yesterday

written on our due date

Yesterday I posted this on instagram. It was the first time I shared about our loss with people beyond our immediate family and those who had helped us during the IVF process (re: giving me numerous progesterone shots in the ass and sometimes driving me to/from a procedure where I needed sedation). I can’t articulate why now other than the significance of an important date for us, but I can articulate the why share question. Because I wish someone else had told me they had gone through this. Because I wish I had known someone else who survived this and remembered how to smile again.

Today (July 19) is the due date for the baby we lost at 12 weeks. We haven’t talked about it much — not because we want to forget, but because the remembering has been so full of sadness, the kind that makes most people uncomfortable. 

[I feel compelled to justify our grief. We were one week away from second trimester, when it is “safe” to tell people. We had ultrasounds. We had finished our IVF protocol, over a hundred injections and so much damn scar tissue. But now, after a second loss, I know in my body that that those are all reasons that I tell other people, to explain the sadness. Now, after a second loss, I know it wasn’t how long the baby was with us but how deeply we saw and believed in a future with this baby in our lives. This future was so very real to us.]

This day will always be the day we will not be bringing our baby into this world. A day that feels normal to everyone but us. 

Cells from a fetus stay in the gestational parent’s body even after the baby is no longer there. We are not the same people we were before. We live with a grief that is impossible to ignore. We are hopeful this is not the end of our story. But we know that nothing is promised. 

So, for now, we continue to love each other. To remember the beautiful moments that our sweet bug brought into our life. A baby who was real to us and will not be forgotten.