Emotions

While holding my sleeping 5 month old son today I was overcome with emotions. He was my ninth pregnancy, and only my second child here on earth.

I often think about our seven other children that we never got to meet. Would we have had more boys than girls or girls than boys? Or maybe we would have stopped after our first two and only had girls or only boys?

I’m not sure why I started to cry today while thinking about this. I have thought of this multiple times throughout the years since our first loss. I don’t always end up crying. In fact over the years I have been able to both think about and talk to people about our losses without becoming an emotional mess.

The times that I don’t cry and become emotional are not because I have really gotten over the losses but because I have been able to grieve our losses and come to believe that this is the reality we live in. Nothing we can do can take us back to the beginning of our journey to have children. At the same time, I wouldn’t change our journey, even though it was a very painful, heart wrenching ride, the destination was so worth it.

A friend of mine and I talk often about the losses both her and I have had. (She has had four losses, and is currently pregnant and due in the new year.)  We talk about the hopes and dreams we had when we found out we were pregnant for the first time. We talk about the devastation and despair that we felt after that first loss. We also have talked about the anxiety of each pregnancy afterwards and about parenting after our losses.

I believe that having this friendship has made it so much easier to grieve the loss of our children and move forward and be able to help other women and men go through the grieving process with someone by their side.

Moving forward we will continue to talk about our journeys both in the future and in the past and support each other through it all.

As I finish writing this I look down again at our son while he sleeps, and our daughter while she is playing in front of me, it makes me realize how lucky I am to have these two miracles here with us, and to have an amazing friend that has helped me grieve and grow over the last few years. 

Category : Amanda , Volunteer Bloggers