Seven in 2017

My sweet, sweet Ivy girl.

One year ago I was 18 weeks pregnant, and just starting to feel your movements. Facebook will remind me of these things, and I know the string of reminders is just starting. It just doesnt seem fair. Today, the 21st, marks seven months past your due date. A date most pregnant women eagerly await. Instead of a happy ending, Im pretty sure this is the day you died.

Seven months ago I was feeling....close to labor, and decided to walk the grocery store to try to urge you to come. In that grocery store, at the front right next to the cookies and seasonal goodies, I experienced the strangest sensation. It was a sudden dizzying, topsy turvy sensation. Best I can compare, it felt like a sudden blood pressure drop. Which I guess would make sense if I had a body no longer needing to feed my baby. Of course, this I know with hindsight. At the time I just chalked it up to being another weird pregnancy thing, and finished shopping. I bought convenience foods, thinking I would need easy, near ready to go meals after your birth. I guess that still proved true to an extent…but they were supposed to be convenient foods because I was busy with a newborn.

Nothing came out the way it was supposed to.

Seven months out is not as dark as the first weeks after your birth. The disoriented haze that coupled every moment is gone. I can function through some days now without crying. Your big sister starts first grade on Wednesday. A super exciting time, clouded by the thought that you should be here with us. I envisioned waiting with you and your brother at the bus stop…a crawling, maybe even cruising baby girl. That hoped-for image is forefront today…but I’ll pull it together and bask in the excitement of the first day of school. I think its safe to say that I’ll likely be so busy. Too busy to linger in the sadness. Not a day goes by without you on my mind. And even in the bustle of a crazy day, you are in the breaths of quiet.

Seven months ago I was talking to my doula, concerned about lack of movement. Juice. Jumping jacks. Urging you to move. My mind swore it felt you move. Hindsight shows it was likely just a rebound movement from my jumping jacks.

Even with the overwhelming sadness, I am thankful. I am thankful to have gotten 40 beautiful weeks carrying you, full of life. You are so special to me, and the connection I had with you during pregnancy was stronger than anything I’d experienced, even in my other pregnancies. The connection is still there. Just not in the way I hoped. The thing about cord accidents, is that I’m not sure I could have sensed something wrong before it was ‘too late’. When active labor started, there was not a worry in my mind. I was aiming for a water birth, and was really focusing on my mindset. Taking each contraction like an ocean wave, I felt in control. In fact, I was managing labor well enough that I had no idea it had progressed as far as it had. Six hours in, I was sure I had another handful of hours to go. As we prepared to leave for the hospital…I just had no idea.

My labor was perfect. I got the labor I had dreamed of, though still no water (I also hoped for a water birth with my son). Theres a place in my mind I’m scared to let fully develop. The place where I imagine a positive outcome. The place where you had been born alive, right there in our kitchen. A perfect labor ending in a perfect birth. A pink baby at my breast, with a placenta in my lap. Waiting for the pulsing to stop to walk your daddy through cutting the cord. I imagine that we would just settle in, calling our doula to ask her to leave the hospital and instead meet us at our home. We would be elbow deep in our babymoon. I have a feeling we would head to the hospital eventually. In an ‘oh hey, I unexpectedly delivered at home two hours ago’ sort of way. Proud of my labor and birth. Proud of you. And in no rush to get to a sterile hospital because birth is normal.

Im still proud. So so proud of you, my daughter. It seems so conflicting to have a dreamy labor and delivery with no happy ending. My arms still ache in the absence of your weight. You have rattled my existence in a way that leaves me forever changed. Somehow, I’ll be sure to use it for the better. I will never stop wishing you were here. But please, above all, know that I am grateful you were here.

Your mama loves you forever, and I can not wait for the day we are reunited in Heaven. The beauty of that moment is something I will look forward to for every last minute of my existence.