Today is my due date

July 28, 2009. I am not having a baby. I'm not expecting a baby. In fact I'm just about as far away as possible from even getting pregnant, forbidden to even try for the better part of a year.

In September my parents are going on a vacation that DH and I were supposed to join them on. With the new baby. It was to be a family bonding experience like no other we've ever had. Healthy active grandparents with their very first grandchild. DH and I away from work, unencumbered but for the miracle that was to be our first child. I'd be on a four-month leave, soaking up some much needed sun and ocean breeze, marveling at the pure innocent perfection I held in my arms. Everyone happy. Everyone content and proud and humbled all at once. I would know now how very much appreciation I could have for my own parents. They would be just giddy with excitement about their new roles, making plans to retire and maybe move closer to be near the little one. Having conversations with us about subjects we've never breached before. We would be closer. There would be, hard as this is to believe, more love in our family.

I would have been sending out announcements soon, wearing out the battery on our new camera. We'd have plenty of visitors and well-wishes. We'd be "in the club." Finally. And would be sharing war stories about the early stages parenthood with our friends, most of whom have begun that journey already. I'd be thinking about getting out of maternity wear and what I was going to do to get back into my 'old' sizes. I have a pair of work shoes I was ready to sacrifice to the pregnancy swollen-feet gods. They're nice enough for the office but stretchy and I've had 'em for a long time. They're starting to show wear & tear so last fall I decided they'd be my pregnancy shoes. They'd be all stretched out by now and I'd probably be thinking about retiring them but instead, I happen to be wearing them today. Still waiting for when they'll be my pregnancy shoes.

I am broken. But not irreparably. And just like when you "break" a horse or a dog, being broken seems sad and hurtful, but oddly protective. A necessary evil. Like it's for my own good. It had to be. And I will be different for it, but the possibility of a fulfilling, meaningful life is still there. Just like the well-trained horse I will simply travel through the remaining years I have a little more "in-check." I won't let my wildest dreams run away with me because I know the misery of reality. I have been taught not to think I deserve the world. Not to assume that it is my birthright to be free and innocent. What a silly girl I used to be. I have been shown and become accustomed to a darker side of life. I know better what difficulty is. What sadness and disappointment and guilt and regret and anger are. What they really are. What it really means to feel hurt. To feel lost and scared.

And with all this still, I am lucky. I don't know what it feels like to be alone. I have a wonderful family and a husband that has been brought closer to me through this experience. One that is on this journey with me and while he doesn't feel the loss the way I do, we can never know exactly how another perceives pain and disappointment. I don't need him to feel exactly what I feel. I just need him.

And I still have my health. People can die from what my doctors think I might have had. I am 29. I am healthy. I am having regular cycles. There is no reason to think we won't conceive again. I am lucky.

Today was the last bastion for getting pregnant again. "Surely I will be pregnant again by my due date," I thought. Foolishly. "That will numb the sting of a miscarriage." The sting has become a wound. A deep one, and will leave a scar. At the time of the m/c, the worst had just begun. And even now, I wonder if I am still at the edge of the tip of the iceberg. How bad will it get? I can only wait. And wait. To find out. And if by some miracle things go better next time around, I will still be forever changed by this year. This pregnancy. This miscarriage. This fateful injustice. In some ways that, while painful, all of this will help me to cope in the future with whatever happens. I've already noticed that I have become desensitized. I have felt the innocence and naivete wash clear from my heart and leave a numb empty spot where there used to be pain. Was I required to lose a baby to learn these lessons, to feel this way? Could I have learned them in a less traumatic way? Maybe not. And maybe if it wasn't this, it would be something equally as difficult. Isn't that the way we "grow up?" Isn't there typically one pivotal incident that changes us forever? And then all the later incidents aren't "the incident," simply because they came later in time, not because they were lesser insults. Maybe it's not the nature of the insult but the timing. After one or two, we become desensitized and move through the rest with more grace, discretion, acceptance, and faith.

But I am lucky. DH left today for a month and before he did, he said he was getting excited about parenthood. Excited to see the way we would evolve. Those of you who follow my blog know what a HUGE milestone this is and it made me feel so amazing. And at the same time, so much more disappointed that we can't make it happen now. So much more anxious about all the time left in The Wait and all that can happen in five months. But maybe now that we are ready, it will happen. By some cosmic miracle, maybe that's how things were supposed to go. At the very least, we'll be ready this time, and that is enough. Ready for success. And we'll move forward with positive feelings instead of trepidation. And we'll move forward as one unit, instead of me pulling DH along and him feeling pushed and forever like this wasn't what he wanted. These are all good things. And I am trying, in this difficult time, to keep that in perspective.