My First Baby

An 11 week ultrasound (not mine.)

It's March.  Always, it's been a weird month to me. Vaguely springlike, vaguely warm or maybe not.  I do like St. Patrick's day with it's greenness and jolliness.  However, I give March credit for preceeding my favorite time of the year, Spring.  There is so much to love and be happy about with the approach of Spring.  It's like Hope becomes visible in the form of beautiful flowers, skies and warm days rolling by on the way to Summer's freedom (at least when you are eleven.)

Right now though, I have an uneasiness I can't explain.  Its been years since I have been through any kind of depression.  When I was younger I always let my emotions and my circumstances dictate whether or not my life was worth living, in my mind atleast.  I was always a victim to outside forces, everything was beyond my control.  Now, thankfully I have the gift of perspective that grows each year.  I have maturity to thank and a deeper faith to lean on.  Plus, I have a great life.  Really.  I can't complain - too much.

So its March and I am uneasy.  Then I remember.  March is the month I was due with my very first baby.  I was 29.  It took my husband and I a year to conceive  plus fertility medication.  I was cautiously optimistic.  We made it to 11 weeks I think.  Some of the details have become fuzzy.  I do however remember quite distinctly the pain and the change in who I was that took place when I lost that baby.  I have since lost three more but the happy ending is that I have 5  healthy kids too.  I never would have believed it if you told me I would end up with such a big family.

That first baby, it turns out, had a strange and rare condition called Tetraploidy.  It had four sets of chromosomes.  Learning that did bring a slight relief in knowing there wasn't a darn thing I could have done differently to help it along.  It was doomed from day one.  Isn't it weird?  That a body would go through the trouble of responding to a pregnancy test, feeling nauseous, getting a little rounder and all along the baby never even had a heartbeat.  Why did it take so long to let me know something wasn't right?

It really hurt - mentally and physically losing that baby.  I think it was a boy.  He would be turning 10 right about now.  Maybe even today.  I don't want to give the impression that I sit around trying to find things to be sad about or that I weep for those babies day in and day out because I don't.  I have perspective and joy and too much darn laundry to leave much time for that indulgence.  I do however, remember them often, look forward to meeting them and wonder if they know my sister and grandparents who are sharing eternity with them already.  I do wonder what they would have looked like, sounded like, how they would have made me smile and cry.  Of course then I remember, if they were here -

I know and love five sweet kids who would not be and my life would be so much different without them in it.  That takes away the sadness.  There really is a plan.