12 weeks day after tomorrow

…or it would have been.
12 weeks.
I feel like I have less right than others to feel this heart break. I mean, I have one right? And every one keeps telling me that. Is that the case? Or does it just mean that I know the real value of what I lost.
That I know that I lost.
Lost.
I know I lost the feeling of sharing the news. And sharing myself with someone else and feeling them grow and change and become some one. A person. My person.
Tomorrow was supposed to be the last day of notverywellconcealed secrets. Now it will be just another day that takes me further from. Further and further from.
Sigh. Another mark in the time line of my life. The days before. The days after.
Instead of 12 weeks day after tomorrow, I have two weeks since the first day after. And the count of all the days after began.

You slipped through our hands

Dear Olive,

Every time I hear the bridge of the song Sandcastles by Justin Roberts I tear up thinking of you. Which, considering it’s the only song your brother wants to have sung to him at bedtime, is often.

“We didn’t want you to go.
We just thought you should know.
She slipped through our hands,
just like a balloon
returns to the sky.
So Dad and I
knew you’d be
somewhere out in the sea,
in a million sandcastles to be.”

We had big plans, Olive. Big big plans. And they all got washed away. I only want to be the places we never went together. And I only want to be the places we’ve been. I want to keep you here with me forever. And I want to let you go too. It’s been a hard, hard week Olive. I miss you.

Love Mommy

it begins, the end.

Dear Olive,

Child of my heart. You’ll go from me today, but you’ll never leave me.

I’m so sorry we’ll never meet.

I love you very much.

Mommy

It’s the hope…

Loss. End. Final. I’m waiting for it to be done and done. D&C tomorrow then nothing.
What remains are the memories of going to bed talking quietly in the dark – is it a boy or girl? What will it be like? Don’t forget to say goodnight to Olive. The joy of seeing that second line emerge for the first time in the white nothing of the window after 2 minutes that seemed like 2 hours then waiting 6 hours that seemed like 6 months to test again to see if it would happen again, and again, and again.

I wish I had never wondered what we’d name it or thought about how we’d care for it or arranged the furniture in the room in my mind. Now I look in and only see what I wanted it to be. Only remember the 7 weeks it was, not all the time before when it wasn’t.
I’m coming to terms with the physical reality. I’m choosing to accept that this happens and that there was likely nothing I could have done. It’s a pointless game guessing – what I could have done differently? – And if he or she was not going to be well enough to make it all the way to the end of the pregnancy – better now than later.
I’m alright with the tears and the sadness and the pain. They’re almost comforting.
I know I’ll recover and my body will forget it was ever here.
It’s what could have been that’s keeping me up at night.
It’s the hope that kills you.

at least

At least it didn’t go further then end the same way
at least it didn’t happen in the middle of nowhere on our holiday
at least i wasn’t at the office
at least i did the best i could
at least i’m not alone
at least there are other people who understand how i feel
at least
at least
at least is not really helping yet. maybe tomorrow will be a better day.

decided on a d&c. booked for thursday. now i wait. a warm home for my lost little one for 2 more days.

at least i have this time to prepare to say a final goodbye.

it’ s bad news today, she said.

Dear Bubble2 – I learned today that your heart stopped beating and you stopped growing at 7w6d. That means you’ve been with me a week and a half and all this time I’ve been talking to you and patting your home and loving you and you were already gone.
I’ve been thinking up names and trying to guess if you’re a boy or a girl and living like you’re coming and you weren’t ever coming. And you weren’t still living.
So sad. I’m so sad to have to say goodbye to you. You were loved and wanted and cherished already even though you were just a little bean, or blueberry or olive or whatever you were when you started to not be. You maybe couldn’t hear us, but we called you Olive this week – as that’s the size you were supposed to be, but it looks like you never quite got there.
I used to say I could never get pregnant enough to lose a baby and I couldn’t imagine how horrible it would feel. Now that I have, I think perhaps the feeling i had not being able to get pregnant at all was better. Though that’s easy for me to say when Bubble1 is here after all that heartache and wonderful.
I suppose these few blissful weeks prior to today, this awful day, have been one of the great joys in my life. So I thank you for that joy, even though it has to end in such sorrow. And for that, I know that not being able to get pregnant is not better. I suppose that’s where the whole “better to have loved and lost” thing comes from. I tell you Bubble2, I have more than once questioned the validity of that statement.
We believed you were our last hope for another. We certainly don’t have the means or perhaps the fortitude to carry on. Though it breaks my heart to say good bye to you and to my hopes too so I reserve the right to change my mind on this issue.
I knew about 2 min into our ultrasound that things were not going right. The tech acted strangely. She told me to wait till the end for the results. I noticed her eyes welled up as she scanned. My tears started long before there was an absolute confirmation and even as they were streaming down my face a small part of me thought she would say – phew – there’s the heartbeat.
But no. It’s bad news today, the nurse said.
Bad news indeed.
It’s bad news to learn you have to say goodbye to someone who isn’t but is as loved as anyone who walks the earth.
I’ve done my fair share of losing in my life so I should be getting better at it. Not so, it seems.
Alas, my heart is broken open all over again. For you sweet Olive – lost, but not forgotten. Never forgotten.