Guess how much I love you...

Today marks the day of our first child began life. Lily Grace was born via emergency cesarian at around 9am after 24hrs or labour. She passed away only after 3 days of life. I won't go into the details, I have touched on them in previous posts if you would like to read them but today I would like my post to be more of celebration of her life.

We were given the book, Guess How Much I Love You, Written by Sam McBratney, Illustrated by Anita Jeram by the Paster who preformed Lily's Baptism (at her Dad's request).

For those who haven't seen it or read it it's about a little rabbit, Little Nutbrown hair, and his Dad, Big Nutbrown hair and their adventures into going to sleep. Little nut brown hair is trying to show his Dad how much he loves him by measuring it against things like, how far he can read and how high he can jump. It's a beautiful, simple story but has such meaning for a parent and child.


After the Paster had delivered the religious ceremony, he asked if it was OK to read this book, it was just so beautiful and summed up how I felt about our little girl.






This is the last quote from the book, but it resonates with me.

"Big Nutbrown Hare settled Little Nutbrown Hare into his bed of leaves, He leaned over and kissed him good night.
Then he lay down close by and whispered with a smile "I love you right up to the moon... AND BACK."

Happy 6th Birthday my beautiful sweet angel. I love YOU right to the moon and back.

It's a pretty sad couple of days ahead.

Today (7th June) marks the beginning of my world changing forever. At 7am 6 years ago today, I was awoken to the pangs of labour. (Those pangs turned quickly into excruciating waves of pain).

As the years have gone on I am finding myself not getting bogged down in the memories of those days, but when I have a few minutes to myself, I catch myself thinking, remembering, of what was happening.

The only thing that gets me through is knowing the fact that is my little big man's and my gorgeous Nieces birthdays are in the coming weeks.

As for celebrating my daughters birthday, I find it hard, the first year I had a cake with a candle, but it was a hollow celebration, I guess where there's cake there should be happiness and celebration, not sadness and the thoughts of what could have been.

I have told Master N about his big sister and what happened to her, obviously we haven't gone into great detail but he understands she died an can't be with us any more. But tomorrow I will tell her it's her birthday and will celebrate with him in a way he feels he wants to. I don't want to hide his sister from him, I think he has a right to know, be proud that he has a big sister who is watching over him, as she would have done had she'd stayed with us.

Another little niggle that I get especially around this time of the year, is that had we not lost our first child, the likely hood we'd have the Master N we have and adore now would be very small, yes we would have a version of him but not the amazing little creature we have today. I worry that as he gets older he'll make the connection and wonder if he was just a replacement and resent me. Which of course he wasn't, we wanted to have at least 2 children, but not that close together. We were adamant we needed and wanted to get pregnant straight after (as soon as I medically could anyway), which as it turned out was 3 months after giving birth to our daughter.

Mothers guilt, ain't it a grand thing!

Anyway I'll leave you for now, and will try and return tomorrow which would have been our daughters 6th birthday.

TNT...

A little bit about me!

 Hi, I'm Gem, I'm the person behind Musings of a crafty mind & Eastside Crafters.

I'm 30 (turning the big 31 on our first crafty catch up ;)). I have an adorable 4 year old son and a gorgeous partner who I adore. I am currently a SAHM but am just finishing off cert 3 in child studies (to become a child care worker) but in previous life was a Vet nurse. I live in the beautiful Yarra Valley which I wouldn't change for the world!

I left vet nursing to become a mum over 5 years ago but unfortunatly we lost our first child after she was 3 days old due to complications with her birth. Her name was Lily and she is my beautiful angel. She is actually the reason I got into craft as an adult.

I had always been a crafty/creative child but as time went on I forgot about that part of me but when I was organising my daughters funeral I really wanted to make something for her, so I decided to make a guest book for people to sign at her funeral. It wasn't perfect but I was happy with how it turned out, it was pink, yellow and white pastels, I used some very cute baby related scrap booking papers on in the front left hand side near the bottom I used some cute pink letter tiles to spell out her name, LILY, lined the pages inside to make it look professional and worthy of being such an important memory from such a sad day.

I don't have any pics of it unfortunately and it's currently in storage with all her other items but I promise when I get it out I'll show you all.

So from there and as a sort of therapy (and to indulge my stationary addiction) I decided to learn to scrap book, I collected many themed papers, got obsessed with card stock and embellishments etc. I've made about 3 pages to date....LOL. It was fun while it lasted but just wasn't for me. I realised I liked to make things that serve a purpose, that can be used over and over again, so after trying card making, invitation making etc, as well as graphic design, I went to the other side, fabrics and sewing! This is where I am today with my craft.

I ♥ fabric, it makes me happy, I have make clothing, toys, aprons, bedding, room decoration etc and I love it all! I currently have two machines which are like my third and forth children LOL. One is a Brother BC 2500 sewing machine and the other is a Elna 344 overlocker, basic but what I need right now. My dream would be to get an embroidery machine but that's a while away!

Not my actual machine taken from google images, too lazy to take a photo of mine LOL.

 

 

Again not my machine, too lazy to take pic myself!

Back to reality I have a wee dog who's name is Daisy, she's a funny little thing she is but she was my saviour in very dark times, she gave me something to love when I should have been loving my newborn daughter. I also have 3 cats, Molly, Scout, and Moushka, three ratbags of cats but would be lost without them! 

I'm obsessed with the internet and having access to it, I couldn't live with out my internet, facebook, google, it connects me to a world I need to be a part of! I also love reality TV, I know not the most stimulating of activities but I ♥ it. My latest fav was The block, I even stood in line (FOR 4 HOURS!) to see inside the houses, am a little lost now it's over, although I'm glad to have found Katrina's blog, as well as Josh and Jenna's website so can get a fix in a round about way LOL.
I'm now watching the Renovators which is good but isn't the block!

Disclainer-
I promise I'm not a crazy stalker fan, in fact I can't stand when people get obsessed with celebrity, while I was waiting at the block to take a peek inside I stood there waiting to get things signed by the contestants and thought, wait a minute this isn't me, I felt strange asking for a signature from someone who was not 8 weeks a go just like me, don't get me wrong I loved watching the show but that whole celebrity thing just doesn't sit right with me, asking for autographs should be for 15 year olds with braces and acne, not 30+ y/o women. I admire the peeps from the show because they are just like us who have a talent for design and renovation, I love all things creative so to me it's a good fit. I did however get the promotional hat signed by a few of the contestants for my son as he loved watching the show and when I brought it home got a kick out of the autographs but never again will I ask a stranger for a signature, no matter how famous, they're just people!


So yeah, that's me in a nut shell, there isn't much to me really, I'm a Wife, Mum, Daughter, Sister, Aunt, Crafter, Internet and Reality Show Junkie, Coke Zero Lover.