A year ago I was pregnant with my first baby. I don't think I'd ever been so frightened in my life. My body was changing as fast as my mind was racing trying to ascertain what I was "supposed" to feel like. I asked tons of questions, ate hundreds of thousands of crackers, and took more naps than a room full of preschoolers. I was nervous and happy and nauseated and tired. After years of wondering if I'd even be able to get pregnant, watching my friends pop out babies like free iPods, and parenting everyone else's children for more than ten years...it was finally my turn. I picked out names and nursery themes and even received a few gifts stacked neatly in the closet. I was about a week from announcing my miracle to the social media gods...everything was fine....
....and then one day it wasn't....
....it was violent, graphic, horrific...and sad...in a cold, sterile hospital room with no chance for happy ending, no possibility of a proper goodbye...
....just like that, all my plans were gone.
I was empty and broken with no desire to ever have children born of my body.
I endured the full 9 months, the holidays, the due date, the what-ifs and what-might-have-been's and avoided any direct contact with babies and the infant section of stores. I still can't attend baby showers (eat those chalky mints and shitty cake and play those cheesy candy-bar poop games) or listen to friends' pregnant stories for long durations. Each time another relative gets pregnant accidentally, I cringe a little.
I say this because I'm jealous...so many people have what I want, what I've been afraid to want for the last year. A family.
Tis true that had my baby lived...his or her life would have been greatly complicated by the strained and now dissolved relationship I shared with their father. Before I was divorced and in the time since ...being a mom has felt more natural than being a wife. The maternal instinct has always been more innate than the spousal one.
Now I look at my life and wonder when it will be my turn again. Will it be seen as a blessing or a social spectacle (should it occur before I become a re-starter wife)? Will the baby survive in my hostile body? I've made the choice to try once more for a biological child and if it ends in a pool of blood, I'm finished. Either way, it will happen, some day. Some day I will have the opportunity to build my own little family...and hopefully my child/children will grow up in a home with parents who are ardently passionate about each other. Next time the hospital room will be warm and inviting and echoing the cries of a healthy baby...dare to dream.
Despite the dreams and the hopes, I still grieve...for the mother I almost was.
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