This month is your due date. It’s today actually. For the past few days I can’t help but think about how excited I was to be carrying you.
From the moment I knew I was hesitant, you see I had been pregnant many times but miscarriage was a reality we faced a few times. But it was always right around 6 weeks. So I held my breath and waited, 6 weeks passed and I let go. I let myself get excited. I let myself even book an ultrasound, I couldn’t wait to see you.
Then we hit 7 weeks! It seemed surreal I was excited. I think because a part of me had assumed we were all done having babies. A part of me had made peace and trusted the Lord. But now, you were here and I felt like this was a gift! I got so excited I told the kids, they got so excited for you!
Week 9 came and ultrasound week! I was excited. I even took your brother because dad had to work and I wanted someone else to celebrate in the moment with. He was most proud. I’ll never forget it.
And then. I knew. When they finally found you on that big screen you were too tiny. There was no movement. They started asking my dates, maybe I was wrong, maybe I was off on my dating. But I wasn’t. In my heart I knew it was over, I knew you were gone.
They called you a missed miscarriage. Referring to you in cold clinical terms like conception tissue and an embryo that was no longer growing. It felt awful. Inside my heart was breaking and I felt like my body was to blame.
I decided to wait and let you come out naturally I couldn’t bear with the thought of doing anything else. I guess a small part of me held some hope it was all going to be ok. I prayed for whatever to come would, and that I could be strong enough to handle it at home. They said it would happen naturally. But nothing feels natural about having your baby die inside of you.
I wasn’t prepared for the waiting. I wasn’t prepared to have my body start slowly bleeding a week later and be told that it was going ok without being checked out. I wasn’t prepared when you did decide to leave my body but also start hemorrhaging and need to go to an emergency room.
And let me tell you, emergency rooms are not a place to have a dead baby. They weren’t prepared, they didn’t know what to do. Sitting in a bed bleeding uncontrollably waiting for them to do something anything felt like even more pain lumped into your loss. I wasn’t prepared to have to fight to bring you home. Wrapped in a paper towel and finally given a ‘hazardous waste’ bag to place your tiny self in.
Finally they stopped the bleeding with medication and then I was allowed to go home. I was crushed with the weight of the loss and now the trauma of how everything had been treated at a hospital, a place that is supposed to offer comfort and care. I had been so used to being treated as a new mom giving birth many times, nothing ever like this.
We buried you. I wanted to keep you, I know you weren’t really here anymore, I knew rationally that heaven was your home now. But it still felt like I could not let go.
It felt so final. But at least it felt more human. To your daddy and I you weren’t just tissue. You were our little girl. And we desperately missed your presence.
A few weeks ago your tree started turning red. It was how I chose it. A red maple. Each October a visual reminder of your beautiful soul lost to us too soon.
It’s a small tree, because you were small, you would be so small still being born this week. So each year as it grows I’ll be reminded of who you might have been. How you would have brown. Each year I’ll stop each October I’ll admire the beauty of a changing season and how sometimes goodbyes can be filled with hope and promise. Those bright red leaves will be a reminder that you were loved and you are missed, even if I can’t see you anymore, even if I never got to cradle you and kiss your sweet head. In my heart I’ll hold the memories of those 9 weeks where I carried you, and waited for you.
Today as I sit with my thoughts I feel alone, sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who misses you, who thinks about you. It’s hard when you feel the weight of the grief and quietly wonder who you would have been. It’s hard missing you and always being the one who brings it up. It feels isolating. It’s hard when the world keeps moving and you want to hold onto a day, to sit in your grief and be still.
So today on your due date I want you to know I miss you. That I remember this was supposed to be your big day, and it is not lost on me that you would have been born sometime this week. That my body is missing you, and my heart feels the emptiness of your loss.
I will always be your mama.
October is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. 1 in 4 pregnancies will end in loss. If you or someone you know has experienced a loss there is hope and healing.
https://www.marchofdimes.org/find-support/topics/miscarriage-loss-and-grief
Colleen Smith, LMHC, NCC 