Editing

When you pee on the stick and see the second pink line develop, you begin a reworking of your life story.  The movie that is your life is getting a new character and everything from that day forward is going to be different.  I got my second line on February 9th and immediately packed up my summer clothes and soon after, all the rest of my non-maternity clothes.  I wouldn’t be needing those for awhile.  I pictured the scenes of my summer: The heat, the swollen feet, the huge belly, complaints about the heat, the swollen feet and the huge belly…  Fall, my favorite season, would bring the start of preschool for Averi.  I would need to plan her Halloween costume early because the baby would be here in the middle of October.  Thanksgiving and Christmas, people could come to us if they wanted to see us.  Nobody expects a family with a brand-new baby to travel.  I worried about who would be with Averi when I went to the hospital to deliver her new baby brother or sister, how she would react, if she would feel replaced.  I wondered how I could ever possibly love another child in the same way that I loved Averi.  I wrote countless scenes from their childhood together.  I imagined Averi coaching the little one along, through babyhood, through school, through life.

When your baby dies, or when you find out that you will not be bringing a baby home from the hospital, production on the movie of your life is halted.  It’s derailed.  It’s scrapped.  You need to edit the new character out of the script.  But the problem is that you don’t want to.  You liked the movie with the new character in it and it’s not quite as simple as you think it might be to revert back to the old script.  You know that things have indeed changed forever, and that you will not even be getting a live baby to show for it.

A few hours before I found out that something was wrong, I visited a new preschool that we were thinking of enrolling Averi in.  I loved it and knew right away that it was the perfect place for her.  I told the registrar that my husband would have to be the active parent come fall because I would have a brand-new baby on the way.  I told her that I would put a check in the mail for the deposit as soon as I got home.  I didn’t mail it for almost a week.  Every time it occurred to me to write the check, I thought to myself, “I don’t need to pay the deposit for preschool because we won’t be here in the fall.”  And then I would remind myself again that it was only the baby who would not be here in the fall.  I have to remind myself of this ridiculous fact several times a day.  It still doesn’t make any sense.

I’m new at this.  I only found out 27 days ago that there was something wrong.  14 days ago, my baby died.  10 days ago, my baby was born.  8 days ago, my baby was cremated.  I’m not one to speak on the subject of going through the stages of grief after losing a child to stillbirth.  I haven’t gone through any stages yet.  I’m still reminding myself that everything is changed.  I’ve hidden away my pregnancy books, which seems to me like a start.  Your Pregnancy Week By Week was still on my nightstand when I got home from delivering my baby.  I couldn’t bear to put it away sooner although I had stopped looking at it after I found out that something was wrong -  I knew that my baby was not doing what the baby in the book was doing that week.  I knew that my baby never would.

So please forgive me if you found my blog, thought it was funny and decided to stick around for more.  I know you didn’t sign on to read about a woman who loses her baby and then possibly just a bit of her sanity.  Like I said, this wasn’t a part of my original script.