Chosing

I recently blogged about Betsy's Christmas Program at her little school and how much we all enjoyed that as a family. What I failed to mention is that we chose to attend Betsy's Christmas Program as opposed to something else that is important to Tony and myself.

Since the girls passed away Tony and I have belonged to a parent support group from the hospital they were born at. Our support group is called P.R.I.D.E. Which stands for Parents Responding to Infant Death Experience. We have always enjoyed our meetings with them and twice a year they always do a big memorial service. One for Spring and one for Christmas. The administrators of the group will make special Christmas ornaments for each individual baby lost and that is something we look forward to bringing home and putting on our tree to honor our girls who will be forever missed at Christmastime. They put on a very special program, complete with sweet songs, poems about missing our babies and read each baby's name for all to hear.

Well this year the P.R.I.D.E. Christmas Program was on the exact same night, at the exact same time as Betsy's Christmas Program. When I received the invitation in the mail my heart just broke. There was no way to make it possible to go to both programs. So we had to chose. Of course we were going to chose Betsy's program. It wasn't even a second thought. But to even have to think of the circumstances and that we would literally have to chose between our children was a pretty hard pill to swallow.

We know that there will be many, many more P.R.I.D.E. Programs and there will be many, many more Christmas Programs for Betsy. But it just sucks that we had to miss paying a special tribute to Grace and Olivia. I am so torn up about this. It's sad that their special ornaments sat there without anyone hanging them on the tree for all to see. It's sad that when their names were read aloud there was no one there to know them, to cry for them, to remember them. Yes, we had a blast at Betsy's program and without a doubt I know we made the right decision, of course we will always chose Betsy first, but her sister's were pushed aside...something we have never had to do and something we never anticipated doing. It was almost a sad realization that sometimes Grace and Olivia just won't be as important. It's tough to deal with that. I could never imagine our lives WITHOUT them in it, then our lives WITH them in it. I picture all three of them in our sweet little Betsy. She is so amazing to me and as I watched her dance and play around the stage at her Christmas Program, I remembered just how far she has come and just how important she is in our lives. I can't miss one second of her little life. To think of her being born so tiny and to be a survivor of three little blessings...wow. Our love for all three of our girls can never be expressed in black and white.