Also, I haven't really been in the
writing mood. I try and nothing comes out. I have about twenty drafts saved on my blog dashboard that are little more than main ideas with little to no sentence structure.
Part of it is stress related.
Work has been crazy lately and I've been working a lot of overtime. It is
good to be busy, but it is also exhausting.
The other part is more emotional
than anything, and just makes me sad. For the last three weeks, I've been
counting down the days…until today. October 8th was my due date.
I went to a wedding over the
summer, and one of my mom's friends took me aside and asked me how I was
doing. At first I didn't know what she was talking about, and I was all,
"I'm fine!" Then she confided that she, too, had a miscarriage decades
earlier.
"How are you doing? How
are you doing really?" she asked.
I paused. This was back in
June when - honestly - I was still a wreck. Physically I was experiencing
frequent heart palpitations and inexplicable weight gain, and emotionally I
felt hollow. Like a complete failure and waste of space.
"Does the pain ever go
away?"
"Not really, but it does get
easier. You will never forget, though. Whenever you see
a child celebrating a birthday around the time yours should have
been born, you will remember. You will imagine how old they would have
been, milestones they should be reaching, lost teeth. And later, when you
are my age, you will think of them at graduation ceremonies and weddings and
the birth of grandbabies. There will always be little reminders.
But with time, I promise, they will sting less. Although, the ache...the
ache will never truly go away."
So much of what she said resonated
with me. Since the miscarriage, there hasn't been a day that I haven't
thought about where I would have been in my pregnancy. Symptoms I would
have been experiencing. When I hit what should have been the 37 week
mark, I started thinking about whether or not I would have gone into labor on
my own, scheduled a C-section at 39 weeks or insisted on trying for a
VBAC. I've stared at other women's pregnant bellies with a combination of
misplaced resentment and longing.
It's been a very difficult 28
weeks. I have so many more white hairs now.
But here we are: D Day.
If that little boy hadn't died in my womb, he'd be here by now. And yet...it
is just another Wednesday in October.
Things have gotten better,
though. Really. The heart palpitations now have an explanation
(benign heart murmur and PVCs), and that random weight I gained
disappeared - literally - overnight in late July. I had
complained to several doctors about the 10-12 pounds, and not one of them
took me seriously. They just told me it was most likely because I was
getting older or eating more because I was still depressed about losing the
baby. No one would even consider that it was hormonal or water-related, which
was crazy-making. I was oh-so literally
running until I bled trying to get it off, and borderline starving myself.
I had all but given up hope, and then *poof*. The water went away, the
PVCs all but stopped and I finally felt like my body was starting to get back
to normal.
Emotionally, though, I still have plenty of moments.
For instance…
…Trevor and I became Godparents on
September 21st, and Banner absolutely adores his God sister, Abby. Banner and I have taken her to the
Arboretum on playdates, and he loves to push her stroller and check on
her. One time, at lunch in August, she was fussy
with reflux and red faced with tears. Banner wanted so badly to help her feel better that he covered her infant carrier and feet with stickers. Since then he asks frequently to go see "Baby Abby". He will hold her hand
and smile at her, and Abby will stop crying and smile back when she sees
him. It melts my heart to see them
together, and I can’t help but tear up when I think that he was supposed to be
a big brother by now.
Or…
…Back before Banner was born, my
mother bought a newborn Santa outfit.
Ban was supposed to arrive before Christmas, but was stubborn and showed
up nearly two weeks late. When he
finally arrived in January, it never occurred to me (blame first time
parenthood) to shove him in the tiny little outfit for a photo before he was
way too big for it. Something I’ve
always regretted. When I found out I was
pregnant back in January, one of the thoughts that made me happy was having
another opportunity to use the never worn Santa outfit. After all, the timing would have been perfect
with the holiday’s right around the corner.
Maybe an announcement photo? It
is a silly thing to be sad about: an
unused Santa onesie. But I am. I tear up when I think about it sitting in a bag in attic with the tags still attached.
Maybe tomorrow I'll find my words and finish one of those drafts on my dashboard.
Here's to hoping. Here's to tomorrow.
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