My children are my identity.

There have been so many times in the last ten months that I have felt lost. I feel confused about who I am, who I will be, and how on earth I will ever be anything other than the person I have been since we lost Carter.

It's an interesting thing, to try and describe yourself. I can tell you very easily that I have brown hair and hazel eyes, that my nose is a little crooked, and that my skin is whiter than a ghost's. I love laughing, writing, eating, singing, watching movies, cats, ice cream, and hanging out with my husband. I can also tell you, with a little more difficulty, that I am kind, silly, deeper than I may seem, and that I care about others more than myself. I have a love/hate relationship with people in general, get bored way too easily, and that the only time I feel 100% confident in myself is when I'm dancing in a crowded room. There are surface level things that you probably know, then there are deeper things that you don't. There might be even things you know about me that I don't know about myself. But I have been so changed by the loss of our children that I don't really know anything anymore.

I don't really remember who I was before we lost Carter, and I don't know if it's because I am still the same as I was then, or if it's because I am completely different. Or maybe it's both. The things I would have told you about myself then are the same things I would tell you about myself now, but they feel different. It's almost as if, before, my traits simply laid on top of my skin, like they could slip off and be replaced at any moment. But now, they are etched deep into my bones. They are permanent, and would be very difficult to change. 

Or maybe everything feels different because there is sadness that lies behind it all.

It's almost as if, the day we lost Carter, I ran into a brick wall and everything fell apart. My composition stayed the same, but those traits were slammed into my bones and then I shattered. Now instead of being whole, I'm in little pieces. I still feel the same things, and I feel like I'm still the same person, but I'm having a hard time putting it all together. I don't know that I could really tell you anything about myself anymore. 

The only thing I can tell you for sure is that everything I do is done for our children. Every thought I have, every action I do, every word I say, they are all for our babies. I go to work to make money to save for the next baby. I stay home in bed because I'm too sad to get up. I speak kindly to people because I don't want to add to any hardship they are experiencing. I play with the cats because I can't play with my babies. I eat out because I'm too tired to make food. I spend money because my life feels empty and even though material things don't help, they feel good in the moment. I cherish my time at home with Brandon, because he and the babies are my world, and home with him is the safest place to be.

A lot of women talk about how they lost their identity once they had kids, and I can understand that. Going from lots of me-time to little or no me-time is a big adjustment, and I'm sure it's hard without that time to rest and recharge. It almost sounds silly to say this, but it's also really hard to recharge when you have too much time for yourself. I'm so sad and so lonely and so empty all the time, and it feels like the weight just gets heavier and heavier. 

I don't know who I am, and I don't know how to feel normal emotions anymore. I don't know how to maintain one stable mood for longer than thirty minutes at a time. I don't know how to be happy without being sad. But I do know that I am a mother to two perfect children, and wife to the best husband a girl could ask for. Even though I am a broken, our family is whole, and that is enough motivation for me to keep picking up pieces of myself, even if I drop a few along the way.

On sharing Carter's pictures.

I had some nasty comments left on a few of my pictures this morning. They started with the picture of Carter I posted last night, and went all the way back to a picture in December. I always wonder why people waste their time trolling feeds they don't care to look at. If you don't want to see those pictures, go find someone else to stalk. But further than that, why troll the feed of someone who is clearly hurting? What gives them the right to drive that hurt in deeper?

Let's go back to yesterday. I was having a SUPER crappy day. Like, on the brink of tears all day, babies everywhere, wanted to just lay down and cry kind of day. We allowed ourselves some retail therapy, ate lots of food, and watched a lot of parks and rec. Late last night, I started scrolling back through pictures. I got to one I had posted of me with Carter, but honestly, the photo in black and white doesn't do his cute face justice. So I opened the shared file we have with all of Carter's pictures. I don't look at these pictures very often, maybe once every few weeks, and I think I kind of realized why last night. Carter is always always on my mind, one hundred percent of the time. But after almost ten months, a lot of times, he just feels like an idea. Like the time we had with him was all made up, and that the nursery was put together just in case. Looking at his pictures makes it feel real. I look at him, and I see my eyes, Brandon's lips, my nose...I see us. He is our baby. We made him. He's not just an idea. He's real.

The jerk this morning commented "why post a picture of a dead baby?" And while I kind of just laughed it off, because they aren't worth my time, it still upset me. Carter isn't just some dead baby. He's my son. Our son. He is a product of Brandon and myself. He carries our dna, and I carried him. I delivered him, we held him, we loved on him, and then we had to say goodbye. And then we had to bury him. He's not just some baby. He's our baby. I understand that some people may not want to look at a picture of my deceased child. In all honesty, I'd much rather be posting pictures of him with his eyes open, smiling, and crawling around the house. Of course I'd rather not be sharing a picture because I'm feeling sad, I'd rather be sharing a cute picture of something he did that day, and saying how lucky I am to be a mom to such a perfect boy.

Here's the thing though: I'm still lucky to be his mother. I'm still incredibly proud to have carried someone so perfect, to have made the literal cutest child (biased but oh well), and to have felt his little personality as much as I've been able to. While a lot of things are and always will be just dreams, we still get to fantasize about what life would have been like with him, the things he would have liked, and how full our home would have been with him here. We don't necessarily get to parent him, but he is still, in every way, our child. 

Like I said, I know that seeing pictures of an angel baby may not be something everyone is comfortable with. And that's okay. It's sad, and it's hard. Trust me, it makes me sad too. In the past ten months since we lost Carter, I've had a total of three negative people leave comments on my pictures. Compared to the amount of support we've received, three is nothing. So I'd like to take a moment here and say thank you to everyone that leaves such kind comments. I can't even begin to tell you how much they are appreciated. I'd also like to say thank you to those of you of may be uncomfortable with the pictures, but are decent enough to simply keep scrolling. You recognize pain, and you are kind enough to not make it worse.

The troll also commented "why smile at the grave of your deceased child?" Again, I'd really rather not be doing that. But there is something to be said for appreciating what you have, even if you don't have it quite to the extent you'd like to. Our family has grown by two in the past year. And even though our children are not at home with us, I am still so grateful to have them, and to know that they are a part of our family forever. So forgive me, hater, for smiling at the grave where two of our children are laid to rest. But I am blessed to be their mother, and knowing that Brandon and I have made a couple of perfect children is definitely something to smile about.

Missing the babies.

If I had a dollar for every time I've said that losing a baby is confusing, I would probably have enough money to adopt every child in the world. Confusing isn't the only word I would use to describe it (though it's one of the more appropriate ones), but besides being sad and angry, confusion is what I feel the most.

I started thinking about this on Monday. It was 11:04, and I got up to go to the bathroom at work. As soon as I walked in the door, I thought, seven days and ten minutes ago, I walked into the exact same stall and found that I was bleeding. Seven days and ten minutes ago, I was pregnant, and now I'm not. In my last letter to little bean, I wrote about how it was weird to not have any active participation in her delivery. With this miscarriage, I just stayed home. I was kind of an active participant, kind of not. Either way, one day the baby had a heartbeat, the next, it didn't. One day there was a baby in me, a few days later there wasn't. One week I got to stay home and mourn our loss and deal with the physical pain, the next I had to come back to work and pretend like everything was back to normal. Whatever that means anymore.

It has been nine and a half months since we lost Carter, and with each subsequent loss I find it harder and harder to understand our new normal. In the span of forty weeks, one normal woman's pregnancy, we have lost three babies. Three little angels that have somehow broken and completed us all at the same time.

There are so many things I've written separate posts about that I could continue to write about for years and years: sadness, anger, confusion, emptiness, fulfillment, joy, grief, fear, dread. The fact that our house is so empty. The idea that when I go out in public, no one would ever guess that I am a mother. How unfair it is that we are unable to bring a child home when there are parents locking their kids in cellars or the trunks of their cars. That I'm terrified people will forget Carter and little bean when there are so many other babies in the world. How crazy it is that time still passes, and that it seems to go so slowly, yet so fast. I think a lot about the day my counselor had me choose emotion cards out of a deck. I think I chose like fifteen different emotions. Maybe even twenty. That's a lot of emotions for someone to feel. And it would be one thing to feel each of them on different days, but I feel all of them simultaneously every single day.

How is it possible to feel so empty and full at the same time, all the time? To be so thankful for what I have, but so angry at what I don't?

When you lose someone you love, it's kind of like a giant boulder getting dropped into the middle of a small puddle. It crushes a lot of who you are, and the ripples aren't so much ripples as they are just chaos. Water spills outside the puddle, breaking the serenity and the wholeness of it all. The boulder is too heavy to lift all at once, so to get it out of the puddle, you have to slowly chip away at it, piece by piece, and it takes a long time. But even once every chunk of the boulder is removed from the puddle, there's still a dent where it fell, and that dent will never go away. There will always be tiny pieces of the boulder that are left behind.

Every single day I'm reminded of the chaos this boulder of child loss has caused in my life. Depression, anxiety, fear, guilt, loneliness, social anxiety...the list could go on and on. Losing Carter and little bean have hindered my ability to function like a normal human (or at least as normal as I was before, anyway). Brandon's work provided tickets to a baseball game last night, and I wanted to go, but we got about ten minutes away from home and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't handle people asking how I was doing, or giving me hugs, or telling me how tough I am. And on the flip side, I couldn't have handled everyone avoiding me or avoiding the subject of our losses. So instead we just went home and I was sad all night. It's not fair that we're changed in this way. Of course, I would rather be this person without my kids than never had them at all, but ideally, I'd like to still be normal and have them here with me.

It has been a pretty crappy week, in all honesty. I hate going to work not knowing when I'll get to be a stay-at-home mom. I hate staying home because it's too quiet. But I hate going out in public because, you know, people. Thank you to everyone who sends me notes and special things and remind me that our children are remembered. They always seem to come at the right time, and this week has been no different. And to all you loss parents, or anyone that is going through a hard time. just hold on. The ripples get smaller, and each day you wake up is another chip off the boulder. We can do this.

"You're so strong."

I read an article a while ago that sparked this post. I shared the article on Facebook, so some of you may have read it. In it, the mother writes "People comment on how “strong” my husband and I are. I don’t want to be strong, I want to be normal. There is nothing strong about living without your child. We don’t have any other choice but to go on without her; to go on living some semblance of a life while constantly missing her. There is no other option."

I've thought about this a lot since we lost Carter, and even more so since we lost our little girl, and now, after our miscarriage. People are always telling us how strong we are. We, like the mom that wrote the article, don't want to be strong. Trust me, I would love to have both my babies here and have people tell me I'm weak all day long. I would far take that over losing our babies and having to be strong. It takes so much work to be "strong." It is so hard to wake up every single day, get out of bed, eat, go to work, put a smile on my face, and help people with things when all I really want to do is scream and go home to sit in the empty nursery. At the end of the day, I barely have energy to sit on the couch with my eyes open. Some days I just want to drag myself outside, crawl into the backseat of my car and stay in the parking lot at work, because going home means I have to get up and do it all again the next day.

I don't want to be strong because I feel like the more I put on a show, the less people will remember our children and what we are going through. I don't want to be strong because I feel like the harder I try to be okay, the less I remember my own grief, and in turn, the less I remember our kids.

You think I'm strong because you don't see what happens when you aren't around. I put on a face for you because I don't want you to cry for me. I don't want to ruin your day the way all my days are ruined. I don't want you to feel even an ounce of the hurt I'm feeling, because no one deserves that. So you think I'm strong, because I'm spending my energy being strong for you.

But you don't see what happens when I'm by myself. When a song comes on the radio that reminds of Carter dancing in my belly. When I get home and can't make it up the steps because I'm physically tired from all the emotional pain. When I'm crying so hard that I can't breathe. When the skin around my mouth dries out because I drool a little when I cry. When anxiety sets in and I'm hovered over the toilet trying to simultaneously quell my crying and not throw up. When I get so angry that I throw the nearest non-breakable items until my arms are tired. When Brandon's shirt is soaked through with my tears. When we sit on the floor holding each other until the pain lessens. When every sentence about our children is a little stilted because we can't help but get choked up every time we talk about them. When we sit at the cemetery wondering how this is our life.

It's nice that people think we're doing well, and that we are being tough and putting on our game faces, but it's a lot of work. It's hard to not just call in to work every day. It's hard to not just lay my head down on my desk and will away the world. It's hard to come home to an empty house, or leave with an empty backseat. It's hard to live with an empty heart.

You can tell me I'm strong, but just know that you're lying. Maybe lying isn't the best word. Just know that you're wrong. I do things the way I do because I don't have a choice. Falling apart is not a choice because we have to keep going. Putting our lives on hold for grief is not a choice because time moves on and we have to learn to incorporate grief into our everyday routine. Giving up on myself is not a choice because at the very end of the day, I am all I have; I am the only one that controls my thoughts and emotions. Forgetting to live is not a choice, because my heart still beats for myself and our children, and there is so much potential for our little family. We have to live for that potential.

So you may think we're strong, but to us, breathing and living without our children is just a hard thing we have to do every day. It's routine but not, all at the same time. We're not just strong, we're loss parents, and this is our life.

Our five-day baby.

To fully tell this story, I need to back up a bit. Before we went to Disney World, I really thought I was pregnant. I was having some symptoms, and I just felt pregnant. But test after test confirmed that I wasn’t. I took one more test the day we got home, and again, negative. I was still confused as to why I was having symptoms, so I called my doctor and asked to get my blood drawn so we could make sure I was ectopically pregnant. I wasn’t, but I had started having some pain in my abdomen, so we made another appointment to go see him. He wondered if it was maybe appendicitis, so we did another blood draw to check my blood cell counts, and all were normal. Four days after that I was in a lot of pain, so I went in for an ultrasound and found out that I had an ovarian cyst. I wasn’t upset by this, because our bodies make cysts for a living, and one cyst isn’t anything out of control, plus if it is something that has happened before, it kind of explains why it took us a little bit to get pregnant with Carter, but that’s a story for another day.

My doctor was out of town when I found out about the cyst, and was gone for two weeks after, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to him about it before my follow up appointment. When we went back in (two weeks after finding out about the cyst), the ultrasound tech told me that the final ultrasound report said that my cyst had actually ruptured (which would explain why I was in so much pain the day I went in) and that we didn’t need to do a follow up ultrasound because the cyst was gone. For some reason, I felt like being naggy and kind of insisting that she do another ultrasound. She said she would just do a quick scan, and if she saw something, she would do a full exam. She looked at both ovaries, and they looked fine, then did a quick swipe over my uterus and said “I think there might be something there.” I said “like a baby?” and she said “I think so!”

We ended up doing a full exam, and found out that there was indeed a tiny baby with a little heartbeat! Brandon and I were so surprised. We just kept looking at each other and shaking our heads and laughing. We hadn’t anticipated being pregnant, but I was so glad I pushed for that ultrasound! It was just crazy that I stopped taking pregnancy tests when we got back from vacation, but that was when I should have started (tmi but oh well!). We went upstairs to meet with the doctor, and everyone was so excited for us. The first thing he did when he came in the room was give both of us a hug haha.

The appointment that day was exactly 39 weeks, almost down to the minute, from the day we found out we had lost Carter. That whole day had been kind of crappy, but finding out we were pregnant on such a hard day made it a little easier. I measured 5 weeks 6 days, and our tentative due date was set for March 22, which meant that with our early induction due to our losses, we would have a baby a day or two before my birthday.

That night after our appointment, we went directly to our neighbor friends (who are also loss parents) and shared the news. We went to a wedding the next day and had to keep the secret from Brandon’s family, and it was so tough! All weekend we were so excited. I kept wanting to call our parents and tell them, and it was so hard to be patient! We let ourselves get really excited, talking about bringing the baby home and all things baby. A friend, who didn’t know I was pregnant, sent me a rainbow blanket she had made me herself, and we got it the day after we found out we were pregnant. I thought it was a sign that this one would stick, and that we would get to bring it home. In retrospect, I should have known that getting too excited would jinx it.

Monday morning at work, I went to the bathroom and found that I was bleeding. I called Brandon as I was leaving work, and he met me at the doctor’s office. The doctor looked me over, said I wasn’t actively bleeding and that there were no signs that we were losing the baby. We even did an ultrasound, and the baby still had a very strong heartbeat. For the moment, we were safe. He sent us home with orders to rest and eat lots of ice cream. An hour and a half later, I bled more, and I knew it was over. I called my doctor the next morning to tell him I had been bleeding all night, and he said we were probably losing the baby. We went in for another ultrasound Wednesday afternoon, and even though the sac was still there, the baby was gone. We had lost another baby.

The rest of this last week has been spent recovering and dealing with the physical pain that accompanies a miscarriage. Our doctor said that ours was just a very typical miscarriage, and that unfortunately, they are very common. He said that it in no way relates to either of our other two losses, and was just another stroke of bad luck. He also said that this should not deter us from trying again. It was nothing we did, nothing my body did (and not caused by the cyst or my thyroid meds or anything), and that we should try not to be discouraged. Then he sent us home again with orders to eat ice cream, and to plan another trip instead of going to the gym. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a million times, but he really is the best.

We’re sad, obviously, but we have to keep moving forward. If someone wants to make me a giant banner that says that, keep moving forward, I’d love to hang it in my house somewhere. It has definitely been our motto for the past nine months.

Even though we’ve been dealing with another loss all week, my heart has felt so full. Brandon is the most incredible husband; I couldn’t have asked for someone better to go through all this with, and our babies are so lucky to have him as their dad. Together, we have two little angels, and another little baby that brought sunshine back into our lives for just a few days. Our house is so empty, but our family keeps growing. Even though our family is not the most traditional one, we are still parents, and our children are ours to love forever.

Hi Little Bean: May 23, 2017

May 23, 2017

Hi Little Bean.

I miss you so much. I haven’t written to you since the excitement the day after the ER, and now you’re gone. The two weeks since we found out about your swelling have gone so terribly fast, yet I feel like we had just enough time with you before we lost you. Thank you for staying with me through Mother’s Day. And thank you for coming to us at all. We love you so so much.

I came back to work yesterday, bean, and I have felt pregnant both days. I have gotten a little bit of afternoon sickness, have been so tired, and if I didn’t know any better, swear I could have felt you wiggling around in there. But you’re not here, and my body is still confused. One minute I was pregnant, the next I wasn’t. I don’t know how to comprehend the change that I had no part in. With Carter, I was an active participant in his delivery. With you, I was asleep on a table.

I’m waiting to hear from the doctor if he was able to have you cremated or not. I’m going to guess he wasn’t, but I don’t know how to get some closure on your loss without that. Maybe daddy and I can just say some words next to Carter’s grave and pretend you’re there. Maybe we can get a little plaque with your name on it or something. But I just really want to be able to spread your ashes. I want some physical proof that you were here, and that I’m not making it up like I made up Carter.

It’s such a confusing thing, to lose a baby. How do you lose something you barely had? And I barely barely had you. You were still so little. The report says your hand measured 1 centimeter, and your little foot measured 1.1 centimeter. You were barely there. And now you’re not here, and I can’t grasp it.

I can’t understand why we had to lose you. I get that maybe the timing was just meant to be this way. You were supposed to come for a bit, but that you have other stuff to take care of up there, and that you’ll be back. I hope you’ll be back. I knew it was you and I knew you were here before I even knew I was pregnant. You and I have a special, special bond that I wouldn’t trade for anything. But I hate that I knew  you were gone. I hate that you had to go in the first place.

This week we would have been sixteen weeks pregnant, and we would have been sharing you with the world, finally. Instead we shared the news the morning we went to the hospital. And instead of sharing the news with joy, we shared it with sadness.

I miss you, little bean. We love you very, very much. Stay safe.

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Lazy weekends.

I wrote weekends, like Brandon and I actually have had more than one weekend with zero plans, but this past weekend was the first we've had in a really, really long time! We didn't even go up to Logan, which was unusual. We usually either have a lot of things to do at home, or we make a trip to go see the babies. This weekend, we didn't do either.

Friday night, Brandon went to a movie with some guys from work, and I hung out with a friend until her husband got home. Then I treated myself to Costa, and watched Riverdale until Brandon got home. (Does anyone else watch Riverdale? Why am I so obsessed with it??) The next morning, we slept in a bit, ran to Walmart for some breakfast stuff, cleaned the house real quick, showered, and put our pj's right back on. We sat down to watch Parks and Rec around 2:00, and I fell asleep probably around 3:30. After a two hour nap, we went to Firehouse Subs for dinner, then went up to Daybreak to walk around the lake. We were feeling kind of bad about our lazy day, but we ended up walking five miles around the lake, so then we felt okay about it haha.

I didn't sleep well Saturday night, so we slept in pretty late on Sunday. Once we finally got out of bed, we ran to Target to pick up a few things. My best friend's nephew was in a pretty bad burn accident last week, and his birthday is today, so we got him a few movies, a book, a game, and a blanket that will hopefully help get him through his time at the hospital. We drove across the valley to leave the gift at the hotel, so that took up a good chunk of our day. That morning, Brandon told me we couldn't take a nap, but after we finished folding the laundry, he decided he was tired, so we laid down with an alarm set for 45 minutes later, and ended up waking up almost two hours later. Oops. But I felt fine about it, because that meant we didn't have to go to the gym, so we just made dinner and went for another walk instead.

This is a rambly post, but it was so nice to have a weekend with Brandon to do nothing. Even though we took lots of naps, we got in some good bonding time. July was our busy month, and September will be the same, so here's hoping August will be full of relaxing weekends!

39 weeks.

I know I'm posting a lot this week, but apparently I have a lot on my mind. 

I wasn't sure how the 39 week mark would affect me. I knew it would be hard, but I can't decide if it has been harder or easier than I imagined. It honestly blows my mind that it has been nine months since we lost Carter. The pregnancy went extremely fast, and the time after has done the same. Almost too fast for my liking sometimes. Some days I wish I could just slow everything down and take more time to grieve, especially since losing little bean. I wish I could go and spend more time at the cemetery. I wish I could do everything in the comfort of the nursery every day. But what I wish most is that I was mothering a live child. That, rather than sitting at the cemetery, we could be sitting at a park. Rather than taking time to grieve, we could be taking time to snuggle. Rather than sitting in the nursery, I'd be chasing a crawling baby all over the house. There are so many things I wish could be different.

The 26th of each month is generally always harder than the 27th, and this month is no exception. I had a follow up with my doctor on Wednesday at 4:00, the same day, date, and time of our appointment the day we found out we lost Carter. It sucked. I almost wanted to cancel, just because I knew that going to his office that day would make things hurt so much worse. We had a wedding to go to on the 27th, and it kind of sucked having to put on a face and talk to people.

As I'm writing this, I'm thinking about the days following the 27th. I remember little things, but not necessarily when they happened. We went home Thursday night, and were treated to french toast in bed, and gifts from our parents. My friends came over sometime that weekend and all we could do was hug each other and cry. My mom brought home Costco hot dogs for lunch one day. I left a giant wet spot on the couch from icing myself and not realizing that the ice had melted through my sweatpants. I cried in the shower each day. I woke Brandon up many times a night to help me go to the bathroom. My milk came in as a solid reminder that there was no baby to feed. We went for a walk to the mailbox one day because that was all I could handle. Flowers and cards poured in. The thing I remember most is going for a drive after my parents left, and feeling like the car and the house were all too empty. We still feel that every day.

For whatever reason, every time I'm prepping the house for my parents or Brandon's parents to come down, I cry. Even though both sets of parents have been to our house multiple times since October, it always feels like that was the last time. Maybe I feel guilty, or maybe thinking back to that weekend just makes me so sad, but either way, it happens every time.

I miss being 39 weeks pregnant. I miss the discomfort and the heartburn and the lack of sleep and the belly and the tiny kicks inside me. I miss craving pizza rolls and Carter's hiccups and feeling him dancing to my favorite songs. I miss the glow and the happiness Brandon and I both had as we closed in on the due date. I miss being naive and patient. I miss our son. I miss him more than I've ever wanted or missed anything in my entire life. I miss him as much as I love him. Endless amounts. So much that it hurts literally all the time.

I would give so many things to have him back. I would give my own life if Carter could come back and live with Brandon. But this is our life now. We have to take what we can get, and muddle through the 26th and 27th of every single month. I will never be 38 or 39 weeks pregnant ever again; those two weeks are something that I will have shared with only Carter. I would give anything to be 39 weeks pregnant again. Or maybe 38 weeks. I just want to go back to a time when our son was alive.

Nine Months In // Nine Months Out

It has been nine months since you were born. October 27, 2016. I wish we could take one of those “nine month” pictures. The kind where I hold you roughly where you hung out in my belly, and then we put it next to the very last picture of my pregnant belly and compare the two.

I wish we could be doing that. There are so many things I wish I could be doing with you today.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it a million times, but I think it’s extremely unfair that Thursdays still exist. And that the 27th of each month exists. It’s the worst when they happen to be the exact same day. Now it has happened twice. Not only is today the 27th, and a Thursday, and exactly nine months, but it also marks thirty-nine weeks since the day you were born. The same number of weeks I was pregnant when we lost you.

A huge part of me can’t believe that it has already been 39 weeks. This time last year we were 25 weeks along, and your little kicks were starting to get so strong. We started setting up the nursery and buying more and more clothes, and trying to decide on a name. This year just feels empty. 

There are only so many ways we can track time without you, and it seems like four of the five all happen this month. And even though it gives me a specific time that is set aside to only think about you, I’d really rather that you were here every second of the day, making it hard to focus on anything else. When my alarm buzzes every Thursday and each month on the 27th, my movements slow and I stop what I’m doing to think about you and only you. Some days I barely scratch the surface, other days I relive the entire process, from the second we found out you were gone until the day we buried you. Neither way is easy. And as hard as I try, I generally end up in tears.

So many people said it would get easier, but I think they kind of lied.

What would you be doing right now, at nine months old? Would you be crawling like crazy around the house? Pulling yourself up to stand against the couch? Playing so much and talking nonstop just like your mom? You would be daddy’s little buddy, and my best friend. And maybe the cats would have taken to you by now. Hopefully.

We would be spoiling you like crazy, that I know for sure. We’re still trying to do that, even though you aren’t here, so it’s just a little harder. We make a day trip to see you at the cemetery as often as we can, and always try to take a toy or flowers. We buy you a souvenir on each of our trips, and keep as many airplane trinkets as we can around the house, so that there are little reminders of you everywhere we look. But even without those things, I know we’d never forget to remember you. Not on the 27th, or on any other day of any year.

Nine months in, and nine months out, my sweet Carter boy. Nine months with you in my belly, nine months of you not being here. Nine months of preparing to be parents, nine months of parenting differently. Nine months of loving you before we knew you, and forever more to love you until we see you again.

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**original post on Still Mothers