You can read Raya’s journey here.
“Do you think about her a lot?”
My child?
Yes, yes I do.
For part one of things that suck after pregnancy loss & unfortunate sentences people say, please click here.
The problem with losing your child before they are born (besides LOSING YOUR CHILD BEFORE THEY ARE BORN) is that you will think about them a lot.
But you’ve never seen them.
And you cannot dream about someone you’ve never seen.
Which means when I fall asleep, she’s not there.
When I close my eyes and drift off, there’s no secret life with Raya in my dreams.
Because I have no idea what she would have looked like or been like.
I’m left to live a life of wonderment around who she would’ve been.
You don’t just lose a pregnancy.
You lose an entire lifetime of experiences.
What They Would Look Like
I don’t know if Raya would have had Gregg’s hair or my nose (hope not).
I don’t know if she would have our height or somehow inherit her grandma’s inability to reach the top shelf.
You’re not just saying goodbye to a baby.
You’re saying goodbye to never knowing what/who that child would resemble; what would make them stand out in a crowd.
Firsts
You’re saying goodbye to all the firsts you spent your second trimester calculating.
You’re saying goodbye to changing diapers & trying to breast feed.
Your child is going to walk into the arms of God instead of you.
You will miss first steps and first words; baby-proofing and trying to stuff a stroller into a car that you swore would be big enough, even though you knew and the car dealer knew and your husband knew you just didn’t want to wait for a bigger one.
You will miss out on selecting their first crib (unless you’re us, in which case you will order a crib and it will arrive 2 days after your child is gone; claps for us).
Lower Body....Expenditures
The idea of changing a diaper with the notion that at one time or another, that…. expenditure… would end up on you becomes this experience you crave.
Watching mothers’ faces when they discover their child went the icky kind of potty in their diaper and wishing it could be your face.
That you would have to excuse yourself from the festivities because your child had an accident and the rest of your day has been restructured to deal with it.
It would suck, but you’d absolutely love it.
Crawling & the Middle Finger
I’ve seen babies crawl for the first time.
Their parents cry because their child will never be that little again.
I cry because my child will always be that little.
She won’t crawl or walk or eat or do that thing babies do where it looks like they’re giving you the finger but they’re just being babies yet you capture it on tape anyway.
Because what’s funnier than a baby giving someone the finger?
Christmas
The most difficult part so far since Raya left was getting through Christmas.
Not getting through it knowing I was no longer pregnant.
Getting through it knowing that that time next year I would not be buying gifts for a 10-month old learning to walk.
No putting out gifts from Santa that she won’t even notice because she’s 10 months old, and you could give her a toy she already owned and be just fine.
No bundling her up to go to Duluth where it has snowed 3 feet, so you stick her in the snow to take a photo because again, she’s so cute and helpless in her snowsuit.
And no taking photos of her in said snowsuit that she would inevitable grow out of by the time you got back to the house.
Photos
There are no photos to take.
There are no photos that HAD been taken.
You are left with no recollection of who this child would’ve been or what they would’ve looked like.
No going through old photographs & reminiscing about the birth.
No creating so many photo albums for her high school graduation she gets embarrassed and runs off with a boy that your husband CLAIMS is not right for her.
Because the only photos you have don’t have her in it.
And even if you were to print them out, they wouldn’t even fill a photo album from the dollar store.
In the sale section.
That holds 2.5 photos.
A photo of the day you found out you were pregnant.
A photo of the day your bump popped.
And half a photo of her footprints from the day she came and left the world.
If you’re going through pregnancy loss, click here to visit Saying Goodbye (if nothing else, they have some amazing quotes!)
