Stop. You need to read this.

I intially wrote this to be a Facebook status, but it got too long. I decided it should be a blog post instead. I haven't blogged in a long while. 


Okay, so I haven't posted for a few days about pregnancy and infant loss awareness because it's very difficult this month, so I'm gonna speak to you from the heart. When I was pregnant a year ago with Liam, I was ecstatic. We had been trying for over a year and I had just given up hope of being pregnant again without fertility drugs. It had been so easy to get pregnant with sammy. We didn't really try. I knew nothing of the "prime time" to get pregnant in a cycle. I didn't know all the things you shouldn't eat or do.  With Liam, I charted. I took my temperature daily. I kept notes. I got mad when things came up during that "prime time" in the cycle and we weren't able to baby dance. (Sorry Danny, for getting mad about that.) And then, right when I told Danny that I wanted to make a doctor's appointment, I decided to take a pregnancy test first because I had been feeling crummy. To be honest, I thought I had a stomach bug because my cycles had been so irregular since getting off birth control. It was positive and I was elated. I avoided all the things I shouldn't eat. I didn't lay flat on my back anymore to sleep. I went to bed at a decent hour and cut out caffeine completely. Then Liam was born early. The doctors say I had an infection that caused spontaneous labor. You all know the outcome of this. Liam lived for 23 days. He was loved, fiercely. He was prayed over. His story and ours touched lives. He went to heaven. I was crushed. I felt like we worked so hard to have this baby and now we were back at square one, trying to have another child. As soon as my cycle appeared again, we started trying again. I was so eager to have another baby to love. It took only five months this time to get pregnant again. We again were so happy. I was nervous too because this pregnancy would be on the same time line as my pregnancy with Liam. I again avoided all the things I should have, took my vitamins, made the appropriate doctor's appointments. When I was ten weeks along, I had a viability ultrasound. Which showed the baby had no heartbeat or blood flowing through it's body. He or she wasn't growing. Hadn't grown for a week. I was heartbroken. My world had been shattered twice in a year. I was angry. This baby was so wanted as was Liam. 

I've shared all that to say this. Being around pregnant women and new babies after losses like these are so very difficult. My heart aches for my babies and wishes that I could have continue growing them to term. My arms long to hold them. My mind is angry and screaming at me "this isn't fair." Yes, I am happy for pregnant women and their husbands. Those starting families or expanding them, intentional or accidental. I'm happy for those who have new babies in their families. But too, I am sad for me and my family. I'm sad that Sammy doesn't have siblings yet. I miss my babies that should be here. I see babies that were born when Liam should have been and i wonder if he would have mastered some of the things they had learned already because he was born early so that would have put him potentially behind developmentally. I get angry that of all the women I know, I was the one who had to lose my babies. My family had to suffer and not anyone else's. I get angry that women take being pregnant for granted or complain about it when I would trade any material possession I own to be able to go back and carry my babies to term. I want to scream at the pregnant women who complain, that they are so blessed and to not wish it were over because you don't know what can happen to your baby.

I want to give words of caution to all women who are pregnant for the first time that anything can happen. Anything can go wrong during your pregnancy. That if it does, it's not your fault and it sucks so badly and you want to change it, but you can't. 

I want to comfort the mothers like me who don't have their babies. To tell them it wasn't your fault, you didn't do anything wrong and you don't deserve this hurt. I want to tell them it's normal to be angry at families who haven't been touched by this degree of loss, to even be a little jealous. 

So I'm saying it now, new parents, please, please be understanding of the parents who have lost a pregnancy or a child, they aren't mad at you specifically for having what they long for. They feel happy for you, even in small ways, but that is often over clouded in their minds by the pain and sometimes guilt of the loss they have faced. 

And parents who have lost babies or pregnancies, it IS okay to be hurt or upset when you find out someone you know is expecting. It is okay to have to step back for a while to process your grief again. Don't let that ruin friendships though. Yes, your baby was and still is important to you, but so is their baby to them.