I feel like I have experienced three distinct losses.
The first - the loss of the perfect baby I was dreaming of - was the quickest and the most painful. It started in Dr Steiger's office the moment he said, "There are some problems." Just like that, my mystery baby, the one we'd nicknamed monkey just the day before, was gone. This is the loss I cried the hardest for, sobbing and choking in the car, crying at night and waking Josh up. I think this is the loss that Josh felt the most. This is the loss I cried for feeling my baby kicking so strongly inside me (and I had thought just days before "With kicks like that, how could there be anything wrong!"). But how long could I grieve for something that never was? For the most part this ended when I went into the hospital.
The time in the hospital was a kind of dead zone. It was all medications and pain and very little room to think about the real world, what was really happening. I know we cried a few times, I remember Josh crying after the social worker came and I think I did, too.
The second loss I felt was the loss of my daughter Willow, so tiny and broken. Her nose looked just like Mischa's when she was born and her hands and fingers were long and skinny like mine (although this may just be because she didn't have any baby fat yet) with tiny, perfect fingernails. On the footprints the hospital gave us, her toes are perfect little circles. Sometimes I think about her and just want to hold her one more time, or somehow go back in time and be with her again. I wish I'd listened more carefully to her heartbeat that last time. This loss, the death of my daughter, will be with me always.
The third loss is the loss of my pregnancy and the timeline. The loss of my big belly, the jokes about the baby being Josh's birthday present. The thoughts of the baby at Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Fair. This is very painful now (I should be 23 weeks...), but will fade as these dates pass. Along with this I have some anger about losing those 4.5 months of hard work and morning sickness, the time I could have been enjoying with Mischa, and the fact that I started weaning her earlier than I was ready and we stopped breastfeeding when I went to the hospital. I could have nursed her until she was 2 like I wanted to if I hadn't been pregnant with a baby I wouldn't get to keep.
I want to get pregnant again as soon as I can. I know a lot of women don't want to bond with the next baby, are afraid to, but I can't wait. I want ultrasounds, I want to know the gender, I want a baby registry. I want to get back to that place I was finally getting to with Willow. The planning and loving, the anticipation.
