When you first get pregnant, the doctors tell you "congratulations, but you need to be aware of how often miscarriages happen" but then the risk of miscarriage ends. you relax. You start to plan the rest of your life. You hear about SIDS and how to prevent it, what lowers the risk etc. But no one tells you, that in that 3rd trimester everything can go wrong. That one day, for no apparent reason, they discover your baby has no heartbeat. In my case it was less than 24 hours after I heard his heartbeat,
The morning before Oliver died, I had this moment where I was perfectly happy. It was Friday morning, and David drove me to the doctor for a routine checkup. My blood pressure was good, and the baby's heart beat was strong. It was finally FINALLY starting to be spring. I was 31 weeks along, with less than 10 weeks to go, and as we pulled up at home we discovered that overnight the blossoms in our yard had bloomed. And there was this moment, this perfect moment where everything was wonderful, and perfect and good.
And the thing that was the best about that day, was knowing that this Friday was so close. The (approximate) date that I got to meet the little life that I already felt I knew so well. My baby bear. The bear cub.
And now as this date gets closer and closer, the loss almost feels worse. It feels sharper and more real than it did in the first foggy few days we left the hospital with nothing but a box. At first all I could do was sleep, Then there were a few good weeks. The hormones from the pumping kept dumping pacifying relaxing chemicals into my brain. And I felt like I was really possibly helping.
My goal with pumping was to do it for the 6 weeks that I was told it would take my body to heal, So I pumped for just over 5 weeks and took most of the last week to gradually wean my milk production. As the happy hormones have faded, the world seems to have sharpened a bit. All of a sudden the seconds that I am alone feel emptier, and cold. The times I am distracted seem more like my old life, the life where we didn't have a son. Before.
And now he should almost be here. Friday is the day I should have been looking forward to for what felt like my whole life, and instead I am dreading it. Instead of holding my son in my arms and feeding him and protecting him and singing to him, I am holding his memorial. I am going to look out at all the faces of all the people who would have loved him, who loved him already, and together we will mourn the fact that we will never know him. No one will ever hear his voice, or get to touch his face again, or watch him grow.
On Friday it will be real. He should be here, and instead he is gone.
