nothing new

I ran out of new things to say.

About once I week I think about posting here. At night when I'm rocking Elliot to sleep and smelling his head and feeling the weight of him change as he falls asleep on my chest, I think about how I should write something.

I miss Oliver every day. This is our second Christmas without him. This year he would be a toddler. Climbing. Talking.

I can't help but picture it. The family of 4 with the two little boys. Playing together. 4 stockings. 2 heads to kiss goodnight.

Its all the same things I have written before. The grief comes on hard at first painful and on waves, but then before you know it life heals over and you just have this deep scar that stays the same every time you look at it. Same scar. Same grief. Same love. Oliver, I still miss you.

I still wonder what you would be like. What your voice would have sounded like when you called me mama. But that's not new, I started wondering that from the beginning. From the day I found out I was pregnant, I wondered who you were. And I always will.

In a lot of ways losing your baby puts you on hold. At first your whole body is on hold. Your mind, even your heart seems to have stopped. But after that, when you start to do normal things and your life resumes, that part of you is still on hold. Still waiting to know someone you will never get to know. Still feeling phantom kicks sometimes at night. I will feel those kicks forever. The kicks I wished for so hard. Lying in the hospital bed waiting to be told what I already knew, that there wouldn't be anymore kicks.

I think the holidays bring the pain of loss to the surface more than normal days because they are the days we had pictured in our minds. You get pregnant and you start doing the math. How old will my baby be at Christmas. What will his first birthday be like. First day of school. First thanksgiving. Will he be old enough to walk? Will we have to baby proof the tree?

These moments are so vivid while you are lying in bed dreaming of your future with your child. Then as your baby gets older the real moments crowd them out. The first imagined Christmas gets replaced by the first real one.

So I will write the same feelings over and over. Cement the same thoughts I had of Oliver time and time again. The Christmas we should have had last year with our baby who was 5 months old (based on due date) or maybe the  7 month old we would have had if he had been born alive.

I will hold on to my what ifs . I will look at my scar and remember the wound. Remember what I lost. Remember what could have been. And those new, wonderful memories we will make with our amazing son, will be stored along side all the plans for what could have been.