Grasping

I click on this blog constantly, searching in vain for comments. Me, who has not blogged in years, who hasn't really missed it, not the way I thought I would--all of a sudden I am back, and I am desperate for company. Tonight I washed dishes and wondered, what am I looking for? What am I hoping to read, every time I click on the POW bookmark?

But I don't really need to wonder. I know, I knew, I admitted it to myself immediately. I am looking for that one comment that will make this go away. I am hoping, inexplicably, for an answer, and I want that answer to be: No, don't worry, your baby didn't really die. Just do this, and you will have a baby September 1st, just like you planned. Better yet, you will have a newborn right now. Your son, born on April Fool's Day. (Should his due date have been a sign? I thought it was so appropriate, but now, now I am the only fool.)

I have been lurking, desperately, on a new blog, Glow in the Woods. A blog for women who have lost babies. But I do not really belong there. These women have lost full term babies, where I have only miscarried. And while I know it is not the same--my loss at 17 weeks is but a drop in the bucket compared to a 38 week still birth--I still find myself there, reading their posts and crying, and raising my hand, eagerly, saying, "Me, too! Me, too!"


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I sing along to the mom station I listen to on the TV while I'm washing dishes or sweeping up. Love songs, easy songs, slow songs. (It is called "The Blend" and it's embarrassingly corny.) And I am so surprised: all these songs about heartache, and not one about a dead baby. All about the seemingly innocuous problem of lost love. Then, of course, "Tears in Heaven" comes on. I almost laugh--I do laugh--a grotesque cackle that quickly turns to sob.

When do the tears stop? That's what I want to know.

I pull a block of tinfoil out of the freezer, read the notation on the zip lock bag that encircles it. "Lamb, 3-22-08". "He was still alive then," I think, as I thunk it on the counter. Isn't there some saying about April being the cruelest month? It always will be, for me.

But when did he die? I just don't know. Last time, I remember a moment in the grocery store. I felt faint, suddenly, and had to stop, and concentrate, right myself on my wobbling legs. My heart rate sped up inexplicably and there was a long time--30 seconds, maybe--when I considered calling out to other shoppers for help. But it passed, and I chalked it up to random pregnancy oddness. Until two days later at the ultrasound of course. This time, nothing. He was alive, he was kicking, then he wasn't. And I was pretending he was. Maybe he died right after my last OB appointment, at 15-1/2 weeks. But I don't want to believe that. I want to believe he was 17-1/2 weeks, I want to give him as many days as I can. The more days I can give him, the more validation I can give my own grief. It's okay to still be sad, right? He was practically a baby.

Would it make me feel better if he had made it to twenty weeks? Then I would have a death certificate to put in the scrapbook.

I can't decide. Do I wish I had more time with him, or do I wish I had lost him from the start, before I had a chance to get attached? I have had early miscarriages, too, and I know that kind of pain. It is different from this kind, but still painful.

Truly, of course, I don't wish either of those things. I only wish he was still with me, swimming around safe inside me, kicking and sucking his thumb.