Sure can steal your heart away

Am I crazy to blog this? Maybe. It is very personal... but it's been on my mind more and more every day this week, and I thought maybe it would help to just write the words, and let them go.

Years ago, I had a miscarriage. I wasn't very far along - I just starting to let a few friends know that I was expecting, but really hadn't told many people.

One day in late July, my pregnancy slipped away from me, before I even could truly understand what was happening to me. I remember standing at the photocopier, and feeling one sharp cramp; things happened from there, and after a night spent in a room in the maternity ward, it was over. I didn't realize. thought that I was still pregnant, just spotting, and it wasn't until after an ultrasound the next morning that the doctor told me there was no more baby.

The due date I had been given was St. Patrick's day. I had visions of a tiny baby with fire-red ringlets, given that my husband is Irish.

He didn't stay overnight with me that night in the hospital, because I told him to go home. I guess he didn't understand that I didn't really mean it, that I knew the chair was uncomfortable and he couldn't sleep in it, but I wanted him to climb into bed with me. I didn't tell him. It's not his fault. I've never really been good at telling people what I'm truly feeling. I give the answers that I feel like I'm supposed to give. So, he wasn't there with me when the doctor gave me the news. It's not his fault.

While I waited for him to come to take me home, I watched through my open doorway as a woman across the hall arranged her gifts and flowers and balloons and bundled up everything to go home with her baby. It's an unbelievably cruel irony that all too often when you are miscarrying, you are in the part of the hospital with the women who HAVE made it to the finish line. I was too numb and cold to cry.

My mother later tried to comfort me by telling me that maybe I hadn't even been pregnant; I know she meant well, but... not only was my baby gone, now I felt like I was supposed to just forget that he or she ever existed, and that just hurt too much. I'd already had a blood test, so I knew I WAS pregnant at one point. It seemed so useless to debate the issue.

I've tried to put it all behind me. Most of the year, I don't think about this. It seems like it happened in another life, and I guess in a way it did. But the shamrocks, they get to me every year. I feel as though it was only yesterday.

I did go on to have two children, of course. We waited a couple of months, and after a few heartbreaking months of no success, I conceived again. I was blessed with healthy babies. In my heavy heart I know the logical reasons why I might have miscarried. First pregnancy sometimes means hormones not quite all ramped up for the task, or there was a "problem" of some sort. Who knows? Every minute of the first four months of my next pregnancy I was terrified, and I couldn't even really enjoy it. I was almost five months pregnant before I dared wear a single maternity outfit.

I know that I'm lucky to have my children - I know that. It was SO long ago. I do know that. But when St. Patrick's day rolls around, I still can't help but think of it as that baby's birthday, and miss him or her just a little...

I guess I'll never completely escape those feeling, of longing to know that child. Wondering, what he or she would be like.