay here (thanksgiving eve) letting my mind wonder like many nights before this...I can't help but think about how close we are to meeting our sweet girl. I never imagined my life ending up in this direction or being picked to carry such a beautiful angel. So many thoughts rush through my mind constantly I finally decided to start writing them down. I have a journal I use to put most of my thoughts in but I finally chose to do the public type blogging so maybe my posts would be of some use to another mom out there going through the same thing. It's not an easy raps to travel but it is worth it all in the end. Love conquers all. I never thought my heart could love so much and so deeply but it does. I love my family more than anything and I am beyond blessed for everything The Lord has given us. Many nights I cried and begged God to change this for me, but tonight I thank him. I thank him for giving me a beautiful baby girl, for giving me 9 wonderful months with her, for blessing our family with close friends who pray for us constantly, for many many things.

Our journey

Today I am 38 weeks along...phew it is beyond hard to believe it has gone by so fast. It seems like just the other day we were finding out about our sweet girl and now we are just 14 days away from meeting her. I love you so much Madilynn Anahera Brown. This has been a difficult
journey to travel but I'm glad I did. Most don't understand why I chose to carry you but all I can say is love will really push you to do anything. All the heartache and all the tears are so worth the end reward of meeting you and seeing your beautiful face. My heart longs for the moment I can finally hold you in my arms and give you a millions kisses. You are my daughter and you are so precious to me. I love you more than words can describe and I know we will be together again when your soul returns to be with our wonderful and mighty God. Long before I ever thought about you he knew you and knew that I would be your mommy. I am so honored he picked me to carry you. How many people get to say they carried an angel. My sweet baby girl all the things I wish you would be able to do here on earth will never get to happen. My heart breaks for daddy because you are his very first baby and even though we will only have a few moments with you our love for you will last a lifetime and more. We know the good lord has a special plan for you but it still hurts our hearts that we can't have more time with you. I can't express enough how much we love you princess. Forever and always you will be in my heart.

It's a girl

Where to begin...
My husband and I have had such a blissful life. We met, fell in love and on November 19th 2011 were married. It was only natural that our next step would be baby planning:) I already have a daughter from a previous relationship and wanted nothing more than to let her be a big sister. A few months went by and we were surprised to see a positive pregnancy test...it was only a short time. Not thinking anything could go wrong we didn't take pre vitamins. I mean I had a healthy daughter already.. It was super early to tell anything when we went to the dr, I was maybe 4 weeks along so we had to wait another month before we would hear that beautiful heart beat. My next appointment put us at 7 weeks and then 11 weeks. It all seemed to drag on so slow but the wonderful day was here... 6/28/2012 gender reveal! Boy or Girl pink or blue. Proud big sister wanted another girl and daddy like most wanted a boy but mommy just wanted all ten fingers and toes to be perfect . 17 weeks along and "it's a girl" needless to say I had a very excited 3 year old and a now over protective husband lol. We were so excited...and I was planning in my head all the amazing things we were going to buy and how we would decorate her room. All these thoughts rushing through my mind I never noticed that our ultrasound tech was having trouble scanning. She left the room and got our dr, then they both left and she came back in saying we needed to go to the hospital and get some scans there because their machines are better. So off to the hospital we go (across the street) I got a transvaginal scan and then the tech leaves the room....needless to say we were very confused at this point but never once thought about something being wrong. I just saw my baby girl on the screen and heard that beautiful heartbeat. We were told to go back to our dr office and when we walked in we were immediately told to sit in her office and she will be right with us.
She walked in, sat down and bam "your baby doesn't have a brain"
What??? Are you crazy lady I just saw my baby....she looked fine. It's impossible. How can you not have a brain? She's nuts....you don't know what your talking about. Oh my Gosh how can this happen. What am I'm going to do now. How will I explain this to Michelle. Why us. What did we do to deserve this. What happens now...
A million thoughts running through my head and all I could do is hold my husbands hand. I looked slowly at him and my heart was breaking for him. This is his first child. His first baby girl. All the things that he will never get to do with her. Of course he loves Michelle with his whole heart but he came into her life when she was turning two so he never got to experience the beginning years.
As the doctor continued to talk about what this was and how it happens all I could do was look off into "space" and replay in my head the fact she just told me my baby doesn't have a brain. I heard the word "anencephaly" and then heard incompatible with life. I don't think I have ever in my life tried so hard to hold back the tears and failed so miserably. I remember her handing me a box of tissues and then I hear the word "medical termination"
Your nuts lady!!' No way! I'm am cussing her out in my head at this point. I completely understand now the saying "don't shoot the messenger" or whatever it is. I know it's not her fault this is happening and I know she's just looking out for my best interest as her patient. She doesn't know me personally she just knows me "medically". If she did know me then she would of never brought up abortion..(now she does know me and is very supportive of what I choose) but in the beginning she was just being realistic and following statistics. Our sweet angel had just been given a death sentence that most doctors prefer to end before 20 weeks. After researching I understand now why they are pushy for that because only 5% of women carry a baby like this to term.
We left the dr office and (with the support of my husband pretty much carrying me out) had the unwanted but needed phone call to make to our mothers. First was my mom. (I had already text her and said it was a girl) so now it was telling her our baby, if she survived to term, would die after being born. All I could say was "mama the baby doesn't have a brain" I thought it came out fine (in my head I said it perfect, in reality not so much) I finally managed to calm down a bit and told her again. I'm sure you could imagine the reaction on the other end.
Next was Phillips mom. I watched him as he dialed her number and I heard the "hello" I guess that's all it took because he couldn't get a word out from the news finally hitting him, hard. I took the phone and explained to her what we were just told and that we were going to my moms house. It doesn't take long for bad news to travel through a family (or any news for that matter) so it was just a matter of moments before everyone in both our family's knew and the calls started to come in. We were both an emotional wreck but managed to make it to my moms house, and within 30 mins so did everyone else. It was a terrible day full of tears and "I'm so sorry"
I guess everything finally set in when we got home that night and had the dark of the night to let our thoughts roam. Neither one of us were prepared for that day, or the days to follow. We were a newly wed couple who had just been given on of the hardest blows to a marriage that no one ever thinks could happen. All we could do was lay there holding each other and quietly cry ourselves to sleep.