This site is the living memory of Lila Rupinsky, our beautiful daughter, who passed away at 8 days old. This is the story of our precious baby girl and how we are dealing with our infant loss.
Lila should be turning 6 months old tomorrow (July 31st). It is hard to fathom that 6 months have gone by or that she would be that old by now. It is hard to believe we could have had a 6 mos old baby in our lives doing all the things that babies do at that age. This particular birthday is really feeling painful for us. We probably would have been those people that celebrate a baby's first half birthday. We would have done anything for this baby. She deserved everything.
Before Lila was born, we got such joy seeing babies at the store or the mall or wherever. We'd look at them, tell his/her parents that they were cute and discuss if that's what Lila would look like. Since Lila died, it has been a completely different experience for us. Almost torturous. There have been a few times at restaurants that we see families of three with a baby girl and others where the baby is crying right next to us and all I can think of is that Lila did not get the chance to do any of that. Lila never cried, never got to go home, never got to do so many things that I know most families take for granted.
Now when I see babies, especially newborns, I get a huge pit in my stomach and my heart drops. Almost six months later, I still get this feeling. Even when I'm at work, where 10 babies were born to people in my department over the last year, I get those feelings when I hear conversations about newborn kids and grandkids. At work, I can't escape it and I usually get angry and put headphones on to distract me. We try so hard to avoid any situation that would expose us to seeing a baby in public. It's really one of the only things we can sort of control in this life. But, inevitably, we'll come across another newborn baby and get those sinking feelings once again. It seems endless and I don't ever see this feeling going away. Every time I see a newborn, I'm going to think of what should have been for Lila. It's crazy, even as I'm writing this almost six months after Lila was born, I'm still in such great shock that this happened. - Mike
Our upstairs guest bathroom is one of my favorite rooms in our new house b/c its the only room that we totally designed ourselves. We picked out the countertop and had tile put in and everything in it is brand new. When we had to buy a shower curtain I pulled up a few online that I liked and Mike and I both agreed on this white one with flowers on it. Mike said it was a little girly, but he just liked it. When it got to the house we put it up and I suddenly realized why we liked it so much.
It looked exactly like the headband of Lila's that she had worn the most. It was the only headband that did not seem to get in her way and stayed on her head the longest. She had looked adorable wearing it and it was dainty and petite, just like she was.
We have tried to incorporate Lila in every room of our house. I just never thought she would be included in something like picking out the shower curtain. She was our whole life and now we even pick out accessories based on her and I just wish she was here to see it all.
Throughout our relationship, I have almost always gotten up before Jenny. I can't really think of a time where she got up before I did. Throughout Jenny's pregnancy with Lila, it was always assumed that I would be the one to take care of Lila in the mornings. It was going to be our time together. I probably would have gotten up a little earlier before work so I could spend extra time with Lila. I can picture her all happy and excited waiting to be freed from her crib.
It has been tough, recently, getting up in the mornings, partly because I'm tired and don't want to go to work but also because I want to be spending my mornings with Lila. The weekends are even tougher. I usually sit around reading the paper and can't help but think that Lila should be sitting next to me ripping up the paper as I try to read it. We would eat breakfast together and then I could have taken her for a quick run in our Bob Running stroller. I wake up each day and the shock and pain are still so strong. I don't think that will go away any time soon. - Mike
Our grief counselor/therapist suggested we write this out and put it on our blog for people to read so that people would know how to be of help to us. So here goes. I have a hard time asking people for help of any kind, it has not been my thing at all. In this situation it has been especially difficult. Hopefully this helps to clarify what is good for us and what is not. This also should not take away from the massive outpouring we have gotten from a lot of people. Some people have been amazing and I hope that they know who they are.
This is how we think you can be of help to us if you want to be.
*Realize that to everyone else it has been almost 6 months since Lila died but to us it sometimes feels like it has been 6 days.
*We only want to be around people who can talk about Lila or hear us talk about her. Say her name, ask us questions about her, just listen if we bring her up. Talking about her does not always make us sad, its actually what we prefer to be doing. If you think about her, tell us. If you have a dream with her in it, tell us. If you see a baby you think she looked like, tell us, though she was probably cuter anyway. Just the fact that you thought about her is great for us to hear because it means that Lila is not forgotten and it tells us that she matters in this world. It is more upsetting to us if you do not mention her.
*Text, call, write us an email, send us a piece of mail, send us a message on Twitter, come over if you live near by. Anything. Doing something, no matter how small, goes such a long way. We may not always answer the phone if we are having a bad day, but we know that you called. If you dont have our address, just ask.
*Keep sending us the Lila stone pictures. If you dont have a stone, ask us and we will send you one. If you lost yours, just ask for a new one. We want to mail them out to you. The pictures help us to see that people are thinking of her. Even if you think your Lila stone is in a place we wouldnt care about, just send a picture. Yeah we want all of the states, but we really want to see where the Lila stones are in everyday life too.
*Ask anyone who has been around us, we are not unapproachable. We can go out to dinner and have conversations like anyone else. Just ask how we are doing. It goes a long way.
*If you have not done anything and do not know what to do that would help us, do something. Avoiding us is the worst thing to do, especially if you care about us and Lila. We need it more than you can imagine. Even if you have been missing in action for weeks, it doesn't take much to just send us a text message and shed some light on our usually gloomy day.
*Don't assume in the future that if we ever have another child that our life will be fixed. Lila will always be missing. Any other child will always be missing their big sister.
*Try to remember that we have been completely traumatized by this situation. We did not see it coming, we never had any clue that something was going to go wrong until the minute that Lila was born. Even then they told us that she would be going home and that she might just be "bad at math." Then we were told she was going to die. This has been the worst kind of experience anyone can deal with. If our actions dont make sense to you, dont judge us, they don't really make sense to us either. We are not the same people we were before this happened. We just want our baby back. We are trying to figure this out ourselves.
*We are overly sensitive right now, so just keep that in mind.
This picture is from the day we found out that Lila was going to be a girl