15.3 weeks pregnant - 15.3 weeks since she's been gone

Ava has been gone for the same amount of time I was pregnant with her 15.3 weeks exactly... When I was pregnant with her it felt like the time was going so slow, first due to severe morning sickness and then due to the not knowing what was going on with our sick baby. 

How can that be? It already feels like so long since I held her in my arms. 

She is fully integrated into our family now, I am able to talk about her without being a mess and breaking down most of the time. The kids accept what happened but talk about her almost daily too. They comment when we drive past the hospital that she was born at and talk about the things they think she is doing in heaven. They discuss what she would look like and where she would have slept if she came home. Her place in our family is firmly cemented as out third child. 

I was so afraid that other people would forget about her, ignore her, pretend she never existed but I needn't have worried. Ava is brought up daily in the lives of my friends and family. Others have shared her story with their family and friends. In fact Ava is very well known - over 60,000 views of my blog in 4 months and her story is also easily found through Internet search engines. Her life has touched others all around the world even to countries I had never even heard of! Other baby loss mumma's have contacted me and shared their baby birth and story with me. As isolating as this is, and as much as I wish no one else experienced it, it is nice to know I am not alone. 

Even a prenatal diagnosis of cystic hygroma/lymphatic malformation and hydrops has come up when people share their stories - and it is considered very rare. 

Losing Ava has opened up another world to me, I wish I knew nothing about it, but I do, and now I want to join other mummies in sharing their children. I want to advocate for the babies who never came home. I want to support other families who have been given poor/fatal prenatal diagnosis'. I want to educate the community and the medical profession about what they can do to support these families left distressed and heartbroken. 

I am going to continue giving blankets, clothes, nappies and hats to hospitals for these precious tiny bubs to be dressed and wrapped in. 

I'm going to continue to be Ava Grace's mum.