On Losing A Baby

The first thing that bothered me to no end was that the world continued to produce babies. I went through my pregnancy feeling alone, having no mom friends, no future friends for my future child, and, yet, when I lost her, suddenly babies were everywhere. Everyone was pregnant. I drove past people pushing strollers down the street and I was mad at them. Mad because my stroller was better. I had put hours upon hours of time and research finding what I wanted, and then more hours tracking one down, and these people went out to Walmart and bought the cheapest thing off the shelf - how did they deserve a baby more than I did? People would ask us, "how are you doing around other babies?" "Do you mind if these people bring their baby to dinner?" and Bill would immediately respond, "We're doing just fine, obviously people will keep having babies." "Yes, of course, we really want to meet their baby." But we were not just fine, we did not want to meet other babies. I was mad at the world for allowing babies to continue to be born. There should have at least been some 24 hour pause out of respect. But then no one would ever be born.

I spent the next month on the couch trying to allow stitches to heal after having had a bad tear. I was somewhere between living in filth and cleaning in pain. Bleeding seemed to last forever, and my milk coming in added insult to injury. It took a year to return to my original weight. All of these things would have been worthwhile, had there been a baby to share it with. But I was now a mother without a baby. Something that had never really been there was now missing. I needed a baby. I never knew what to say when faced with the question, "Do you have any kids?" Even when I was pregnant with Benjamin, the question, "is this your first?" confused me. If I said yes, I was in for stories about what pregnancy and labour are like, things I already knew. If I said no, I was asked questions about my first child. If I said, "first baby, second pregnancy", it meant getting into things. Too much complication for a simple question.

People always slip up. At first, they were careful to say the right things, bring up the right subjects, maybe fearing they would be responsible for me breaking into tears. I didn't want to be treated special, but on the other end of things, there were comments that hurt. Things like, "Lia's the first one of us to have a baby!" Not to single Lia out, or make her feel bad, or anyone for that matter. These things just come out. And it's not true. The truth is, "Lia's the first one of us to raise a baby." But how incredibly nit-picky does that sound? There's nobody to blame for this kind of situation, and it's always going to happen. But it doesn't stop it from feeling like a stab in the heart.

Laura was never supposed to be her name. At some point during the labor, some nurse or doctor told us we should consider thinking of a name, despite the situation - decide if we wanted to use one we had thought of or come up with something new. I said, "Well, we already have names picked out." Bill said, "We should save them for the next kid." Later, I read a blog of someone else who had lost a baby, and she had written, "Never save a name." That's the best advice I've ever read. But, who reads things like that until after the fact? We saved the names. Laura's a nice name. It's pretty. It encapsulated everything that I wished she could have been. But it will never be who she was supposed to be. For months after she was born, people would refer to "Laura" and I would think, "Who?" To me, she will always just be my baby girl. Never save a name. It could never really belong to your next kid anyway.

Romans 8:28. I would never tell anybody, "it's for the best." But you just never know what would have been. Maybe my baby girl would have grown up to be an axe murderer. I highly doubt it. It's really not worth dwelling on. Sometimes I have dreams about Benjamin having an older sister. She will always have a place in my heart. But even with her not here, I am incredibly happy now. I have a baby who needs unending attention and love. I have a man who supports me to no end and loves us both with his whole heart. How could I be luckier?