sad in through the looking glass.

I think often about my pregnancy, labor, and delivery. I feel … nostalgic? The thoughts are so frequent (almost obsessive?) that it’s been keeping me up at night. I’m more tired than I need to be.

Within days of his birth, I was already very strongly feeling the need to be pregnant again, to have another child. I find myself jealous of pregnant women.

What is it? I’m not totally sure.

Maybe I’m wishing I could have enjoyed it more, that I missed out on the experience, that a second time would be different. (But would it really be different? On some level I think I will always be afraid of loss.)

Maybe I’m surprised that my grief over the miscarriage still hasn’t left me. If you asked, I would tell you that I didn’t want it to go away anyway, that it’s part of who I am now, that remembering is the only way to honor what could have been. But perhaps subconsciously I expected that it would. Perhaps the relief, the bliss I felt in those first few days of his life convinced me that it would. (I think that feeling would have stayed with me for a long time too had we not discovered his eye condition.)

I recently read someone online describing how their grief changed after their “rainbow” baby was born. Now they really knew what they had missed out on with their loss. Maybe that’s part of it too?

I am grateful. I am. He’s a delightful, easygoing baby and I’m really enjoying my time with him. His surgeries went well. He will see.

But sometimes my heart is still sad.