The TRUTH About Motherhood

Search results for: “miscarriage”

Stream of Consciousness ~Lingering in Loss
Loss~ Sometimes it crashes over me like a giant wave; swallowing me up and drowning me.
I am all alone with this secret sadness.
Everyone thinks I’ve forgotten & that I’ve gotten over my miscarriage.
My pregnancy that I never got to share with the people I love.
My baby who I never got to welcome into the world; into our family.
Life carries on but I can’t forget. It’s always right here with me.
It’s in my heart and bubbles to the surface and almost chokes me on certain occasions.
When I see a pregnant woman who is about as far along in her pregnancy as I should be; my heart silently breaks.
I am not bitter. I am envious that she does not know the pain of loss.
I would not wish the loss of a pregnancy or a child on my worst enemy.
I am sad for my baby that I will never know. I feel cheated.
I am pissed that this happened to me.
I long for what I should be experiencing too.
No one hears me. When I lie awake at night unable to sleep & one of my daughters comes into get me, I lie there looking at my 2 beautiful babies and I yearn for something I’ll never know, someone I’ll never meet: my baby.
The little life that lived inside me for only 10 weeks, who I loved more than words can ever convey.
Loss is not fair.
Why did this happen to me?
Everyone gets to move on with their life but I can’t. I’m stuck in my loss being swallowed whole and I don’t think I’ll ever break free.
I feel like everyone has forgotten; no one remembers or cares to remember the little life that almost was but my heart breaks and yearns daily to feel my baby in my arms and at my bosom. I never will.
I try to carry on & be strong because that’s my nature. I’m not the victim who sits around and lets life happen to her.
Though my miscarriage immobilized me completely for a month.
Loss has crippled me emotionally.
I pack my pain up in a tiny box & push it way, way down.
I try not to drone on or linger too long. No one likes a Debi Downer but I’m down, down in the pits of hell alone.
Not every day or constantly but the pain of loss lingers just beneath the surface; haunting me from within.
Crying into my pillow in the middle of the night. Screaming, yelling hating the pain, wishing I didn’t know this pain so intimately.
I don’t know how people carry on normally after their loss.
I don’t know how or when life feels normal again. When does my heart stop aching?
When can I stop pretending to be okay and actually be okay?
There will always be a hole in my arms where my baby should be.
There will always be a part of our family missing in my heart.
I will never be the same.
I will never be okay.
My loss is my constant companion.
Photo
2012/07/22
When a Tattoo Heals Your Heart after a Loss
Today is November 24^th and for the first time, in a long time, I don’t feel lost. For me, it’s an annual day of retrospection; of looking back at what could have been, what might have been and, honestly, what should have been. While many of you are coming out of your tryptophan coma this morning or maybe sleeping off the remnants of yesterday’s all night Black Friday power shopping, I’ll be marking time but I won’t be sad. Not today.
Today, I pause to remember. In the past that could have meant many different things. Some years, it involved pills or booze to numb the pain and a day in bed. Some years, it meant Netflix and sobbing or a welcomed distraction. Some years, I hardly remember at all. Some years, it felt like the anniversary of the end of the world. But none of it ever seemed real because, though my heart shattered from the pain of the reality my mind was never quite able to digest the loss of what my eyes never got to see, what my arms never got to hold and what my lips never got to kiss.
I never got to touch his cheek. Kiss his warm gooey forehead. I never got to smell his head or feel his heartbeat beating next to mine. I never got to feel him wiggle in my arms. I never even got to see his eyes fixed upon me suspended beyond all space and time like only a newborn child can do to his mother. I got nothing. I was cheated in the worst possible way.
I felt failure. I felt like I had a very vivid bad dream. The worst dream ever. The dream in which every possibility of happiness was on the horizon and just as quickly snatched away. I felt empty and sad and mad and angry. I wanted to punch the world and sob and be held and left alone, all at the same time. But I never had closure. I know now that I never will. There is no closure for this situation. It’s an open-ended question of what might have been.
Worse, I had nothing. In many ways, it feels like he only existed to me, like some cruel imaginary friend, a figment of my imagination conjured up just to break me down. It felt like to everyone else…everyone…he was nothing more than a glob of cells and he was gone before most knew he even existed. No harm, no foul. But there was. I was harmed. I was egregiously fouled. He was real, as real as my other 2 children are to me.
You know how I spent that first November 24, 2012? It was Thanksgiving, I hosted 40 people. It had been 6 months since my miscarriage. I had to go on living. But on that day, my heart was raw. I was vulnerable and my sanity was being held together by a stick of bubble gum and a tic tac. It wasn’t going to hold.
I just kept telling myself, you just have to make it through dinner. Then it happened. My 1-year-old nephew was running around my house when my someone (I’m not naming names because it was a total accidental foot in mouth moment) looked directly at me (on November 24, 2012), and said, “Don’t you miss the sound of little feet running around your house?” I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t speak, for if I did, all the tears that I’d been holding back for the past 6 months every time someone said something stupid, or I ran into a pregnant friend, or baby Center send me an alert would surely come pouring out and drown me dead right there on the spot.
I knew I needed something, more than fragility as a souvenir of my third child. I needed a way to move through this grief without losing my mind. I decided that I a permanent mark on my body that reflected the permanent mark on my soul. I didn’t want closure. I wanted something more but, at the time, I wasn’t even sure what that was.
After 5 years, I knew what I wanted and I knew I had to have it before November 24^th (what should have been a birthday). I was compulsive in my pursuit. My brother, Jose Cruz, an established tattoo artist obliged my desperately grasping heart last Friday. I needed this like I need air to survive.
What was this life-altering body modification? It is a story, wrapped in a metaphor and held by my heart. They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
Explanation; the big bird is the Big Guy, the next bird is me, the third bird is our Gabs and the fourth bird on the branch of our family tree is our oldest, Bella. We are all looking in the direction of the tiny baby bird, that we never got to hold, as he flies away.
I wanted it all done in black silhouettes because sometimes our family feels like a shadow of its former self. We are not broken, but we are not whole without our baby bird. We remember. I remember every single day.
The baby bird is flying up towards a small heart within a heart. This is in reference to a line from my favorite E.E. Cummings poem I carry your heart with me; I carry it in my heart. It’s on my left arm so that they are always close to my heart.
[i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
Maybe you think this makes me sad. It doesn’t. In fact, it makes me immensely happy. I think it’s because for the first time ever, I can look down and see my entire family; all three of my children; my three little birds.
Maybe this makes me sound crazy? I honestly, don’t even care because it makes me feel whole again.
Through this tattoo, the baby who never lived outside of me lives on forever on my wrist surrounded by the family who loves and misses him. He was here. He is here, in my heart, forever and for always. I told my story without saying a word and maybe no one understands it but me, but that’s more than enough. The baby I lost was not a secret. I want the world to know he was here.
More importantly, I finally have something tangible, proof that I am the mother of three and not just two; even if it is only a tattoo of a portrait of silhouette birds.
2017/11/24
Living in the Purgatory of Loss
It’s been a crazy emotionally draining few weeks. The kind that makes you take stock in who you are, where you are and what your life has become. Weeks that makes you stop and catch your breath and reassess what is important to you.
On Tuesday evening in casual conversation, I asked a my daughter’s ballet teacher when she was due. She said Thanksgiving and just like that, I was punched in the gut. Thanksgiving last year was my due date, this year I should have a one-year-old sitting on my lap. I don’t. It’s not fucking fair! I just want to collapse into a pool of snot and tears and cry until I can’t cry anymore.
It all started last week when the Big Guy and I were having a conversation about the big things in life, already happening. He feels like all the big things have already happened for us. He specifically mentioned our children and though he never said it, I felt that it was unspoken that maybe our loss was on his mind, even if he didn’t realize it. This made me sad because, I already blame myself and on some days the loss is too much to bear.
Then I had to take Bella to the hospital for passing out cold in my arms and for those split seconds I thought she was dead. I really did and my whole world exploded like a nuclear bomb went off and wiped me off the face of the earth. As I sat there in the emergency room waiting to hear the results, my mind went back to that moment on May 1^st, 2012 when I sat on a stretcher waiting for them to wheel me back for my D & E. I remember seeing a mother holding her 18-month-old daughter on her lap as they awaited surgery for the child and I said to the Big Guy then, “At least I am not here with my sick child!”
I was thankful not to be sitting there with a sick Bella or Gabi waiting for them to be wheeled back to get surgery when in fact I was sitting there with my baby in my belly with no heartbeat. I had completely separated myself from the situation and that is how I’ve survived the loss. The Big Guy looked at me like I was crazy. I probably was but when I sat there with Bella on that Thursday morning, I felt more helpless and useless than I’ve ever felt before.
The baby that we lost has been on my mind a lot lately; practically daily. Maybe its because its fall and I know that the due date is right around the corner. Maybe it has something to do with seeing beautiful pregnant women everywhere I go. Maybe it has been triggered by the losses of my friends in the past few weeks. Or maybe I have still not yet let it go.
When I first lost our baby, I was terrified of ever feeling that pain again. I still am but every once in awhile I see a glimpse of what if? I allow myself to wonder. But I’m older now and so are the girls and it feels like the gap is unsurmountable. That part of our life has been forcefully surrendered and I know I could not survive another loss. That I know for sure. It put me in a very dark place that I never want to revisit. But still it hurts, I don’t know if it will ever stop hurting; the loss of our unexpected blessing.
When will I stop marking time by events of loss? I feel like I am coping well and not dwelling on the sadness and then just as suddenly, my heart is in my throat and BOOM! emotional time bomb.
Maybe we should have tried for another baby. Maybe it would have helped take up some of the room in this hole in my heart and then I realize, no, you can’t fill that void. I just have to learn to live in my loss and not being able to give my daughter a little brother or sister. When will I stop feeling like I need to be still and hide on these annual occasions of conception, miscarriage and due date?
It’s all I have. I never got to hold my baby in my arms. I cling to these tiny milestones like they are my last breaths. When will I be able to exhale?
Our babies who have gone on to heaven may not be here in our arms but they are always in our hearts. During National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, please remember what we can never forget.
2013/10/15
There are Angels Among Us
Sometimes something unexpected happens, when you least expect it. Awhile back, my dear friend, Jessica Watson, asked me to join in on a pregnancy and infant loss memorial. I was happy to join in but when it came time to contribute my photo of me holding the last ultrasound of the baby that we lost, I just couldn’t do it. I’m still muddling through the muddy waters of loss and just when I think I may be getting to a point where I am less affected by our loss, I’m slapped upside my head with the realization that it’s still actually a gaping wound on my heart. But this is not about that open wound, this is about the amazing women who have held my hand, cradled my heart and come to my rescue. There are angels among us.
I’ve known these women for quite some time. Mostly we know one another through our blogs and social media. We’ve never met in person. I’ve never had the honor of hugging them or thanking them for what they have done for me. They are beautiful, humble and genuine to the core. We are connected, some through our shared wound and some who just have hearts so big that they completely envelope you when you are in animalistic pain and they soothe your soul with their kindness and caring.
They don’t know me. Not really. I am practically a stranger by most standards but it didn’t matter. They are not restricted by time and space, they are angels. What have they done, you ask? They are the type of women who see past what you are saying and see what you are feeling. When I had my miscarriage, so many wonderful friends online and in real life, sent me condolences and cried for my loss. They shared their stories and they eased me gently back into the world of the living when all I wanted to do was curl up and disappear. You can’t imagine how badly I wanted to just disappear from existence. I just felt like part of me had died on that day.
But these women have never forgotten. They check on me periodically, ask how I am doing and genuinely care what my response is. Erin (@ErinMargolin) is my first angel. This lady has done so much on so many different occasions that I will never be able to repay her kindness to me. There have been cards to make me smile when I thought I never would again.We may have never met but make no mistake, she is my sister. She is truly one of the most amazing human beings that I have ever known. You all know I don’t gush, so you realize that she must really be someone special and I am sure if you know her, you know this already. She is just a really great person. I don’t know how else to explain it. She is the standard by which all people should hold themselves to. @mommaKiss sent me a card, in the mail and to my house. I know it sounds like such a simple thing but for someone to take the time to choose a card, sign it and mail it is a big deal these days. It meant so much to me and it made me feel connected when I felt disjointed from the world. Jessica (@JessBWatson) this dear and beautiful soul, who deals daily with the pain of her own loss, made time in her life to check on my during mine and , more importantly, to check on me still. She knows the lingering pain of loss. Sunday night, she participated in a lantern launch in memorial for our babies in heaven and I had no idea that she was going to include me until I received a photo via tweet of the lantern this sweet woman launched in memory of our baby that we lost before we ever got to hold. This small gesture has renewed my faith in humanity. It meant more to me than words can ever convey.
Believe me when I tell you that my online friends are real and there are angels among us.
Photo Courtesy of Jessica Watson/ Four Plus an Angel
2012/10/15
Lost Baby

Lost baby. No crying. You’re lost to me. Helpless, my only option to carry on. 4 years ago today, I lost my world as I knew it and what was to become of it. My life was shattered into a million pieces and scattered to the wind, blown around the universe like a zillion tiny particles of air. But with all that “air” blowing around, for the life of me, I couldn’t breathe all I could do was cry for my lost baby. I cried until I no longer had any tears. I cried until I felt numb. I cried until I felt like an empty shell of who I was.
I couldn’t speak. Words failed me. They formed at machine gun speed in my broken mind but got caught in my throat and I nearly choked to death on them, right there in the parking lot of my OB, again in my bed and for several months following. The emotional time bombs of grief that come with a mother’s loss blew up beneath my feet and left me in tattered, bloody parts; strewn far and wide.
All I could do, while witnessing the end of my world, was fall to my knees, howl at the world and sob inconsolably at the inhumanity that the world had thrust upon me. I could not draw breath in the fog of my sadness; I suffocated beneath the weight of loss a little more with each passing breath I took. Each time more painful; crueler.
They say God doesn’t give you more than you can handle but I felt as if God gave me so much more credit than I deserved.
The entire world came crashing head on at me and I was stunned, dumbfounded and all I could do was wait to see if I could withstand the impact. I braced myself and prayed for swift death.
I’m not meant to survive this sort of blow. It’s too much. I didn’t even want to come out the other end because I knew, in that one moment, I would never be the same. I would be changed forever and there is no coming back from that. There is only surviving and that’s not the same as living, as you were.
For months, there was only sobbing and darkness. Solitude and Vicodin were my only comfort. I wanted to go to sleep and not wake up, I wanted to fade into forever because I was no longer any good to anyone. What good is a mother without her child? What is a childless mother? This was not how nature intended it.
Lost baby.
In the mirror, all I saw was pain and loneliness. All that I could feel was overwhelming anger and bitterness. I was in the deepest recesses of hell and no one could reach me, save for my living children. Like a tether to life, like a far off whisper begging me to step back from that ledge. I had one foot here and one foot in another world, lingering in the loss. All I wanted to do was step off that ledge.
I couldn’t make out where I belonged. All I knew is that it hurt to breath. It was torture to exist. I wanted to die. I deserved to be dead. I didn’t deserve to live. I had failed my child.
I don’t know if I’ve ever said that out loud but it’s how I felt. How could I live, knowing the child growing inside me had died? A part of my soul had died. The best part of me ceased to exist. I felt worthless and worse, undeserving to even love the children I had because in losing one, I had failed them all.
It still hurts; not every day and not always. But I feel like I’ve spent the past 4 years changing and hiding in the shadows; afraid the sadness would find me and inflict it’s cruel punishment once again. The grief is too unbearable.
But I hear my daughters laughing and something inside me, tells me that I deserve to know this happiness. I don’t have to feel guilty for living and loving these girls because it’s not wrong to go on living for them. It’s not wrong to feel pride, unconditional love and overwhelming gratitude for the gift of motherhood. I deserve to be here and it doesn’t diminish the loss because I’ve been able to carry on when once all I could do was cry.
I think of my baby that I lost, every single day. I am mother to three children. If I’m lucky, I get another 50 years on this earth with my girls and then, I look forward to finally meeting the child I never got to hold but have always loved just as much as I do my other two. One day, we will all be together and I deserve to live, to thrive, until that day because my children deserve nothing less; I deserve nothing less.
As long as I can draw breath into my body, I will love you always my lost baby.
2016/05/01
The Day My World Stopped: What Could Have Been
Estimated reading time: 0 minutes
Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day so, I want to share my story. I wanted to remember my Declan, who I never got to hold in my arms. I don’t get to celebrate his birthday or his milestones. Instead, I mark time by mourning what could have been on what should have been his due date and on the day we lost him. I know it sounds morbid but these two days are all that I have. I don’t even get to talk about him. I’ll never have a picture of him on my wall or get to hear him call me “mommy.” I was robbed of all of it, even though I desperately wanted him.
I lost my third child on May 1, 2012. That day is seared into my soul and the wound is still as fresh today as it was that morning as we drove to the hospital. I was sitting there in the car with my husband but I felt more alone than I’d ever felt before. That day changed everything for me; not just my perspective of the world but who I was and how I would move throughout that world for the rest of my life. I’m not the same woman I was before that moment I was told that my baby no longer had a heartbeat. It’s not an easy story to tell, but I think it’s important. Maybe you’ve been through something similar, or maybe you know someone who has. Either way, I hope sharing this helps in some small way.
The Day It All Fell Apart
It was a Monday morning. April 30, 2012. Just another day, right? Except it wasn’t. I was 10 weeks and 4 days pregnant, and I had a routine ultrasound appointment to confirm everything was okay because I had some slight spotting. No big deal, I thought. I’d done this before with my other pregnancies. But the moment I saw the tech’s face, I knew. You know that feeling when your heart just… drops? Yeah, that. I wanted to disappear and stop everything.
I didn’t want to hear whatever they were about to say. I knew. She didn’t even have to say the words. But she did anyway. “I’m so sorry, we couldn’t find your baby’s heartbeat.” And just like that, my world imploded.
The Aftermath
You know what’s weird? How the world just… keeps going. There I was, my entire existence shattered into a million pieces, and outside that window, people were still walking their dogs, grabbing coffee, living their lives. It felt so wrong. Nothing felt alright. I didn’t even recognize myself. The grief and sadness were primal.
I remember sitting in my car afterward, just… wailing. I’ve never cried like that before or since. It was this primal, gut-wrenching sound that I didn’t even recognize as my own voice. And then, because life is cruel sometimes, I had to pull myself together to pick up my daughter from preschool. Can you imagine? Pretending everything’s fine when your heart is breaking into pieces? Even speaking was nearly impossible, the lump in my throat was choking me. How was I supposed to survive this?
The Silence That Followed
We hadn’t told anyone about the pregnancy yet. You know how it is – that fear of jinxing it. So when we lost the baby, it felt like this secret engulfing grief. Like I was carrying this enormous weight that no one could see.
I wanted to scream it from the rooftops. I wanted everyone to know that my baby existed, that he mattered, that I loved him fiercely even if I never got to hold him. But instead, I was quiet. Because how do you even begin to explain that kind of loss to someone who hasn’t been through it?
But this was too big to keep from those who mattered; those who loved us and would want to help shoulder the pain. I sent a text to our family and my closest girlfriends and told them the news. I dropped this catastrophic bomb that had just blew up my entire life and asked them not to contact me because talking to anyone, forming words and making sound, was too big an ask for me in this state.
Breathing felt like a privilege that I didn’t deserve. How could I go on living when my child could not? You’ve not known survivors guilt to this magnitude until you’ve had to go on living in a world where your beloved child cannot exist.
The Physical Reality
Let’s talk about something that people often gloss over – the physical aspect of miscarriage. It’s not just emotional pain; it’s physical too. I remember begging my doctor, “Please, get him out of my body.” I know that sounds harsh, but the thought of carrying my baby, knowing he was gone, was more than I could mentally bear. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was existing in feral and primal mode. I just wanted to disappear from everyone and everything I’d ever known.I felt shame for my body failing my child. I know, rationally, that it wasn’t my fault but when you are desperate for answers to why something so heinous happens, your mind can go to dark places.
The next morning, at 6 AM, May 1, 2012, I was at the hospital for a D&C. It felt so final. Like I was saying goodbye before I ever really got to say hello. My heart was broken wide open and I was hemorrhaging every rational thought that I had ever had. I was so detached and in so much mental anguish that I couldn’t even muster enough care to even ask my husband how he was feeling. I didn’t have the bandwidth to care about anyone; I was just trying to survive the most traumatic event of my life.
The Lingering Pain
Here’s the thing about losing a baby – it doesn’t just go away. Even now, 12 years later, I can feel that lump in my throat when I think about my Declan. That’s what we named him. He existed. He was real. He was loved. He was going to be Declan Wayne, carrying on his father’s name, as is the tradition in his family.
I still get angry sometimes. Why us? It’s not fair, and it’s okay to feel that way. Healing isn’t linear, you know? Some days are easier than others, but that dull ache? It’s always there. My arms are always just a little empty; my heart always holding space for our little boy. Every happiness is tinged with a little sadness because he should be here to celebrate with us. I don’t think there will ever be a day when I don’t feel this loss; this longing for something that’s missing.
Finding Light in the Darkness
I won’t lie to you – this journey is tough. There were days when getting out of bed felt like climbing Everest. But here’s what I’ve learned: we’re stronger than we know. Somehow, we keep going. We bend, but we don’t break.
You know what helps? Talking about it. Sharing our stories. That’s why I’m telling you mine. Because maybe, just maybe, it’ll help someone else feel less alone. And that’s something, isn’t it?
A Message for You
If you’re reading this and you’ve lost a baby, I want you to know something: Your baby mattered. Your grief is real. Your feelings are valid. And you are so, so strong.
It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to laugh and then feel guilty for laughing. All of it is okay. You’re navigating something incredibly difficult, and you’re doing it the best way you know how.
Moving Forward, Not Moving On
People talk about moving on, but I don’t think we ever really do. Instead, we move forward, carrying our babies in our hearts. We find ways to honor them, to keep their memory alive.
For me, writing helps. Sharing my story helps. And on October 15th, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, I’m lighting a candle. It’s a small thing, but it matters. It’s my way of saying, “You existed. You were loved. You are remembered.” Our Declan, he is at the top of my Dia de Los Muertos ofrenda. This is a sacred place of honor to me and when anyone comes to my house, they see his ultrasound scan. The one I insisted they take that morning before my D&C. The only tangible proof I have that he ever existed to the outside world.
A Final Thought
I know this is heavy stuff. But I’m glad you’re here, reading this. Because it means we’re in this together. We’re part of a club no one wants to join, but here we are. And you know what? We’re going to be okay. Not the same as before, but okay.
So, if you’re struggling, reach out. To me, to a friend, to a support group. Don’t carry this alone. And if you know someone who’s lost a baby, just be there. You don’t need to have the right words. Sometimes, just sitting in silence and acknowledging their pain is enough.
Remember, your story matters. Your baby matters. And you, my friend, you matter too.
Take care of yourself, okay? And know that you’re not alone in this. Not ever.
2024/10/15
Wish You Were Here
Last night, I dreamt about a baby. A tiny, baby boy who perched his little bobbling head atop my shoulder right in that perfect cradle made just for babies between my collar bone and my ear. Then his tiny head would wobble and bob and little lips would fall on my flesh like kisses from heaven.
I woke up this morning feeling happy with my visitation from the sweet baby boy in my dreams. Then, I realized that it’s November 24^th and it wasn’t just any baby, it was our baby. The one who should be turning 4-years-old today. Instead of celebrating together, I’ll be choking down tears and turkey while he (that pregnancy just felt completely different than either pregnancy with my girls so I assume it was a boy), my sweet Declan Wayne (that would have been his name…in my heart it already was) will be missing from our table and our lives.
It’s been 4 years and I still can’t feel the loss any less. Only now, it seems my sadness is turning to bitterness and anger. It took 4 years but all I keep asking God is why? Why did you take my baby? Why must I survive this?
There are so many unwanted pregnancies and babies, so many children born into families where they are mistreated and unloved and all we wanted to do was love our baby. All I wanted to do was hold him in my arms, even just once. It wouldn’t have been enough but it would have given me closure. Instead, I live my life like an open wound that never closes; vulnerable to all of existence. I need some kind of closure, some tangible marking that you were here, so I am writing you this letter.
Dear Declan,
I wish you were here. More than anything in this world, I wish that I could hold you in my arms and feel your little heart beat against mine. I wish I could see your sisters love on you and fawn over you like big sisters do. I wish I could see the pride in your dad’s eyes when you two connected over something boys do. I wish there was a little Big Guy in the world.
I wish you were here to have booboos kissed and tears wiped. I wish you were here to smile lovingly at your sisters when they had a long day at ballet or a hard day at school. I wish you were here to make us smile and giggle as only little boys can do. I wish you were here for me to see grow up.
I wish you were here to love because you see each time I got pregnant, I fell deep in love and my heart grew to accommodate that enormous love. Only now, who am I supposed to give all that extra love to? You made me better before you were ever here.
I won’t talk about the day I lost you or how my entire world crashed down on me. I won’t talk about how all I wanted to do was be with you, to stay with you forever because if I do, I’ll start to cry. I’ll never forget you, my sweet boy, and you will always be in my heart. That’s where I carry you. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say it once more and every single day for the rest of my life, I wish you were here.
Forever yours, Mommy
I know it’s Thanksgiving and I am thankful for all that I have but it’s also what should have been the 4th birthday of the baby that I’ll never get to hold. So while I am thankful for all that I have, including those few short precious months of pregnancy with my third baby, I am still sad beyond belief that I will never get to celebrate his life with cake and ice cream surrounded by family and friends.
I will never see him play soccer or go to prom, get married and have children of his own and every November 24th, I will be just a little melancholy around the edges knowing that one child is missing from our table and from our life. I don’t think that sad emptiness ever goes away and to tell the truth, I’m not sure that I want it to because it is the one reminder that I have that he was ever here.
2016/11/24
My Cervix Went to the Gynecologist and All I got was this Xanax
My cervix and I had my yearly this morning. I kinda hate it because I have an abnormally deep cervix and so they have to use the world’s largest speculum and push really hard and they call in interns to show them my really deep cervix so that they can marvel at how deep I am. I lie there twiddling my thumbs, while 17 strangers marvel at my vagina, praying that my landscaping job was up to par, as it is now on display. It’s awesome. Who wouldn’t be ecstatic to do that?
(more…)
2013/01/20
For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn
Anyone who has ever read this blog before knows that I don’t write flash fiction. In fact, I write the complete opposite of “flash fiction” I write drawn out nonfiction. I’m a story teller who tells you my stories in their entirety, even a moment can last 350 words.But when I saw the Hemingway piece, “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn” again with new eyes, new experiences, they were no longer 6 words. They were like a brick thrown at my heart and the weight of those words brought me to my knees.
I’ve read these words before but I never really knew what they meant, not truly. I never knew the hole in your heart that could be left by losing someone you never got to meet; never got to hold, kiss and cuddle. Never got to hear them call out to you, “Mommy” or wrap their tiny arms around your neck. But, I think you miss them even more because you are missing the promise of something that never came to fruition. You have to cling for dear life to that one single memory, the loss.
Thankfully, I haven’t lost a lot of people who were close to me. I lost my grandparents that I never really knew and I’ve lost two uncles who I was very close to and that hurt. It hurt bad. I felt those losses and I still miss their presence in my life. I wish my daughters could have ran to them when they came to visit and known the giving hearts and comforting smiles of these men. I’d like to say it taught me to appreciate those who are alive even more. It did, for a little while, and then as some sort of a survival mechanism, I had to put that loss on a shelf, so I could continue on. I think that is how we are made; this is how we survive the pain of loss.
Not until I lost a pregnancy, my third child, did I feel the true weight of loss. It nearly killed me. There is nothing like it. The only thing that I can imagine that would come close would be losing a spouse or a parent. I know that sometime in my life I will lose my parents and that scares me. It terrifies me but not for the reasons you might suspect. Not because I won’t know how to live in the world without them but because I didn’t have enough time to know them; to really know them. The hole left by words unspoken and memories not made is an unfillable one. I know that now.
I don’t know why these words have been haunting me over the past couple days. I think it was triggered by watching my friend go through the painful loss of her dear mother and watching another friend give birth and struggle with complications and a very sick baby after losing her twin pregnancy last year. My heart is breaking for these two women. I have all of these feelings swirling around in my mind, in my heart and I I can feel my own scabs being ripped off. I can imagine how their hearts are aching with these fresh wounds. I wish I could do more than pray for these women but they need their space to process; to contain the hole that feels like it will swallow you up. It’s survival.
The pain of losing someone you have so much love for leaves a giant hole in your soul and with them they take a part of you. You don’t feel whole. You feel fractured and broken and it hurts it ways that you didn’t even know it could. It’s an indescribable, all-consuming pain.
Please pray for these two women, Alexandra Rosas and Diana Stone, that their hearts might know peace and comfort again someday soon.
For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn
2013/08/19
Mommy, I Want Another Baby
As I lay here cramping, a cruel reminder, stifling my tears as my 5-year-old brings up an old topic; one that we try not to discuss but has been lingering around my heart lately; the miscarriage we had last year.
It was this time last year that we conceived our third child. I know that. I’ve thought about it every day since Fat Tuesday but tonight, my 5-year-old asked me a simple question as she lay on my stomach and I read her a bedtime story, ” Mommy is there another baby in your tummy?” (more…)
2013/02/25