Angels

     June 29, 2009 & June 29, 2013.

     Today is the due date of not one but two of my angels. (I mean, give or take, since neither of the due dates were all that reliably calculated.) I guess it seems a bit sappy to call them that, but I don't really know what else to use. And when I lost my first, a dear friend comforted me by saying that my future children would now have a guardian angel. And it sounds nicer than 'dead fetus'.

     Anyway, it's still fairly raw and painful to talk about, but I feel like I at least owe them a blog post today, though I'm not totally sure what I want to say. Basically just some rambling thoughts, I guess. I have been thinking of my most recently lost baby more frequently in the past few weeks as our due date approached. I'm not gonna lie, it kinda sucks. I think now that I have healed physically and (somewhat) emotionally over the ordeal as a whole, I can now take some time to grieve the loss of my child, which is something I haven't really done fully yet.
     I do wonder on an almost daily basis how on earth we would have handled having another child at this time. The two we have keep us busier than busy as it is, and I'm sure things would have been mighty stressful around here. But, when I see families with kids really close in age like ours would have been, I still get a painful twinge.
     I had planned on making this --> for our baby, but instead decided to make it for a friend's baby who is due around the same time. I didn't realize that would also be painful. Maybe I just should have chosen to make them something else, or maybe I will make one for us anyway, just as a keepsake.
     I've been thinking a lot lately about my 'incomplete' family, and the prospect of surrogacy. And I think that would be a really hard thing to do for both parties. I am a headstrong, Type A who would probably have a really hard time coping with the inability to control/ monitor the growth of my fetus, not to mention missing out on the emotional, bonding aspect of growing my own child. And I'm sure it would be even harder to give up a child you grew in your body for nine months even if you knew it was coming and wasn't biologically yours... so... I'm not sure if I would ever be strong enough to handle that. And also, Josh has stipulated that we must win the lottery first since IVF is not cheap. And it would have to happen while our family is still young enough to justify making new siblings. And what if we got twins?! Also I'm not super enthused about the idea of all the messing with hormones it involves... Any way you look at it, it's not in the foreseeable future for us right now, though the desire for a third child is certainly there. For now we'll just enjoy the two we have.

    For sure the loss of a baby is a deeply painful experience, but the joy the children I already have brings me makes it much more bearable. The first pregnancy I lost was horribly depressing without the welcome distraction of mothering. At the same time, it feels like the loss of our second baby has gone largely under-mourned because I have been so distracted. It makes it especially hard because we had confirmed a heart beat and everything for the second baby, so it really did 'die' (as opposed to the first baby, to whom we do not know exactly what happened.) Sigh. This is so saddening to think about. Perhaps I will stop here, and simply light a candle for each of my two angels tonight.

    May you rest in peace my two beautiful, sweet babies. You are missed and very loved.