Three Years

Dear Baby,

March is always a tough time for me, now. It's your Daddy's birthday and your little brother's birthday. He'll be two next week, which means it will be three years since we said goodbye to you, next week. I hate that the anniversary of his birth gets muddled up with the pain I still feel thinking of losing you.

He wouldn't be here without you, you know. We made him only a short time after you left us. But know, my little one, that having him here will never mean I forget you. I never do. You have another little brother now; a sweet, tiny two-month-old who can't take your place, either.

I love you, my little one, and I will always miss you.

Love,

Mama

1 year, 6 months

Dear Baby,

I miss you.

Love, Mom

1 year, 4 months

Dear Baby,

It’s been almost 1 year and four months since you left us. Last night, while we were cleaning the house in preparation for you grandmother’s arrival, I found your ultrasound photo tucked away. It’s such a beautiful picture of you. We can see the little light of your heart as it was beating.

I still wonder what you would’ve looked like, and if we would have been able to handle your disabilities. I still think about you every day. Keep watching over us. I promise your little brother will know about you.

Love,
Mom

Too Much Information

I’ve been burping like CRAZY all week. Now, normally, this wouldn’t seem like much of a big deal to most people, but the first month or so of my pregnancy, I couldn’t stop burping. I have no other pg symptoms, my period (if it’s even regular this month) isn’t due until around the 9th, and I wasn’t able to figure out what day I ovulated, if I even did. Yet thanks to the incessant burping, there is very little keeping me from freaking out completely.

ARGH, I wish my digestive system would stop giving me signals!

A welcome change

It's been 2 months now since my miscarriage and while some days are still bad - some days, the grief still flows so swiftly that I can't comprehend what's happened - other things are starting to return to normal.

-We took a trip to Switzerland to visit good friends.
-I'm picking up more hours at work. (Though I work mostly from home, so... hours from work?)
-I'm feeling able to knit baby things again. I'm more than a third of the way done with a sweater for my cousin's baby, who is due in July. Two months ago, it was painful to even think about knitting for a baby who wasn't mine.
-My creativity is starting to come back. I managed to design a pattern in this past month, though I think it still needs some tweaking. I'm considering cleaning up last year's NaNoWriMo, since I lost March (which is the editing month for those efforts) to my grief.
-Spinning is sounding fun again. And it's about time, my fiber stash has reached critical mass.

So with all of this returning to normal, maybe this blog should be something else, too. It's time to make this a place for me, not just for my grief.

Happy Mother's Day

To all those whose children are no longer on this earth, but who are mothers, nonetheless.

Thank you notes

I went to a bridal shower last week, a work friend who is getting married in May. It was a nice little gathering. Good food, good people. I managed to blank myself out when they talked about babies. It was only uncomfortable for a few minutes and the whole thing passed without incident.

And then today, the thank you note for my gift came. The bride-to-be hoped that the next shower for the workplace would be for me.

It was supposed to be. There's some chance that it may yet, of course, if nobody else decides to have kids or get married soon. But that simple sentence, from someone who knows nothing about what happened, stung horribly.