“They Never Really Leave Us” — Abbie on Grief, Healing, and Life After Losing Rowan

Abbie shares the story of her son Rowan — a pregnancy that felt calm, grounded, and deeply connected, until everything shifted. In this episode, we talk about pregnancy loss, grief, and the identity changes that come with motherhood after loss. Abbie opens up about how Rowan shaped not only her journey as a mother, but also her work, her purpose, and the way she now moves through the world. We also talk about her rainbow baby, and what it looks like to hold both grief and joy in the same life.

We talk about:

• Experiencing an unexpected pregnancy after infertility and PCOS
• A peaceful, connected pregnancy during the quiet of COVID
• The moment everything changed and navigating pregnancy loss
• How grief reshapes identity and motherhood after loss
• The concept of “before and after” loss — and living in both
• Carrying your baby with you in your body, your work, and your life
• Finding purpose and moving into grief-informed care
• Parenting a rainbow baby while honouring an angel baby
• The ongoing nature of healing after pregnancy loss

This episode is a gentle reminder that grief and love can live side by side — and that even after loss, motherhood continues in its own sacred way.

Get to know Abbie:
Abbie is a massage therapist, nurturer, and mother currently living in Southwest Florida. Originally from rural upstate New York, she brings a deep sense of care and presence into both her work and her life. She is a mom to her daughters and her son Rowan, who passed away — an experience that has shaped her compassion, her purpose, and the way she supports others through grief and healing. Abbie believes in slowing down, finding beauty in the simple moments, and living with gentle intention.

Instagram: @bonitaspringsmassage
Website: https://www.facebook.com/Rowanwellnesscenter/

Connect with Kristin:
📍 Website: thedoulalife.ca
🌈 The Haven — Pregnancy After Loss Community Program: thedoulalife.ca/haven
🌸 Mother Like No Other — Loss Mom Community: thedoulalife.ca/mother
📸 Instagram: @the.doula.life

If you enjoyed this episode, please don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review — it helps get these stories and resources into the hands of the women who need them most. And please share it with someone who could use this kind of support. Your support means so much.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I spent those few hours like really giving him permission to leave. It's one of the hardest things and most selfless things I've ever had to do. And I just looked at him and I said, You don't have to stay for me. I'll be okay. This is about you, and this is your journey, and I love you, and I'm sorry. And it's okay. It's okay if you have to leave. You know, in my mind, I was preparing myself for like 48 more hours of snuggling him, and he really listened to me and said, I'm going now. And you know, I put him back in the isolate. I made a couple phone calls and had to tell people and family and friends, like he's not gonna make it. Those are awful conversations to have, like preparing somebody for death, not just a sudden death.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Welcome to the Rainbow Connection. This podcast was designed for mothers who are finding their way through life after loss. Whether you're grieving, trying to conceive again, newly pregnant, or holding hope in your heart for what's to come, this space is for you. Each week you'll hear real and tender stories. Stories of love, heartbreak, healing, and the babies who continue to shape us. I'm your host, Kristen Mundy, a mother, doula, and a woman who's walked this path too. May these conversations remind you that you are not alone, that your baby is never forgotten, and that hope and grief can live here together. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to introduce you to The Haven, my signature support program for mothers who are pregnant again after experiencing miscarriage, TFMR, stillbirth, or infant loss. This is not just a course. The Haven is a trauma-informed community program that includes weekly live workshops, expert guest speakers, and ongoing support from me, an experienced Jula, and fellow lost mom whenever you need it. You'll also receive one-on-one check-ins, guided journaling prompts, full access to my birth course reclaim, and a warm, intimate community of other PAL mothers, a place where you can be real, be held, and be reminded that you are not alone in this. Enrollment inside the Haven is now open and support is available to walk with you through your entire pregnancy, from the moment you see those two pink lines all the way until your baby is tucked safely into your arms. If you've been longing for a place to be safe, be seen, and be supported throughout your pregnancy, then the Haven was made for you. You can learn more at thedula life.ca slash haven. Inside the Haven, your baby is remembered, your voice is honored, and you are fully supported every step of the way. On today's episode of the Rainbow Connection, I want to introduce you to Abby, a mother, a caregiver, and someone whose life was forever changed by her son Rowan. In our conversation, Abby shares what it looked like to move through a peaceful, connected pregnancy and then into loss that reshaped everything. She thought she knew about motherhood, grief, and herself. We talk about the before and the after that so many of us come to know and what it looks like to live in both worlds at the same time. She also shares about the life with her rainbow baby and how Rowan continues to guide the way she lives and loves and holds space for others, both in grief and the everyday moments. This is a story about loss, yes, but it's also about transformation, about purpose, and about the ways our babies continue to stay with us always. Okay, now enough from me. Let's hear from Abby. Hello, everybody. Hello, baby. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Rainbow Connection. Today I'm joined with Abby and her little one with her on her lap. Hi, Abby. Thanks so much for being here.

SPEAKER_03 4:30

Hi, Kristen. Thank you for having me. This is such a special morning with you.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yeah, I'm so grateful to be chatting with you. Today is actually Pregnancy and Infant Laws Awareness Day. So it does make it a little doubly special to be chatting about our angels and your experience throughout motherhood and this little one that's sitting on your lap as well. Um Abby's going to share all of that with us today. But before we dive into your story, Abby, why don't you share first a little bit with our listeners about yourself?

SPEAKER_03 5:02

Uh sure. Yeah. Um I am living in Southwest Florida. I'm an upstate New York native. I went to massage school up there, so I've been a massage therapist for the past uh approaching my 17th year. And um that healing space has been a big part of my life, and I think it's been um super beneficial for me as going through like the grieving process and then um into my life after um, you know, before Rowan and then after Rowan. We have these different chapters of ourselves. Um so the massage therapist part of me really is more than my career, it's a part of me as a woman, you know, to have that maternal instinct and to be able to care for other people is really at the core of who I am. Um if I wasn't massaging, I'd probably be in the kitchen. So you know, I really love just tending to people that I love and making people feel cared for. Yeah, spoiler alert, I do have an 11-month-old and I made a big shift in my life um as far as my career goes in trying to encompass more of uh grief work just by going through it and kind of understanding how that plays into our mental space, our physical selves, our emotional selves, and how our babies never really leave us and they live within ourselves, and it's it's been a really incredible journey. So I have to give Rowan some credit for that.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Well, I would really love to hear more about that journey. So wherever you'd like to start, I'd love to hear more about Rowan. And one of the biggest things is like loss, you can never go back pre-loss, right? Like loss really does change you, and it sounds like he has really changed everything, including your career. So I'd love to hear more about his story and this sweet little boy.

SPEAKER_03 7:07

Sure. Yeah, I um got um pregnant with Rowan unin' unexpectedly, and it was that that weird quiet time of COVID. Um so it kind of gave me my like I'm naturally introverted, and it kind of gave me the space to not feel pressured to have a baby shower or not feel pressured to be mingling with other people, and I really just got to sit with baby, spend a lot of time by myself and in nature. Um I was surprised to be pregnant, but um because I had struggled with um PCOS and um just like unexplained infertility in a long-term relationship um for years and years and years, and I just I knew in my heart that I could become a mother, so I was just in awe of actually being in that process and being in that space of pregnancy, and I had such a beautiful pregnancy, so so easy, you know. I had no um no aches, no pains, nothing to complain about. My sleep was beautiful. Um and I was working with a midwife because during COVID um the woman in my area that I had reached out to, they weren't doing home birth. Um just for their safety measures, I guess. Um so I had signed up to do uh birthing center birth. And um that's a very um patient, you know, the patient, you're an advocate for yourself, and it's a good space. And I felt um I felt comfortable and confident of asking questions and saying like this is these are my wishes for my birth and this is my wish for my pregnancy, and I really just wanted uh the whole experience to be very physiological and hands-off and supported, but just trusting that intuition. You know, I had waited for so long for this experience, and I really wanted to own the experience and for it to be mine.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Um birth centers too. I I feel like birth centers are like the perfect medium too, like between hospital and home birth. Like you're not at home, but you're definitely not at the hospital.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

Yeah, definitely not in the hospital. Yeah, it's like a sweet spot of like there are safety measures in place, you know, there's there's plans in place, but you're still it's yeah, it's very home-like. And it was it was good. Um, so everything was great until um my ult uh the anatomy ultrasound scan um that's required by most midwives in the state of Florida is to at least have the anatomy scan. Um I kinda I resisted her a little bit and probably frustrated her a little bit because I was like, what is the point of this? You know, we did all this, I did some genetic screening and I did some blood work, and I'm like, there's nothing really outside of PCOS in my history that would make us think anything would go wrong. Can I opt out of it? And she just kind of said, Yeah, but you have to find another provider. So ultimately at 23 weeks, I got the anatomy scan, and she called me the day after with the results, and I was getting ready for work, and she said, Um, I'm looking at your results for your anatomy scan, and your amniotic fluid is too low for my comfort. I need you to go into maternal fetal medicine, and here's the address. And I was like, Okay, do you need me to schedule an appointment? And she said, No, I need you to go right now. And I was like, Oh, right now, and she's like, right now.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

What was that like to you know hear that from her? What was going through your mind at that time?

SPEAKER_03 11:19

Like immediate guilt of like, here I sp I wasted two weeks because they want you to have the scan at 20 weeks and I'm like 21 weeks, and I'm like, ugh, I wasted two weeks being stubborn because I had some idea of how I wanted this to go, and I was shaking, and I'm like, something's wrong, something's wrong. Um, so I went, I went over there, you know, I called into work, I went, I got the scan. You sit and wait a little bit, and then you meet with the maternal fetal medicine doctor, and it's COVID, so it's a little bit colder than I think it would have been normally. He sat 15 feet away from me at the end of a conference table with a mask on, and he just said, He said, Look, I'm looking at your scan, and he's like, It's low, it's on the low end. And he said, What my suggestion is is for you to hydrate with electrolytes, and you know, he gave me ounces that he wanted me to consume every day, and he said, and we're just gonna repeat the scan every week until we feel comfortable that we're not missing something. Um, and he just it was very it was so casual and reassuring, which in hindsight not in a good way, you know, because he just he didn't make me feel like it was an emergency.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

And so I and there was nothing that was like popping out um with your baby, like nothing that was alarming them.

SPEAKER_03 13:00

Nope, yeah. So they said, you know, we got like they were able to get a good image of his heart, of his lungs, um he was moving really well, the blood flow in the cord looked good, the placenta looked good. I had a low-lying anterior placenta, but it was so early on in the pregnancy that he said which happens the pri the it's gonna shift as the grows.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Usually if you find it in the second trimester, I forget what the statistic is, it's very high that it's most likely to move by the third trimester. So usually it's yeah. So he's like, you know, we'll keep our eyes on it, but it's uh not an issue at this point.

SPEAKER_03 13:39

Not totally placental previous, so just kind of keeping an eye on it, and that was the plan was we booked we booked a scan for every single week after that. Uh so from 23 weeks to twenty seven weeks, I got scans. And you know, we have we have intuition, and I I think you said it really well in your episode when you spoke about Vienna's like you look back and you try not like you look back at these things and how you were feeling and the things that you put in place or things that you did, and you're like, did I know something was happening? And I I really think that I found my way to reach out to somebody to find support because I scheduled I reached out to a girlfriend and said, Hey, I want to take a photo, like a pregnancy photo, and I want to do it at the botanical gardens. Can you meet me here um on this Saturday? And she's like, Oh, I can't. Um, you know, we already have tickets to this thing, but maybe we can meet you afterwards and just like get a coffee. She lives on um, I'm from I spent most of my time on the east coast of Florida, so I really didn't have anybody over here. I had no relationships on this side of Florida at this time, which was just added to the isolation. Um so then I reached out to another girlfriend, also in Fort Lauderdale, and she's like, Great, I'll meet you. So that morning I'm getting dressed, I go and grab a cup of coffee, I'm making my way to the garden, and she sends me a text and she says, I just I just am having an anxious morning and I don't feel I don't feel up for a girl's day. I I don't feel like I would be good company. And so I was kind of disappointed, but I also we have that relationship where I appreciate when we don't have the space just honesty, yeah. Yeah, just honesty. Yeah. So I went to the garden anyway, and um I felt a little I just felt like my stomach was kind of like butterflies checking in. So I got to the garden, I went into the restroom, and I had blood and I was bleeding, and I um sent my the number to the birthing center. You kind of like paged them in. I sent her a message and I said, Hey, I'm bleeding, it looks different. I had had some brown, like brown old blood, like spotting early on in pregnancy, and it was never an issue. Sometimes she's like, Sometimes there's um bleeding with implantation, and your body just doesn't let it go, nothing to worry about. Um, and I said, This is different, this is like bright, it's red blood. Yeah, red blood. So she called me in a couple of minutes and said, Hey, I need you to go to the hospital, and you're gonna have to drive up to um health park in Fort Myers because if for some reason you deliver this baby today, they have the capacity to care for him, they have a NICU. And it hadn't even like the blood leading to an early birth, like that connection wasn't there. I just was thinking, like, oh my gosh, I'm bleeding. It didn't really compute resonate, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, so it's it's gotta be like a 50-minute drive from where I was to that hospital. I blared my Keirtan music, and I just I sang, and it's a song of prayer. And I just spoke to Rowan and I said, hang on, baby, you know, we're going, we're going to the hospital, everything's okay. And by the time I had gotten to the hospital, I had blood through my dress, through my the little car seat cover, and I just was dripping blood, and I was like, at that point, I'm like, this is it. I'm having like I'm having a baby now.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

Is this what's happening?

SPEAKER_03 18:08

Um, I checked in, they were so they were so kind. The nurses in triage were so kind to me until the OB walked in. Um, so I I walked into the hospital and the nurses in triage were were so kind, you know. The woman was like, You're okay, you're here, you're okay. Just, you know, she's like, We're gonna come grab you, we'll get you cleaned up. She brings me in, she brings me a gown to change into. She's like, You're okay, we're gonna get on the monitor. Are you feeling crampy? What have you eaten today? What have you drank today? Um, just going through all the, you know, her checklist and um got hooked up to the monitor and she's like, There's baby, baby sounds good, your blood pressure's high, but you're nervous, you know, that's expected. And she said, We're gonna get to an ultrasound and figure out what this bleeding is. There's a lot of reasons. Like, let's not jump to conclusions, let's see what's going on. Just you know. And she she kind of like paused and looked at me and she said, Do you need a hug? And I was just like, Yeah. So she kind of like leaned over the bed and she gave me a hug and she's like, It's okay, honey. It's okay. I'm like, Okay, okay. So I'm still like, you know, crying on and off and rubbing my belly, and I didn't know if I was having a boy or girl, so I'm just talking to baby.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 19:37

And the OB walked in and he was so rude.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Just totally different energy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:45

Totally different energy. And he's like, he's like, I looked at your scan, you have a low-lying placenta and low low amniotic fluid. Why are you not um why are you not seeing uh an OB? Why are you doing a midwife? She should have dismissed you as a client, and just like berating me. And I said, no but I'm seeing maternal fetal medicine alongside her, and nobody has alerted me to anything. I've never had any anything crazy happen. So anyway, um some doctors just hate midwives.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yeah, they just just do.

SPEAKER_03 20:26

Yeah, they do. So I got checked in, stayed with there was it just was unexplained why I was bleeding. Stayed in the hospital for five days. Again, everybody was so lovely. It just was me being monitored. They said you cannot have even a hint of spotting and go home. That's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 20:48

Um, so I was in there for um from December 5th to December 10th, and he was born on the afternoon on December 10th after he was being kind of finicky on the monitor, and then he failed the um the ultrasound where they check for movement. And the the OB that day. Um, she's very sweet. I've seen her in life after the fact. And she came in and she just said, I can't, you know, we can't do anything for baby while they're inside. And she's like, This, you know, you have all these things going on, this is how baby looks today. And she said, It's like baby's coming out today. And I was just, I'm like, but the baby's too little. It's she's like, Nope, you're 29 weeks, we have a great Nikyu. Let's go. So we she the late, you know, the tech, the ultrasound tech was finishing the ultrasound, and the tone of the room just changed. I mean Everybody rushed in to prep me for surgery. And the OB looked at me and she said, We're gonna put you downstairs, we're gonna bring you downstairs and put you back on the monitor. And if baby doesn't show up on monitor, you're going under. Like there's not even gonna be enough time for a spinal. And I was just I was very just calm on the outside and just really trying to like almost psych myself out of being terrified. You know, I was just breathing really slowly. And um, we get downstairs, and oddly enough, um, a girlfriend of mine was just on her way to see me that day. She had the day off, and she got there just as I was taking the anti-nausea medication um before the spinal tap. And she got there, they let her in, she gave me a hug, and I was like already leaning on humor to heal me. And I was like, I really wanted to see if I was gonna be crazy in labor. Like, this sucks. I don't even get to experience labor, and the baby's coming out. And she's like, it'll be okay. He's like, he's gonna be okay, he's gonna be a little bit, you know, the baby's gonna be okay. Sergio was fine, they just took him right away, you know, because they didn't know what was going on. I never got to hear him cry, they didn't let me see him right away. Anesthesiologist took some photos for me, and she was very reassuring, you know. She's like, my sister had twins at 29 weeks, so I'm 29 weeks to the day at this point. And she's like, and look, they're five years old and they're thriving, and just trying to reassure me that a premature baby doesn't have to mean like a terrible outcome. Yeah, so he was um two pounds, 10.7 ounces, just little. Um I finally got to see him probably I think it was around midnight that night.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Um pretty much the same size as as Vienna.

SPEAKER_03 24:10

Yeah, just so tiny, so tiny. And I I walked in to his room to meet him, and his nurse was very pregnant. Like, she's she was probably she must have been 30, 30 or 31 weeks pregnant because she had her baby shortly after. Um so she's very pregnant, and she's like, he's under the light for his bilirubin, and he's got the goggles on. Um, she's like, you can reach in, and she just kind of instructed me how to reach for him, and the room was so busy. Like Nikki rooms are there's just lights and machinery, and you can't really tell if what's necessary machinery and what just lives in your room, and it was beeping, and I really didn't feel like this baby that I'm looking at is my baby that was just in my womb. I was just kind of like I reached in and I touched him, and I'm like, he's so small, he doesn't even look like he should be in the outside world, you know? And I just said, Hi, baby, and I, you know, once I knew he was a boy, I knew that Rowan was what I was gonna name him. So I said, Hi Rowan, and just kind of talked to him. And I said, I'm not leaving this room, so I had to like run upstairs every time the nurses need me to needed me to do my vitals or whatever they needed me to do after the C-section. And I lived in that chair with Rowan for five weeks.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

I believe it.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

I you know, I got some acupuncture, I left a couple of times to get acupuncture. Um but it just it it really felt like as long as I stay in this room and monitor um every single thing that's happening, and I was just really involved in his patient care, it just felt like this is how I protect him now. You know, he's not in my womb anymore, and this is this is my next stage of motherhood, is really just being his advocate.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Yeah, it's just like a different level of hypervigilance, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 26:45

And it's it's not easy. NICU is not easy, and I I spoke to some people, you know, I spoke to a high school friend who's a NICU nurse, and she said, This this is the roller coaster of NICU. It's she's like, it's it's just constant. Your emotions are gonna be up and down and up and down, and just hang in. And things change so quickly, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:10

So and they talk to you in medical language, like there's it's just every time you I from my experience talking to people, it's like every time you absorb one thing, it's like another thing. It really is that emotional roller coaster, right?

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Yeah, yep. And I you know, we so what ultimately was the um thing we were working with him was he just had kind of unexplained low oxygen. He was fine for about maybe 30 minutes after he was born, he seemed fine, and then he needed oxygen support, and then he needed nitric oxide support, and then it just cascaded from there, and just it was just this like avalanche of medical intervention. Um so in order to survive, I just really focused on routine. Like I tried to wake up to do the 7 a.m. shift change and be involved in like the new neonatologist coming on, and like this is our care plan for today. Um I made sure to just like eat three meals, drink water in between meals, just like this. And it just it was really just to pass the time. Like, if I could sleep, I slept as much as possible, and I just really I wanted the days and the hours and weeks to just pass. Like I just wanted everything to pass, and um, it was just really important for me to just kind of humanize him because that it's very much like the neonatologists say baby and then the room number or baby Norman, which is my last name, and and I'm like, his name is Rowan, like he's a boy, you know. They but they just they don't, and so I'm like, what are you doing? Can you like hey Rowan? We're gonna take your temperature now, we're gonna go under your arm.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

I treated can we please treat him like a baby? Like, what would you do if this was like your daughter's baby or your niece's baby or whoever, like your baby? Like, can we just treat this baby?

SPEAKER_03 29:26

And um the procedures were really tough, you know. Like he got a pick line, and that was reading the you know, just reading and signing the consent form for the pick line is it's awful, you know. Everything is awful. Um, and I just I even though I was, you know, advocating for him and making sure they knew that I wanted it to be my decision, like don't just put him on a medication without me saying, Let me read about this. Okay, yes, I agree. Or like, why are we doing this and what's the dosage or whatever? And I just want I wanted to feel like I was giving consent about it. Um, but I really didn't press them on lifting the isolate. So he was eight days old before I ever um got to smell him or like put my face to his face. And if you know, I had to I looked at my pictures because um to see how old he was, I always forget how old he was when I had that day. It felt like so much longer. It would have it feels like it was closer to the end of his life than the beginning. But that day, um, he just had had a really rough night and a really rough morning, and the neonatologist came in and she said, This is, you know, we're gonna put try this machine and we're gonna try this medication, we're gonna shift them, and we're gonna have a meeting with um the pulmonologist. And she said, Sometimes babies tell us when they're done fighting. And I I just looked at her and I said, What? And she's like, Sometimes we have to listen to baby. And I was like, Are you saying he's gonna die? And she said, We have you know, we have to listen to baby. And it this was the first time, you know, he's eight days old. This was the first time where I really was faced with that possibility that that that might be a possibility, and I just like f slid to the floor and sobbed, and I was like, This is so effed up that I'm even having this conversation, and you know, there's everybody on his team is around us, and they're all just kind of like witnessing me in this moment, and this lady comes like barreling down the hallway and barges into the room, and she says, Hi, honey, you know, she gives me a tissue and she's like, she's like, Hey, have you kissed your baby yet? And I was like, No, and she's like, Okay, let's lift the isolate. She's like, We're gonna let her kiss the baby. So she let me, you know, I splashed some water on my face, and she um she lifted the isolate up and she said, Do you have your phone? I can take some pictures. So I really just like I I put my face to his face and I put his little my his little hand around my finger and I kissed his little hand. It was so tiny. And those are the sweetest pictures that I have of us, but the hardest because that day was that day was its own kind of hard. It was one of the hardest days of my five weeks with him. Just that just the like the reality of it, I guess, and not like, oh, we're not heal here to heal, we're here to see if potentially he can be transferred or if he's going to pass. Um so things got a little bit real after that, you know, and um I just uh dove in a little bit further into like he had his pulmonary hypertension was lingering, and we were doing genetic tests and blood tests and just really trying to figure out what was what was going on, and everybody was just kind of like we don't really have anything to call this, we don't really understand why he's not able to be off the oxygen. But if we can get him transferred to St. Petersburg, they are better with the lungs, so their pulmonary team is quite a bit better than here, and so that was my focus goal was to just let's wean him off this nitric oxide, let's lower his oxygen enough so that he can get on a helicopter and go to St. Pete. And having something to focus on, I think gave me a good distraction.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

Yeah, it's good to have goals in the NQ. It's good to have small goals, right? Yeah, it might not be like let's bring my baby home, but like those small goals can help, you know, help you with that resilience that you need and just like feeling some positivity. Yeah. So what did that look like? Did you guys be able to transfer?

SPEAKER_03 34:36

So we never we never got him off the nitric oxide. Um, we tried different kinds of machines and different kinds of ventilators. Um and those like that, those transition times where there's six or seven medical staff in the room at the same time, and everybody's very focused. And it just I'm not a religious person. I just have an overview of you know everything's running and it's all everything's connected and things are happening, and all I can do is hope that it's going in my favor. You know, I didn't really have much to lean on in those moments, other than speaking to him and just really begging him to be okay. And every day it was like, you know, mama loves you, I've waited for you, I'm here for you. We need to live in here for a year, fine by me. I don't need the son, you know. Um and we the only time or the first time that I got to hold him was we were switching out his ventilator and the isolat at the same time, and the nurse was um very um supportive towards me of saying, like, this is a good time for you to hold him. So she's like, usually we like to switch these things out and just like get baby back comfortable, and she's like, but let's find a way, we'll bring some people in here, let's find a way to get him on your chest. And it took three of them to kind of like move his tubes and shift everything around, and they laid his little body on my chest, and he just he looked up at me and I said, Oh my gosh, I've been waiting so long for this, and he moved his little mouth, and he kind of said one of those like like a little breath, and I was like, Like a sign, yeah, like a sign. I was like, Oh, I know, baby. And it just and they gave us a little over an hour. They just they got the new equipment put in, and she pulled the curtains, and they just closed the door, and she just let me hold him, and it was sweet, and I just you know pet his hair and kissed his to the top of his head, and just like felt the weight of him, and I I had said a couple of times like in his care, like maybe he doesn't need these machines, maybe he just needs my chest, you know, and I just I just really wanted that skin to skin with him. And I'm like, you have him in this thing, and he he doesn't know that. He knows his mama's heartbeat and his mama's scent, and it's hard being away from them.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Um yeah, it's it's it physically, like physiologically breaks a chain, right? Yeah, because we're meant to be with our babies, our babies are meant to be with us. Yeah, I don't care how good your Nikki is, like it's never going to replace being like obviously health-wise, yes, but it's never gonna replace the comfort of being with mom, right?

SPEAKER_03 38:02

Um, yeah, so did went through the motions at NICU. They celebrate stuff, you know. Santa comes around, they take pictures. Um and then New Year's Eve, um, he developed MRSA. So then he was very sick after a great day. Like New Year's Eve day was phenomenal. We did he was like very alert for all his touch times, and then just really, really went downhill after that. And I kind of like after everybody left the room, I like lifted the blanket that's over the isolate, and I said, Okay, Rowan, you're very sick. Like, this is what's going on. You they're treating you for this, this is what's going on with your lungs. And I said, I'm here for you, but nothing's getting better, and we can't stay in this hospital forever, and I don't understand why you can't get off nitric oxide. And I was like, and I need you to tell me, you know, if you're okay, then I need you to tell me, and if you're not okay, then I need you to tell me, and I continued to have that conversation with him every day until it was um on January 12th, he was just really struggling with his his heart rate was going up and down and his oxygen, and I had um a new neonatologist. So after that day, when the the female neonatologist had said, you know, we have to listen to babies if they're you know if they're telling us that they don't want to stay, she removed herself from his care, and I was given another neonatologist. Um and so it's the middle of the night on January 11th, so like going into January 12th, and the doctor looked at me and he said, We're going to continue to do everything that we can, but you have the right to withdraw care. And he just said it like very plainly, and he said, Um, he said, but and I was crying, he said, We're gonna we're still fighting for your baby, we're still doing everything we can, but I want you to know that you have that option. And I spoke with one of Rowan's head nurses who's um a dear friend of mine to this day, and she said, Why don't we do a meeting with everybody, like the pulmonologist, the neonatologist, somebody from respiratory therapy, the social worker. I'll be there, like let's all just sit down and so we can see like what is going on, because she's like, we just need to know what the plan is. And so there's this room full of people, and you know, they asked me my understanding about what's happening, and I, you know, I told them that he wasn't doing well, we're not transferring, and I said, you know what? I've been talking to him, and this isn't what I would want for myself. I wouldn't want myself to be alive but not living and on this kind of support. And I said, you know, thank you all for like everybody's been so loving, and I just I need to talk to him a little bit more, and I and I want to know what it's gonna look like if um like what the process is for withdrawing care for him. And I said, Can I take him out of the hospital and bring him to like a park? And they were like, No. Um that's a fair question though. Yeah, and I was like, it's my baby. They put him in a stroller, yeah. Can I leave with him? And so I said, I just told his nurse, I said, I don't want the only thing he knows to be this noise and this smell, and like in the NICU room, I want him to know that it's like he came into a beautiful world, you know? And and she said, she said, look, let's um let's get him, we'll get him outside. Um she said when the time when the time comes, we'll get him outside to the garden. Um so we did. Um, I got a whole day of holding him. Um and was planning on just like dragging it out and getting at least a couple of friends to see him. I mean, I don't have family here, it's very last minute. And um on the 14th, I held him for a few hours. Um, one of the respiratory therapists came in and took photos for me. And I just asked her, I was like, Am I gonna survive this? Because she had had a baby who passed at that hospital. And she said, It's not gonna feel like it, but you're going to survive. And you know, she just kind of like kept that reassurance for me, and I spent those few hours like really um giving him permission to leave. It's one of the hardest things and most selfless things I've ever had to do. And I just looked at him and I said, You don't have to stay for me. I'll be okay. This is about you and this is your journey. And I love you and I'm sorry. And it's okay. It's okay if you have to leave. You know, in my mind, I was preparing myself for like 48 more hours of snuggling him. And he really listened to me and said, I'm going now. And you know, I put him back in the isolat. I made a couple phone calls and had to tell people and family and friends, like he's not gonna make it. Those are awful conversations to have, like preparing somebody for death, not just a sudden death. Um and I was in the bathroom, you know, just crying on FaceTime with a girlfriend. And I was gonna take a shower and dry my hair, and one of the nurses just kind of tapped on the door, and she's like, she's like, I think you should come back before you shower. And I was like, okay. Like she's like, maybe you should shower later. It's like okay. And I walked into the room, and it just it happened so fast. Just his numbers weren't acting right. Um, so everybody rushed in. Um, his respiratory therapist, you know, everybody understood that we were going outside and this is what we're doing. We're gonna extubate him, but we have to get him outside. So they got him off the ventilator and they're manually um giving him breath and they put me in a wheelchair and they put him in my arms, and I just kept my head down looking at him, and they had closed all the room doors in the hallway, and all the nurses are sitting at their station, and just everybody knows what's happening, you know. So it just felt like a really morbid parade, you know. It felt like a funeral already, and I just I kept my head down and I said, Don't worry about all these people, you know, don't worry about all these lights, we're gonna go outside, and you're safe in my arms, and everything's okay. And we got outside, and it's Florida, it's like so rarely cold, and we got outside and it was so crisp. It was like my ideal kind of air. I love that it was just after midnight, and I just I love that crispness, and there were so many stars in the sky, and they wheeled me to the center of the garden and let me sit on a bench, and um the respiratory therapist sat down next to me and he said, he said, Okay, are you ready? So they pulled his tube out and they just put him to my chest, and just everybody stepped away. And and I just I just cried and it was it was like a cry of relief and a cry of like pain and just like regret and all of the things, all of the feelings all at once, and it just it was quiet, it was like quiet crying. And finally, when the doctor came and you know, she's listening for a heart rate, and she looked to somebody next to her and she said, Okay, time of death, 12 48 a.m. And I just sobbed and I was like, Please take me with you, please take me with you. And I just meant it, you know, I meant it with all of my being. I'm like, how am I gonna keep on living when my baby's not here? Uh it just you know eventually went back inside, they gave me a cold cough, they let you give, you know, a private room, you're by yourself, and we did a little memorial at the hospital the following day, and it was just like a bright, sunny, beautiful day, which is so annoying when you're grieving, you're like, stupid butterflies, why are there so many butterflies?

SPEAKER_01 48:20

And why is the Doesn't the world know that I just lost my baby?

SPEAKER_03 48:25

Yeah. Why are these people walking around holding hands, drinking coffee? Like um, I had a memorial, you know, some of the nurses said some things. I tried to thank everybody for their compassion and and just just remind everybody like the perspective that this gives you. You know, it's like we complain about the silliest things, and in the grand scheme of things, does any of it really matter? You know, and it's I think death always brings us to that place. It doesn't matter. Perspective, right? Yeah, it's perspective. Or just even illness, even illness brings you to that place. Um so at the end of the memorial, um his nurse said, Do you want me to take him inside? And I'll bring him downstairs to the morgue. And I was like, I can't I can't just hand him over. And she said, I can ask, you know, if if you can walk down with me. Um so I followed her through the hospital, through all those hallways where only staff is supposed to be. And the morgue is like kitty corner to where the kitchen staff has their area. And there's a few of us standing there, and she said, You're not going inside. You don't need to go inside the morgue. Like, I will take him from here. And I was just standing in the high hallway crying. Like, how am I supposed to hand you this physical form of my body, and then do what? Go home? Like um, it just uh it just felt so wrong, and it's just such an awful thing for a mother to have to do. I mean, it's hard enough for mothers to leave their living children, you know, like who are well and well and good.

SPEAKER_01 50:24

Like knowing they're gonna see them again in eight hours, right?

SPEAKER_03 50:26

Like it's just it's just not normal, but not normal. But I did it um and spent my my grieving time losing relationships and just kind of reevaluating my life and I mean I struggled with a will to live. I really struggled with um seeing joy. I didn't really have anything in my life worth living for. And I mean, there were days where I would wake up and just I was trying to like psych myself up with the routine again, you know, just like I had in NICU. And I woke up, I have a I took a picture of myself. I woke up, I made like this beautiful breakfast with like dragon fruit and mangoes and raspberries and coffee and hemp seeds, and it was so pretty, and I just sat down and I just sat in that rocking chair for must have been like eight or nine hours, and I just sat there and I didn't eat and I didn't drink, and and I was just sitting there, just in my sadness, and like now who am I? You know, I've I can't go back to my job with these people that I don't know. Everybody knows I was pregnant, just such a weird, such a weird space, and you know, Rowan would be five this year. And I look back on that time and I just think it's not like one thing didn't have to mean something else. Like just because a friend that I had loved and cared for and made postpartum meals for, she didn't show up, that doesn't mean what it felt like it meant at the time, which was that I wasn't deserving. So, like in my grieving stage, it just really felt like I didn't deserve to have a baby, and I didn't deserve to have a community around me, and I just really struggled coming out of that space. Um just very dark, very dark, and not really wasn't really giving myself a lot of grace in that time. Um and then there's like moments where I'm chatting with somebody and every you know and everything's fine and I'm laughing, and then an hour later I'm crying because I'm laughing, and that space of grief is so wild. Your brain, your brain has to pull you out of the darkness because it's like we can't we can't stay in this station. We can't live there. Yeah, we can't live here.

SPEAKER_01 53:25

We can visit, but we can't like camp camp there too long. Yep, yeah, like life after when you're grieving, like that's when everything gets so murky, right? Like the moments with our babies, and even saying goodbye to our babies. We have those moments with our babies. It's the moments afterwards where we're like, what? Like, yeah, where do I fit in in this world? Like the world expects me to come out on the other side, like being the same person, and um, you're not like literally every single facet of you is different. It's kind of hard. There's like a process of like learning where to fit in again, and like how to live and how to function and how to eat and how to have conversations. It really is just like you're a new person, it's like how do I be this person and carry this insurmountinal grief, right? I hope you're enjoying this episode. While we take a quick break, I want to speak to the moms listening who are in a very specific, very layered season. If you are parenting a living child after pregnancy or infant loss, whether you recently welcomed your rainbow baby, or you were raising a child while grieving another baby, and realizing that this chapter feels a little more complex than you expected, well, I created something with you in mind. Because parenting after loss is not one story. It can look like holding your earthside child while missing the one who isn't here. It can look like loving your baby deeply while navigating fresh grief. It can look like gratitude and heartbreak living side by side. And that can feel incredibly isolating. And that's exactly why I created The Nest. The Nest is a supportive, ongoing community space for mothers raising a living child after pregnancy or infant loss. It's a space where you don't have to explain the coexistence of joy and grief, where identity shifts, relationship strains, nervous system overwhelm, and the very real postpartum experience are spoken about honestly, not minimized. Inside you'll find trauma-informed postpartum dual support, two virtual community calls each month, and most importantly, a village of women who understand this season without you having to translate it. If you've been looking for your village in your Earth Mama era, whether that season feels joyful, heavy, or somewhere in between, you can learn more at thedula life.ca slash nest. And if you do decide to join us, please use promo code NEST1 to get your first month free. Okay, now let's get back to the episode. So what else did your like grief kind of look like or those days look like afterwards? Like how did you get through those days? Like what was supportive for you? What kind of kept you going?

SPEAKER_03 56:30

I did. I continued to get acupuncture. I was getting acupuncture every week while Rowan was in NICU. That was my my time to leave. I would go to the grocery store, go get acupuncture, and I just I was always calling. Is he okay? Is he okay? Um, but I continued to get acupuncture, and then I was I was doing therapy. I found a friend of mine found a psychologist for me, and I was doing therapy twice a week. And some days that felt like adding salt to the wound, and some days it felt like exactly what I needed, you know, and it just I never knew going in how that was gonna go. And we talked about just more, you know, your whole life and your upbringing and other relationships and how that plays into how you grieve, and and I you know, it's so he passed away in January 15th, and it was coming up on Mother's Day, and I said I have to do something for myself. You know, I I j I need to do something for myself. Um so I just booked like a normal Abbey self-care day. So I booked a massage out of town. I found a couple coffee shops and a couple bookstores, and I went and I got a massage and I drank coffee in a cafe and I talked to strangers like nothing had happened, and I was smiling, and it just felt like it it was this constant like hyper-vigilance of like, please don't ask me if I have a baby, you know, because Mother's Day is coming up, like please don't bring this up because I don't know how to handle this quite yet. But it just felt like, okay, I guess if I'm going to survive, like if I'm going to survive the loss of my baby, then I need to remind myself what it means to live. And I really need to just reevaluate my life, and this is a chapter, and I have to figure out what the next chapter is gonna be. So I spent the next few months working with my therapist of like, who am I going to become? And there are so many parts of like the old Abby that I love, and like my I travel a lot, I do a lot of solo traveling, and I'm very independent, and and I just looked at her and I said, I have no interest in being a massage therapist anymore. There's no way that I can sit in a room with somebody and they're like, Oh, my shoulder hurts when I play tennis, and oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 59:21

Like chit-chat. Like chit-chat, and like a lot of like small talk, right? And like maybe them bitching about bitching about their husband or like whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_03 59:31

Like, yeah. And she's like, Well, what else could you do? Like, I don't know, you know, I that's been my identity for so long. I've done other things here and there because my work has been like the majority of my work has been seasonal. Like, I have these other skills, but like, what am I gonna do? So I started kind of playing around with the idea of like going back to school and just separating myself from that person who's a healer, and just really I'm like, if I can't heal yourself, if I can't be taken care of and I can't heal myself, like what business do I have? Why would I want to be in that space, you know? So I was kind of looking at like maybe I should move somewhere else, you know. I already don't know anybody over here. I the the thought of running into somebody in public after he had passed was like enough to just stop me in my tracks a lot of times. I'm like, uh-huh, please don't run into anybody in here. This is going to be awful. It's gonna ruin their day, it's gonna ruin my day. Um, so ultimately I decided that what I was gonna do was go on um a road trip and kind of my just cross off some things on my bucket list. I had always wanted to see the sun set on the going to the sun road in Montana on Glacier National Park on my birthday every year. It's like the end of August, the sun just sets right on that road, and I was like, you know what? I've put this off multiple times, and I'm just gonna go. I'm just gonna rent a car and I'm gonna go and I'm just gonna go camping. And everybody in my life knows that that's what I do, but I still had a friend she just kind of said, should I be worried? Like, are you are you gonna come home? And I was like, I think so. And she's like just like okay, I don't know how worried I should be. Um and I think I think that just you know, it's not just the travel, and it's not just like the freedom of the road or just like being in nature, it's really it's again it's perspective, it's like you're so hyper focused on our own lives and like the bigness of what Rowan means to me, but then in the in the bigger picture, it's like our lives are so short, we're people are so small, you know, that ripple effect is so small, and just like look at how nature's handling itself, and like this is the cycle we know this going in that it's life leads to death, and like we know that we know that going in. We know we're faced with our own mortality every day, and I just I really healed so many parts of my younger self, of my myself as a mother, myself as a grieving mother, like so much of myself healed on that trip, and and I just gave myself permission to either like ignore the fact that I had Rowan if people asked, or tell them about it and not really worry about how they were gonna react and um and that it just it helped. It helped so much to be able to say to a stranger like I'm just on a road trip because I want to be. I want to, yeah, yeah, you know, and just and leave it all before.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:09

Well, everyone needs everyone needs reprieve sometimes reprief, right? Like we know that our babies die, like our baby has died, and sometimes it is nice to be a different person and escape the reality that that is true just for a little bit, right? Doesn't mean it never happened, but it just means you're giving yourself that reprieve. Now, obviously you have a little one sleeping on you now. Tell me more about that.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:41

I kind of turn like turned off that whole part of like, I don't need relationships, I guess I'm not gonna be a mother. This is behind me. Ken and I had known each other professionally before I was ever pregnant with Rowan. And I was in Tennessee, so I'm on the last leg of that road trip, and I get this random text message from this guy that I used to I would trade him fruit and he would bring me worm castings or like um the little tubs to grow things in, and we just had this like plant exchange, and I get this random text, hi, how are you? Are you still in South War Florida? Hope you're doing well. And I was like, What does this guy want? I'm not even gonna respond. So I did, like a couple days later, I did, and I'm like, I'm fine, I'm actually on a road trip, and he's like, Oh, when you get back, hit me up, whatever, it'd be good to see how you're doing. So, like a month or two goes by, my mom and my brothers were visiting, and I'm like, hey, here's this guy that I know that um is now an airboat captain, like this is what he's doing in his next chapter of his life, and you guys want to go on an airboat ride, go ahead. So, all of this leads to this person just being in my life. And it wasn't like I didn't realize what was happening. I didn't realize that we were dating, you know, because I did I wasn't focused on that, and I had to kind of like drop the ball on him when I finally did see him in person. Like, I'm just gonna say this really quick and let you know what's going on, and then we can just move on with the conversation. And I was like, I had a baby, his name was Rowan, he died, and now I'm moving on with my life, and he was just like, Oh my god. So him and I would just like would get breakfast and go for walks and stuff, and then it just turned into us like agreeing to be in a relationship, and it just felt very innocent, and it's you know, I don't think a lot of people get that anymore. There's a lot of like just

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

Like pure and yeah, yeah. Innocence of perfect word.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:03

Yeah, it was very innocent. Organic. He has a daughter, and he's like, you know, I always wanted more kids, and we just kind of said, you know, it felt too scary to like to say that we were going to try to get pregnant. And it felt safer to say, okay, let's see what happens. And if we're blessed with getting pregnant, then I guess that's what we're doing. And uh it was a little over a year until we actually got pregnant. And I was I was taking care of myself, like, okay, if I were to get pregnant, what would I what what would I want in my body? You know, so I was like getting acupuncture and really focusing on like nutritious foods and not having those Sunday living off coffee days, and I was house sitting for a friend of mine, and I just started making breakfast, and I I was like to myself, you know, I'm all by myself in this big house, and I'm like, I'm pregnant. And I look at the dog and I'm like, I'm pregnant, I'm definitely pregnant. And I just kept saying it, and I was like, whoa, that's really weird. So I gave myself like about a week before I actually took a pregnancy test, and I was like, I don't even have to look at this, I already know I'm pregnant, and I just felt comfortable, like I I wasn't like jumping up and down and crying and elated, I wasn't immediately terrified. I just it felt like so much calm, and I really attribute that to my daughter. I think that's her nature, and I really think that her little soul understood the assignment, like I think she knew life has been really hard, like it's hard enough, it's gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:59

I'm here to bring the the calm.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:00

I'm here to bring the calm. And we really I like just being pregnant after the reality of infant death is is terrible, and you really just have to choose, or I had to choose to like to sit with it in a moment of like acknowledging my fears and really saying, like, I survived this, I can survive anything, I can survive what is on the other side of this, but then really just channeling the positivity of it. Like, let's just live in the moment, everything's fine. This is a different pregnancy, it's a different baby, you know. I'm doing I'm doing things differently. And there was a lot of, I just I felt like I was holding my breath for those 10 months of carrying her, um, just waiting, you know, waiting for something to go wrong. But I was strong in my advocacy for now getting my redemptive birth. And that was like that was the verbiage that I used with my midwife group, and I was now in a hospital, but with midwives, and I just each one that I met with, I said, This is my redemptive birth. I want to experience labor, I want to experience a vaginal delivery, I want to hold my baby, I want to be in charge of my baby's care when she comes out of the womb. Like, don't take things away from me because everything got taken away from me. The first bath, the first cry, like all of those things, this is what I want. And they were um, they were all very cautious and expressed their concerns, but ultimately let me lead in my pregnancy and in my delivery. I had a beautiful pregnancy. Again, I didn't really have any, like no strange cravings, no aches, no pains to really speak of. It was just a beautiful time. Um her birthday was wonderful and fast, and we did um no medication, and I had my essential oils, and I had my comb, and I had that same song that I sang to Rowan all the time. Um and I sang that repeatedly, and I moved around a lot, and it was intense. But I had such a good, like my spirits were so up. I was just in such a beautiful place, and in between every contraction wave, I'm like, this sucks, but we're having a baby. Like, why is everybody?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:41

I know one step closer, one contraction closer.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:43

One contraction closer, yep. So never have to do that one again. Yep. I I had one moment of like just real vocalizing my fears. Um, so my friend Megan was with Ken and I at the hospital, and Megan was Rowan's head nurse. And her and I stayed in contact and we're we're very close, and um I asked her to be there with me, and she's like, Of course, you know, I'm like, you're with my first baby. I'd love you to be there with my second baby. And I was laboring, and she had put a washcloth on the back of my neck, and I saw, like, in my peripheral, a bunch of people come into the room, and I just looked at her and I had tears in my eyes, and I said, Is the baby okay? Is she okay? And she said, Yes, everything's fine. Like, this is protocol, you know, your V back, you're over 35 years old. This is like this is protocol, this is what they're doing. Baby's fine. So finally delivered the baby. I thought she was gonna be born in her waters because like my body was involuntarily pushing, and the midwife was like, I can like I see something, and I'm like, This is the baby. No, it was like my amniotic sac was intact until the very last second, it was wild. Um, but she was born nine pounds seven ounces. She's a big she was a big girl, and I mean they set her on my belly at first to kind of like see how much cord we had to play with, and I was like, babe, she's heavy. Like this maybe is heavy, especially when you have such a little one, the first one, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:28

Yeah, it's like you you pick up, and I'm like, oh my gosh, like this is nothing. I remember that with my daughter too, being like, oh, and she wasn't that big. I was but compared to Vienna, I was like, she's huge, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:40

So it's huge from three pounds to nine pounds. So yeah, just I mean, she's here, she's healthy. Um and it's it's a roller coaster. Motherhood after your infant dies is so wild, and it's this the sweeter days are so much sweeter. And I had a a lot of moments in her early newborn stages of just complete meltdown. I mean, I was giving her a bath to kind of I waited, I think, six or seven days after she was born to wash her hair, and I was like, Oh, wash her hair in my breast milk. And I was washing her, and I had washed Rowan in my breast milk after he passed, and it just was this it was like this moment, and it just felt like an out-of-body experience, you know, of me watching somebody else live this, and I just sobbed because her eyes were closed and she looks like me, so she looks like Rowan, and it just was like this moment that just felt too heavy to really handle. And I've talked to her about Rowan the whole time in her that she was in the womb, and I keep his picture low where she can see him, and I just want it I want that part of my life, and I want him to be just a constant conversation, and I don't want her to to not know who he is, and you know and it's just you know, some days it's some days it's really sweet, and some days it's just oh awful. I did the photo thing the photo prompt.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:24

Did you?

unknown 1:14:25

Oh, I did.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:27

So I was like It's like so bittersweet, right? You're like glad I did it, but also not glad I did it.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:38

Because we we talk about it all the time. We're like, you know, we we were living. It's that and right, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:46

It's that and it's like this is so beautiful, and it is so yeah, it's so painful.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:52

Like we were, you know, we live on a we're starting a farm, so we live on all this land, and I actually brought Tulse May home, and we were still in the RV, we weren't even in the house yet. So it just I think maybe looking back that was maybe nicer for me because I didn't have to have the pressure of setting up a nursery or like setting up a space that I might not be ready for.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:19

Having our house like perfect for this baby. Yeah, I get it.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:24

So I it just I was like, you know, I we always talk about what it would be like to have an almost five-year-old running around, and and I was like, I'm gonna do this photo prompt. I shouldn't do this, I'm gonna do it. And I did, and it was sweet, and it broke my heart to just imagine, you know, holding her in my arms and having a five-year-old tug, you know, it just it's heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:57

Hi, baby. Hi, Tulsi Me.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:00

So I name I named Tulsi Mae. Uh Tulsi is an herb. It's the queen of the herbs. Um and it's one of the things that I don't want to eat your finger. It's one of the things that helped me survive grieving Rowan was I I really leaned on the plants that I knew were going to support me and take care of me. And I drank Tulsi tea um constantly, and I I used the aroma to help me heal, and the plant is very healing. Um now it's healing you in a different way. Now it's healing me in a different way. Yep. So I love that. I I was I had Tulsi picked out throughout her whole, you know, as soon as we found out she was a girl, I had Tulsi picked out. Ken was not sold on Tulsi at first. And I was like, what if I sprinkle in a May? Like after Megan, Tulsi May. And then he's like, okay, yeah. But I'm like, but really, I just birthed a nine pound, seven ounce baby. Are you really gonna fight me on this name?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:12

I know I get this one, okay? I think but then after your baby's named and you like start living with your baby, they're like, that's their name, like that's always been their name. Yeah, yeah. It's like not even you that chooses it, right? It's like that's her name.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:27

Yep, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:30

And it's sweet. What does life look like for you guys now?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:34

Uh, so now I'm 38, and now we we have the casual conversation of is this is our is our family complete, and what does that look like? And what's the what's the fairness of of that to our daughters, you know? Um just kind of play around with that back and forth, just kind of again, just leaving it up to what's gonna happen. If it happens, it's gonna happen, without really putting my heart on the line and saying, like, yes, I'm ready, yes, I think we should have another baby. And and I just it's always in the back of my mind, you know. I always thought I would be a boy mom. I always thought I would be a young mom. You know, I same I graduated high school and my aunt who I babysat for throughout my high school years, she said, Wow, I can't believe you didn't have a baby in high school. Like, and I was like, What? Yeah, and I was like, what? And she's like, because you she just knew I always wanted to be a mom. I'm like, yeah, but I want to be a mom in a relationship, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:48

You're like, uh, yeah. Don't know how to take that one, but okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:54

But yeah, even in my 20s, like I always thought I'd be a young mom. So it's it's different. It's different to be to be 38 and having that that conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:03

Well, now there's like different realities that come into play, right? I mean, we're having a very similar conversation in our house, too. And it's like, well, getting up there, like obviously our the men in our lives they could have babies for 50 more years if they really wanted to. It's different for us, right? And it that is part of the equation, but it's also like doing it all over again. It's like after grief, after heartbreak, and knowing that you like got through your pregnancy after loss kind of by the skin of your teeth, and you're like, what would that be like? And now I have uh this baby on earth, I would have to go through that with this baby, so it's definitely um more complex for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:47

Yeah, just to think like how you know, I kept myself out of the darkness for the most part. I have a very supportive community, and everybody in my personal and professional life knows about Rowan at this point. I opened my business in his name and really have the conversation about him and about life in Nikkei just constantly. It's there's just always a conversation about the fact that he's um not here and that I had him. And I just think if I had her and that's one emotional toll, and then I have the emotional toll of like the fears and the what-ifs while you're pregnant, is that fair to her, you know, and and I don't know, and you know, honestly, things just happen and life just works out, you know. I always I wish it was I wish there was like more sound advice that I could ever give to other moms. I know other people that ha go through things similar to this and child loss, and it's like really that's the reality is it just life just works out, you know. It's hard and it's messy, but it just works out, and so we'll see, we'll see how that goes. But in the meantime, we're just focusing on like building a homestead and um how I'm I'm gonna be um growing herbs and letting herbs be more part of my life and my professional life and my business, rather than just you know, I'm I'm an herbalist at home, but not for the public yet. So I'm gonna start shifting towards that. And I've done some care packages for NICU moms through um Roan Wellness Center, which is my space. Um and I and I want to grow that, and it's this constant battle of like here's this, here's the Abby that's the massage therapist, and here's Abby that's the grieving mother, and how do I how do I shift my clientele to this avenue rather than like what I'm really good at, which is like the orthopedic work and the pain management.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:01

And so I'm just like how can I muddle both of these things together?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:06

How do I definitely grappled with that for a long time?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:10

How do I blend them? So who knows? Who knows what's gonna happen. I just think like motherhood is sweet and life is so beautiful, and it's always gonna be hard, but it's motherhood is it's worth it. It was it was worth the the fear and the heartache and the advocacy and all that stuff, and yeah, it was worth it.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:36

Well now you have your your beautiful girl, right? And now you get to honor Rowan in a different way. And um I think the way that you show up for him, you know, in your business and as the mother you are with your baby girl, um and just coming on today and sharing your story, it's all a part of it, right? And I just think that's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:57

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:58

Well, I think this is a perfect place to wrap up. Yeah. Um just want to thank you, Abby, for you know, sharing such a big part of your story and a piece of your heart and giving us, you know, a mirror into your experience, especially Nikki. Like it's something that a lot of people don't understand. And um yeah, it's you've been on a journey for sure. And I'm just so grateful that you've helped, you know, the mothers listening to this who have been looking for them to have, you know, be seen and be validated and hear a story that resembles theirs. Um truly is so healing, and I just want to thank you for being a part of that healing collective with us.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:45

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for holding space. It's it's not it's not easy, and it's so beautiful what you're doing to be able to open your heart and set aside time from your own family to hear other women's stories, and it's I think that's the beautiful part of social media. How else would we have found each other? You know, and here we are. Everybody's all healing in their own story, and it just makes everybody feel a little bit less alone, and I think that's where we're healing.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:15

Totally agree. Thank you, Abby. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If this episode touched your heart, it would mean the world to me if you took a moment to rate and review the Rainbow Connection. Your words help this podcast reach other mothers who need to hear these stories, the ones still searching for hope, for comfort, and for connection after loss. Every review, every star, every kind word truly makes a difference. Thank you for helping me keep these stories alive. I'll see you in the next episode.