An Anniversary

It's funny but practically every day is an anniversary of something... Derek and my first date, kiss, a birthday, an actual anniversary, a move, the list goes on and on. Some are good, happy days and others are anniversaries of days not so good.

Right about now is the anniversary of a miscarriage. I never really talked about it on my blog, though I've mentioned it very briefly a couple of times. It just seemed too real at the time, to put out there in the blogosphere. But after a year, perspective has been gained which allows for less raw emotion and just more... contemplation? Is that the right word? I don't even know.

I just know that a year ago, it was rough. I mean really rough. Being pregnant one minute to suddenly making frantic phone calls to my midwife, knowing even as they assured me that all was probably fine, that it was not. I knew it, I knew it and I was so angry.

I remember thinking and even saying out loud, "This is silly! It was just a miscarriage!" But I was lying. It was never "just" a miscarriage. Ask any woman who has ever had one, or two or more. It is never "just" anything. It's dreams and anticipation and excitement all shot to heck. Not the outcome one hopes for when they finally see those two little lines.

Whenever I did reveal, in real life our loss, I'd fine more women that had experienced the same thing than not. It happens ALL the time. Darn technology that is a blessing and curse, allows us to know we're pregnant so quickly that it also allows us to be aware of miscarriages that would never have been detected even 20 years ago. It stinks. Hearing other women express their experiences made it a bit easier.

In the year since that fateful, awful day, a lot has changed. My newest baby is asleep right here next to me. And this blows my mind! When January rolled around, and the due date of my third, lost baby, came, I was sad, and yet, so so grateful. I would have had a different baby if it had come in January. It wouldn't be Oliver laying here next to me. It would be some other baby, who would now be 5 months old. Would it have been a girl? (My mommy-instinct tells me so.) I adore my little O-man. His birth was the culmination of a lot of pain and healing that had occurred in the last year. I'm so grateful for him. Never have I been more sure of a loving Heavenly Father who is aware of our every ache and every tear. He knows me, He knows my heart and that allowed for such healing, that it is nearly impossible to describe.

I don't want to say the pain goes away. That doesn't seem fair, but to say that it's been lived through and absorbed seems more accurate. It's simply a part of me, one little tiny attribute of me that makes me more fully me (and Derek too, it was OUR baby). It's not on the surface, but as a mother, it will always be there.

Since it's been a year and since I've already had another baby, I feel doubly blessed. Friends I know experience many miscarriages and wait for the adoptions to go through, and they wait and wait and wait. I'm really spoiled. I had to wait almost no time at all. While being pregnant twice in a year was not easy physically, I had never been more grateful to be pregnant and to have a new baby. Hot diggity dog, what a sweet life I've got. So Happy Anniversary to me! I lived to tell the tale. And it really has been a wonderful year.