Darrell & Sharyn

It has been 22 days since we said goodbye to Pixel. There have been good moments and there have been sad moments. Whenever I see someone who is about as far along as I would be, I get sad and think about the things that could have been. For the most part we are ok though. There will be the few days where we remember and we will have to take a moment to grieve that thought and then continue on. Nothing seems to be easy for this journey of ours.

I have spent a lot of the last week thinking about labels and what communities that those labels put you in. Labels are either given to you or you chose that label. Some don’t have a good label, but the community is definitely there whether you know about it before or after you are slapped with the label.

Take me for example:

Since my birth, I was labeled as a female, daughter, sister, school child, band geek, friend and many others before I even finished High School. The only ones I really *chose* are the labels of band geek and friend.

In College, I chose almost all of the labels I was given. Bus driver, student, girlfriend, roommate, and employee. These are all normal labels that people give and many of them have small communities that go with them. You don’t always stay in the same community with the same label though. Not everything is pure black and white.

After college, I chose to be labeled Wife, graduate, cat owner, homeowner, and School bus driver. Then we had chosen to attempt to add the label of mother to the list. As many of you know, it has been a rough journey and we have been added to a lot of communities with a lot of labels since then.

The first is the label of Infertile. There is a huge community and it has been a rough road, but we have fully embraced this label. We are willing to talk about it with people and help others learn about it if that is what they want. I wouldn’t say that we are exactly spokespeople for infertility, but for our friends who have no idea about it, I feel we fill that role.

Then we got pregnant and we finally joined the community of Expecting parents. This is one label and community we were thrilled to join.

On December 22, 2011, we found out we joined another community – Parents of Multiples. What a shocker!

Then January 3, 2012, we joined another community – Miscarriage. It was rough, but we still had one to be hopeful for.

Our community list and labels grew immensely on May 31, 2012. We became new members to the communities of Stillbirth, Encephalocele, Amniotic Band Syndrome, CLIMB and LAMBS. Some of these are fairly large communities, while some are small communities.

The one label that I am proud to have is the label of Mother that Pixel gave me on that fateful day. It is a label that I will wear with pride even though I do not have him here with me. I might never change his diaper, hear him cry, or get to know him the way other mothers do, but I am his mother all the same.

I haven’t been given the label yet, but we know that with the next pregnancy, we will be given the label of “high-risk” no matter how many babies we conceive. It will be rough as we won’t feel completely ok with the pregnancy until we hear baby cry. I don’t want to add any more labels to our conception journey, but we have to keep trying otherwise we will never know.

The world is a rough place. I am glad that I have someone strong to help me walk through it and face the next steps together.