Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Due Date

My due date was on Sunday, April 22.

For some reason, there was a plethora of births this month, and more to come. I guess everybody was getting busy in August.

It was floating there on the bottom of my consciousness for the first couple weeks of the month, and then it felt like I was a nail and it was hammering me into the ground and I did, of course, have my own special little breakdown on and off for several days.

I don't want to self-indulge. I don't want to express my want for a baby; it's obvious. I don't want to cheapen anyone else's experience or my own. 

I just want to acknowledge the coulda-been-baby that would've been keeping me up all night, this week, if everything had gone as planned.

And I want to acknowledge the women in my life who have miscarried. I had no idea what you'd been through. If I'd known, I'd have shown more compassion and poured more wine. There's so little importance placed on miscarriages in our culture, for some reason. And perhaps even some kind of shame attached to it. I don't want to examine why, I just want to say: I get it now.


9 comments:

  1. Oh, Erin, I'm so sorry. Just last night I was wondering if I was going to be one of the women I used to pity, who cried on their due date for a miscarried baby. I have until July 7th to figure that out. Sigh.

    And then tonight I watched Giuliana Rancic watch her gestational carrier's first ultrasound, and I bawled like it was my first ultrasound. Deep sigh.

    I think (?) this gets easier, but so far, I really have seen the proof. And I'm sick of being so hyper aware of my reproductive system. I was over this. I really was. And now I'm not.

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    1. Oh my goodness, I've been sobbing through each G&B episode this season. And I totally get the "I thought I was over this but I'm not" mentality. I thought so, too.

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  2. It gets better. It never goes away, but it does get better over time. May it get better for you.

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  3. My mom says it comes and it goes. Some years, she's OK and only gives it a passing thought. Other years, she'll be down for an entire month. She miscarried 4 times, three times in December for some godawful reason. She still mourns them, although for her the pain comes on the day she miscarried, not on the day they would have been born.

    Sending you warm, fuzzy thoughts.

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    1. That is a whole other hell I hope I never experience. What a nightmare.

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  4. Hear hear!
    Sending you a huge hug.

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  5. I am sending good thoughts to you. And to your babies. The one in heaven, and the ones to come.

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