Kindness And An Update

 Everyone has been so sweet with the loss of Avery. A friend of mine made a page for people to sign up to bring us dinners, we started getting them a few days ago and we have meals lined up every other day for about 2 weeks. I find that so incredibly nice that people are willing to cook and bring us food to try and help us eat and not have to worry about cooking and also it reminds me to eat. Which is a hard thing to remember to do lately. We've also had two people send us gift cards for restaurants so we can pick up food.

 We also had a woman who has never personally met me (she's a friend of a friend) help set up a donation to help with cremation and memorial service costs. That was so incredibly nice, and completely blew Ethan and I away that someone would want to help us that way.

 We had a woman from our support group donate a Butterfly in Avery's name. These butterflies are metal and put up on a wall in a local hospital, the room is for families of babies who had stillborn or neonatal death babies. The money goes to keep the room going and our butterfly will have Avery's name and birthdate on it.

 People have sent flowers and called us. We've had people just call and reach out to talk to us and support us and tell us that they're here for us if we need anything. We've had people bring clothes and blankets and things for Avery, they brought them by the hospital and people have handmade gorgeous items for us to keep in memory of our precious daughter.

 I'm sure that I'm forgetting people and things but we are SO appreciative of everything people have done and are continuing to do for us.

 Ethan and I have decided that I will be donating my breast milk to a baby that needs it. We found a family and have started donating milk to them. Their son that they adopted last month needed it and I had so much, I just wanted to do something to give back and help someone in need. The local news heard I was doing this and called and interviewed Ethan and I. Which was incredibly unexpected but super sweet of them. Here is a link if you'd like to see the article and clip. They did mess up and call me Hilary a few times instead of Olivia but that's okay. http://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/ahwatukee/valley-couple-donates-breast-milk-after-baby-dies


 Now onto an update, we are waiting for Avery's ashes to come back so we can collect those and are in the midst of planning her memorial service which will be on the 25th of this month. We are having it at the church and then afterward having a balloon release and small meal. We think it will be a beautiful way to honor our baby girl.

 We had our NILMDTS (Now I lay Me Down to Sleep) photo's come back from the photoshoot they did of us in the hospital and they're so beautiful, I just love them. I'm going to see if I can make a slideshow of all those pictures along will all the ones we took ourselves of our time with Avery and post them for you all to see. On Monday we get the pictures our Doula took back and I'm very excited for those because most of them are from the 86 minutes that Avery was alive. Only a few of the photos that we took are from those precious minutes.

 Planning your own child's memorial service is the worst thing in the entire world. You want it to be beautiful and perfect but you also hate that you're doing it and don't even want to spend the time to think about all that it needs.

 We are grief stricken and truly heart broken but I think we are still in shock. We are mostly in this weird calm right now, we have moments of complete break downs but right now we're stuck in this raw numbing sadness. I think that will wear off after the memorial service when things quiet down. We've been really busy this last week with family and planning that it's just keeping us moving.

 I just miss her so much. This isn't fair, no one should have to cremate their child. This isn't how things are supposed to happen.