I’m supposed to be at a birthday party today.

Four years ago, I was pregnant for the first and only time, and December 30 was my due date.  Today, of all days, I feel my lack so keenly.

I never got to experience what it’s like to feel a baby move inside me.  There will never be a little human running around who looks like me.  We didn’t even know if the baby was a boy or a girl, but I think she was a girl.  Or at least, that’s how I’ve come to think of her.  My feelings are all I have to go on.  All I have are a few black and white ultrasound pictures and memories. 

These are the thoughts swirling in my mind as I sit on the couch with my dog.  Since I work from home, he is my constant companion.  He sits in my lap when I read my Bible in the morning, he tries to do Pilates with me, he follows me all around the house.  He’s my buddy!  I’ve even prayed for him a time or two.  Yes, I know he’s only a dog, but I said a quick prayer for him when we dropped him off at the kennel for the first time.  I couldn’t stand it if he got loose or hit by a car because I just love him so much.

If this is how I feel for a dog, how much more would I feel for my child?

Love’s Long Ripening

I can imagine that love – a love I had for my children before I even got married, a love accumulating inside me over time.  It was a love I poured out in prayers, journals, letters to my children.  It was a love expressed in preparation; I stretched myself, worked on issues, and grew so I would be the best mom I could be for them.

And that love for my baby didn’t end when the pregnancy ended.  Only now I don’t have anywhere to bestow it.  It’s just hanging in the balance.  A love years in the making not come to fruition. 

I think of how great that love could be if it had been able to be fully expressed.  If it had a recipient – a living, breathing child of my own.  How amazing would it be if the love that had incubated in my heart could have been finally released? 

I’ll never know what it’s like to love someone as a mother.  And in the four years since the due date that never was, I’ve come to terms with that.  I have grieved the loss of motherhood in general, and I’ve also grieved the loss of that individual life.  I have mourned, and I have healed. 

A few years ago, when the pain of miscarriage was still raw, when motherhood was a dream I was still hoping to attain, and when I was in counseling, my therapist suggested an activity to aid in healing.  This was my journal entry from that time:

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Tears in Target

Today, just for today, I allow myself to dwell on it, to let the thoughts and feelings flow.  I pull out the ultrasound pictures and stare at them, remembering what it was like knowing I had a little life growing inside me.  I remember, and I cry.    

And then I go shopping.

My counselor suggested the exercise of buying a newborn outfit – something that I would’ve liked to bring my baby home from the hospital in – and donating it to a non-profit or a women’s shelter in my baby’s memory. 

This immediately resonated with me.  I’ve donated food, household goods, and toiletries countless times over the years but have never thought about baby clothes.  And I latched on to the idea of something good coming out of a hard situation.  So, I grabbed my keys and went.

Normally, I hurry past the baby aisle, but today I stopped and touched each little outfit, tears quickly filling my eyes.  I looked at the blankets, the onesies, the crib sheets; I saw an adorable pack of hairbands that I would love to put on a little baby girl of my own.  I took it all in and then bought an outfit – for someone else’s baby.  This pink outfit with matching sweater and these socks will warm a baby who’s not mine.  Because I don’t have one of my own.  Still. 

I was hoping this activity would be therapeutic in some way, but it’s just sad.  I got in my car and cried, not caring if anyone saw.  Maybe when I take the outfit to the shelter in a few days this will come full circle and I’ll be able to see the good, but for now, all I see is my own lack.  All I feel is my empty womb and my hurting heart. 

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Resilient Love

I did donate that outfit, and it did make me smile knowing some baby was going to be decked out in the cutest outfit I could find.  My womb remained empty, but my hurting heart has healed since that day.

And I’ve been busy taking care of the family I do have, the Harris trio: my husband, my stepson, and me.  I may not be a mom, but I am a parent, and I’m thankful for that privilege.  My stepson is not some consolation prize; he is my child.  I often hear stepchildren referred to as “my bonus son” or “my bonus daughter.”  I love that!  My stepson is a bonus, an extra blessing I got on the day I got married.  And he gets all the love I have to give. 

So, even though he doesn’t have a little sibling, even though I’m not at a birthday party today, it gives me comfort knowing my baby who died is in the arms of her Father.  It gives me hope knowing I’ll see her one day.  And it gives me joy to look back on her short little life and honor her memory.  She was ours, for a little while.