Sad

I feel sad tonight. I haven’t felt sad for a long time. I've mostly been angry, ever since it was suggested to me that I could feel that way and it was okay to do so. But tonight I feel sad and I thought it was significant and that I should write about it. (Warning: This is rather long)

The same question has been asked to me several times in the past couple of weeks. It is, “What have you done, or are you going to do, to remember your baby?” This is a good question and one that I have no answers for. I’ve searched and searched through online support groups, literature, and people’s suggestions for some way to signify and remember the life of my baby. In a little over a month, November 8th to be exact, my little baby would have been due. As the time comes closer the weight of it all weighs down on me more and more. The nature of a miscarriage loss is that the child itself is seemingly not remembered by anyone but the parents who had begun to know that baby. No one has pictures they display or memorabilia with the baby’s name. No one brings up the subject of that child or laughs about memories. In the case of early miscarriage the parents are robbed of even knowing if their child is a boy or a girl and therefore have no name and must resort to the excruciatingly painful practice of calling their baby an “it”. Imagine your child, one day, suddenly not being there anymore…and only you remember that they ever existed.

Thinking about November 8th makes me cry. But I think that thinking about everything after that makes me cry even harder. I was supposed to have a baby only a few weeks before this coming Thanksgiving, instead I’ll be expected to go to my brother and sister in-laws home and watch them celebrate with their baby. Christmas was supposed to be “babies first Christmas” for us and we were going to spend a quiet holiday alone as a family, together here in Lubbock. Now I’m getting asked if we are coming home to Utah? When I avoid the question or try and explain that we might not, I get pressure to change my mind or hurt comments about not wanting to be with the family. But all I can think about is spending Christmas watching some very special people in my life celebrate the births of their own little babies as they get to stay home for their “quiet holiday alone”. I’m not sure I’m strong enough for that and I'm not sure if they deserve my sadness (and possible anger) to taint what should be a blissfully happy event.

I want so desperately to remember that my baby lived, even if it was just inside of me. I want to remember that I am a mom. That I’ve been a mom since the moment I found out that little baby was inside of me. But somehow planting a tree or buying a piece of jewelry in honor of my little baby just doesn’t seem to do it justice. This was a child, a human being that was ripped away from me in the most brutal way I can imagine. Purchasing a cold piece of metal to place against my skin seems almost profane in comparison.

People say, “at least you were only 13 weeks along and not further.” As though only 13 weeks of my life were changed as a result of this. Tyler and I had plans for the next 20 years…in detail. I spent the last 9 years of my life in the pursuit of education and experience in the field of child education and now I can’t even bare the thought of walking into a school, let alone teaching in one. It’s been nearly 5 months since this happened and on more days than not I still feel so depressed and upset I can’t even get a stable job yet. A lot more than 13 weeks has been lost here. But only Tyler and I remember that. I guess maybe I’m too tired to be angry right now so I’m just sad and to tell you the truth I sort of want to be. Maybe that’s the only way I feel I can really remember my little baby was here.