Losing a baby.

What a ridiculous term. Lose. We didn’t lose anything. Why do we minimalize the grieving process by putting Disney names to it? “Oh,..she passed”. No, passing is what you do when you are stuck behind a 94 year old sunday driver in no hurry to get home to watch the football game. Died. Dead. If we are so afraid of saying the word ‘Death’, then why don’t we just say it how it is?…I had something special in my life, now it is gone and there is a big gaping hole where that something used to be, and even though I am tough and strong I cry like a kid sometimes just remembering what used to be.

I thought that words like death were supposed to sum all that up in a shorter effort so that in the midst of grieving you could say what happened without have to sob through a big long paragraph description, but now apparently death just means that we lost something.

Fetuses die. Just because its supposedly a common thing doesn’t mean that its easier for me. ‘They’ say that one in four fetuses self abort for a vastly varied number of reasons. I guess that later on it can potentially be comforting to know that you aren’t the only one going through something, but at the time it sucks..and just because it happened to someone else doesn’t mean it sucks less this time.

“It gets easier”…no..it doesn’t. We decided not to tell anyone this time. Why go through what we went through last time. Last time we did everything right. We bought all the right books, we started kicking around great baby names and we started thinking about ways to baby proof our very ‘non baby ready’ home. We did it all right and it all turned out wrong.

This time we took the test, then took it again, and then one more time just to be sure. Success. It was time to start moving forward again. No more dealing with feelings of being stuck in the mud with the world passing me by. After a very brief talk we agreed not to tell anyone. We wanted to wait until we were sure we were safe this time…we could wait until the sixth month right? So what if people thought Amanda was ‘filling out’ a bit. At least with no one knowing, we could control the excitement. We had no one to disappoint but ourselves this time.

I was working out of town when I got the phone call last week. “Its happening again”. No need to elaborate. When you have gone through it once, you just know when its happening again. It didn’t take long to realize that we needed friends around and that it was important to have family know what was going on. We really appreciate people praying for us and asking how we are doing. We had some good friends over this weekend who miscarried only a couple weeks ago, she said that nobody can ever really understand how to tell you that they are sorry for what you are going through unless you can see the same pain in their eyes. I agree, but I also appreciate it when people try their best to show that they are my friends and that they support us because you don’t always have to understand in order offer comfort and support.

Its with a heavy heart that I end this post. I feel that even though its understandable to try to stifle your excitement the second time around because you understand the possibilities of what could go wrong, its unfair to withhold any emotional attachment because of negative things that could happen. If you live your life wound up tight, worrying about what might go wrong, I think it will always be a struggle to fully enjoy things when they do go right. So I am glad that even though I tried my best to suppress my emotional attachment, when I sat on a log crying last week I was relieved to discover that I was already in love with another lost child. When we start withholding love in order to protect ourselves, we actually end up robbing ourselves as well as others of so much potential joy. Thanks to everyone who supported us last time, and we really do appreciate the encouraging support that we are receiving this time.  Its hard, but it helps make me more and more appreciative of the things I do have.

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