What Should Have Been

Saturday and Sunday, December 9 & 10, 2006 (written Monday morning)

Dear Angel Baby,

The weekend was sad and seemed to take forever. Saturday morning, I woke up and my first thought was of you, as it has been for over two months. For a split second, I was happy. Then my second thought was that you were gone. I started to cry and Daddy was already awake and hugged me for a little while. We went downstairs and I watched some tv and slept some more. We kept talking about getting dressed and going somewhere, but it just never happened.

We watched a movie on tv and there all of a sudden a commerical came on for forumula and the cutest baby in the world snuggled next to its mother. I picked up the remote and threw it at the wall, leaving a scuff mark and popping the batteries out. Daddy started to say something and then just stopped. I stormed out of the room, my head pounding, my heart aching.

By evening time, I was still feeling pretty nauseous and couldn’t eat any dinner. I remember thinking it was really unfair that you were gone and I still had to feel so awful.

On Sunday morning, Daddy suggested breakfast at my favorite restaurant, the Totem. I felt a little hungry and so we went to have breakfast. It tasted really good, but unfortunately, I couldn’t keep it down. I cried in their small little bathroom because the myth that morning sickness means a healthy baby is one of the cruelest lies I know.

We went to do some Christmas shopping after that. It was weird because getting out of the house and into bustling crowds meant that I couldn’t cry and I almost felt as if this whole miscarriage thing had been a bad dream. I still felt pregnant and I hadn’t had any spotting. Maybe the doctor was wrong? I knew in my heart that this wasn’t true, but I know denial is part of grieving, and that is definitely what I was feeling on Sunday.

I felt as if the whole weekend was a bad dream. I kept waiting for someone to wake me up. I remembered how discombobulated I felt after my nap on Friday and I had this fantasy that I had never woken up from that nap, but I would at any minute and it would be before the appointment. Only this time, the appointment would go well and we would continue on our happy lives, going to tell Grandma Jan about you and happily celebrating Christmas.

I think about that a lot, Sweetheart. I think about how there is this alternate universe somewhere, where Dr. S moved the probe and said, “Oh, there’s the heartbeat. 160 beats per minute. Measuring perfectly.” Daddy takes my hand, I cry a little, we ask for extra pictures. Then we come home, I cut the pictures carefully and put them in the little ornaments for Grandma Jan and Grandma Evelyn. We pack quickly with a quiet excitement, both of us thinking about telling them. We drive in the car, grumble a bit about the traffic through town, listen to Christmas carols, and I cry because one of the songs hits my pregnant heart as sad, but it is an indulgent weep, and really I am happy inside. We get into tGrandma's house and we can’t wait, we give them the ornaments, they start to laugh and cry and call Nancy and Lisa and Aunt Mary. Everyone comes over, we are so blissful. We are so happy.

But of course, I don’t live in that alternate universe. I live here. Where you are gone and nothing changes that. I don’t want to live here anymore.

Love,
Mommy