In Loving Memory

I've been struggling for weeks to try and figure out what I was going to "do" today. Today marks two years since we lost our first child, our baby boy. And while I couldn't be more grateful for the daughter we are soon to have, there is a piece of my heart that will always belong to that precious child, in a way that no one besides another mother who has lost a baby could ever understand.

My heart and soul was wrapped up in that pregnancy. We waited five years before starting to try for him, and I spent a very long, hard year waiting for Kolt to decide he was ready to try because I decided I was ready before he was. I spent month after month hoping I was pregnant only to find out I wasn't. And then blissfully, one sweet day....I was.

We told our whole families that first week after we found out. It was such a joyous occasion. I was pregnant for almost 13 weeks, I was sick, throwing up multiple times daily, I was pregnant in every sense of the word, until I wasn't.

The day we found out the baby had no heart be was the worst day of my life. I'll never forget the feeling when we realized that we would not be actually having a baby. Having to call everyone and "untell" them was one of the worst experiences I have ever been through. But I survived through it, and I will survive through worse if I have to.

Now it seems though, that this baby's memory lives on only in my heart. I was the only one who really ever got to experience his life. Other's knew about it, were happy about, but I felt it, I lived it, I suffered through it. And now two years later, his very short life seems of little consequence to anyone but me.

I was asked earlier this week by someone how long it would be until I "got over" this. That two years later, the thoughts and memories of that experience still shouldn't haunt me, or hurt me, that I should be happy for what I do have and stop reflecting on the past. Ouch. How do you explain to someone, someone who should understand, that you miss someone that was in your life so briefly, so much? That I think about the fact that he would be 18 months old soon, that he would be walking and talking and bringing joy to our life that we never thought possible. How are you just supposed to "get over" that?

I feel like I'm doing SO much better than I ever have been. That I'm happy with my life and where it is, where it's going, and so unbelievably grateful for this baby girl we are about to have. But is it wrong to think, reflect, and mourn on the days leading up to and the day of his loss? Am I just supposed to think about it quietly, to myself, and not tell anyone because that means I'm focusing on it too much? Maybe so.

I am trying very much to focus on the positives in my life, and to really think outside of myself and realize that even though losing my babies has been a tragic event in my life, things could be so much worse than they are and truly I need to grateful and stop living in the past for them. I'm torn with that because I don't want to forget them, they are and always will be a part of me, but I'm hoping that I'm getting to a point where they no longer define who I am, because for years they have. Losing those babies completely changed me, it broke me. I was bitter and hurt and angry for a very very long time. And I know I'm coming to a point in my life where this is no longer the case, but I just don't want to forget them. They don't have to be what makes me who I am, but I don't want to stop thinking about them and just pretend like they never existed. How do I find that balance?

So this was the only thing I could think to do today. I think a grand total of about 15 people read this, and so that's not really that many other people besides myself that will think of him today. But I just want everyone to know that however brief a time he was here, that child touched my life, and I will always love him.