Life in Stepping Stones

Thursday. It was supposed to be a good day. I was so excited. I was nearly 14 weeks pregnant and I was hoping I may even get a guess at the gender. I was just so excited.

We got to the doctors office and I waited in the room playing with Bailey who had been acting up all afternoon but he was finally calm. He was having fun looking at the fish on the big TV. After a 40 minute delay for my appointment they called my name. I was giddy. We were going to see the baby again.

I sat down and I said, “Are you able to tell us the gender?” The doctor said she couldn’t at this point but she could give us a guess. Then she plopped that cold jelly onto my stomach and I looked at Bailey, who was smiling, and Gwith who was smiling too. I saw the baby. Bailey pointed and said, “Baby!” He was so excited. We all were. And then the doctor didn’t play the heartbeat. I wondered why. Maybe the sound wasn’t working for a second and she was fixing it. Then were those words. “I have some bad news.”

I keep reliving it in my head. I can’t unsee it. The horror on my husband’s face, the worry on my son’s. Just like that, everything was gone. The excitement, the joy, everything. Ripped away in a matter of seconds with those five little words. I couldn’t even believe it. I still don’t want to believe it. I always worried that my second pregnancy would end like this because that’s how my mom’s ended too, but I shrugged it off as a paranoid worry. I guess I was right all along. Maybe deep down I always knew. I never worried when I was pregnant with Bailey. I knew that whole time it was okay…and I even feel it now. I don’t feel worried about the next one. But this one, this one I always worried about.

It just hurts so bad and I don’t even know how to process these feelings right now. It’s like a nightmare I just can’t escape from. I thought I was in the clear. I had seen the baby just days before the second trimester officially began. I thought I was in the clear. Apparently, the baby passed about two weeks ago but that’s not possible. We had just gone and seen the baby with a big heartbeat two weeks ago. It was there. It was okay. And then it wasn’t. It must’ve happened just moments or days after we saw it.

We’ve spent these past couple of weeks so happy. Announcing to our friends. Bailey took out his paints to paint the nursery walls. He made a little picture frame for the baby. He took me into the baby’s room two nights ago and lied on the floor with me, wanting to sleep in “baby’s room”. He snuggled up to my belly every night to kiss baby and saying “Night night baby.” And I just keep replaying it all over and over and over again in my head.

How did this all happen? Why? My husband says it’s because the baby must’ve had some abnormality and it would’ve been too sick for this world, so it couldn’t come into it. I’m sure he’s right. And yet, it feels like I did something terribly wrong. It feels like my body failed me. Maybe if I was better at taking my prenatal vitamins, maybe if I didn’t take that lukewarm bath where I kept pouring in more cold water in paranoia that it would be too hot… maybe if I didn’t do this, or if I had only done that…

I know it’s not logical. I know my husband is right that there’s nothing I could’ve done. That I did everything right and the chromosomes just weren’t what they should’ve been. But it still feels like my fault somehow.

Today, I’m going to the hospital where I will have a procedure done to remove… I can’t even type it. But once it’s over, maybe I can try to move forward. I keep trying to think positively. Think of all of the things we can do over these next few months before we try again, and we will be trying again, soon. For the first time since we’ve been married, Gwith finally can take a vacation with me without having the stress of work. He can finally take a real weekend off and we can enjoy each other’s company. Now, we can plan some vacations over the next few months. Maybe we were just meant to finally have some time together. We can stay somewhere and cuddle by the fireplace and have a romantic evening without the stress of our old business. We can travel to New York before Avenue Q closes in the spring and Gwith can finally see it the way it was meant to be seen (not that crappy small LA theater version we saw years ago). Or we can go to Bora Bora. I’ve always dreamed of going there and it seemed a couple years down the line for us but maybe we can go… That would be nice. Nice and warm. Relaxing. Romantic. Or we can take Bailey on a road trip and I can participate in all of the fun activities. We can take him to the mountains and I can go tubing with him. He can try to ski on the bunny slope and he can throw snowballs at me and we can play. Back home, we can make family dinners together and sit together to eat because Gwith is now home at night, every night, and I won’t be gagging from the smells. There are so many things we can do. There are so many things…

But then my thoughts drift back. They drift back to all of the plans I had in my head about how this year was supposed to go. They drift back to the sacrifices I was happy to make by having this baby. Sure, I wanted to do all of those things but not like this. Not knowing what could’ve been.

I just want to escape. I want to escape this whole nightmare. I know eventually it will just be a chapter in my life. As my mom reminded me, with the one thing that helped a little to hear, if she hadn’t had her miscarriage, I never would’ve been born. Because of her miscarriage, she has me. And she has Bailey. And she has my husband as her wonderful son-in-law. One day, I’ll look back too. One day, we’ll have the baby we were meant to have and I’ll know too, that baby will be in our lives because this baby couldn’t be. This wasn’t meant to be and one day, I’ll come to accept that. But it doesn’t change how badly it all hurts right now.