Growing

It’s been a while – I haven’t been in the greatest of moods lately and I just feel like I don’t know what to say that’s uplifting and fantastic.  The elephant hasn’t lifted off my chest quite yet.  I still get moments where I miss him so much that I feel like I can’t breathe.  I still have a person here and there that doesn’t know that I have to tell that I’ve lost my baby.  I’m still dealing with the fact that others have moved on and don’t realize how sensitive they need to be with me still.  Still seeing certain people for the first time and feeling sad because it’s like they’d rather ignore all of my hurt they see inside me than give me a simple “I’m so sorry” and a hug.  But that just makes me feel worse.  I understand the awkwardness of it though.

It’s been two months to the day of his birth.  Feels like a lifetime.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that I spent 19 weeks being pregnant.  Being so nauseous and miserable.  How did all of that happen?  What lifetime was that?  Who was that woman carrying that baby?  She’s such a different woman that’s here now.

I feel like Jonah made me a better person.  I really do.  But I hate that – I would have rather stayed the same and still had him safe in my belly right now.  I mean, I would have grown into this person eventually.  I was just forced to actually grow up.  Mainly to be able to keep myself together than anything.

At first I was being very strong and not letting other pregnant people and their new babies get me down.  I find that harder now.  My body just aches to be pregnant again – to safely deliver a healthy baby.  I want it all.  I want the nausea and the back pain and the constant need to pee.  I want the ache of contractions and the sleepless nights that follow.  Nursing a new baby, getting to know them, watching them grow.  Feeling the weight of them on your chest, breathing in and out.

Some people tell me I am blessed to have two kids already.  Yes, I’m blessed – I love them with all my heart.  But nothing about already having two kids makes happier about losing one.  It doesn’t take away the ache for another.  Doesn’t make me feel less broken because it’s almost been a year since we started trying for a baby and all we’ve been left with is pain.

It’s so weird.  I feel like I fall in love with Jonah more every day.  I feel like his mother, he feels like my son.  I love him as much in death as I would have in life.  I just ache and ache and ache for him.  I feel so sad for him to have to die so soon.

I feel so mad that this is my story.  I just felt like I had been through enough in my life, surely the universe would ease up on me after all I’ve been through.  I’ve realized that it won’t and it never will.  There’s more sad things that will happen, more people to lose.  I feel so vulnerable.  Bad things do happen, all of the bad things.  Nothing is certain.

But in typical Leah fashion I am going to allow this to do positive things in my life.  I’m going to continue growing and just take these beatings as what it takes to make me stronger and stronger and stronger.  Every day I choose between letting myself be defeated or letting myself grow.  My warm bed calls to me, I want to curl up there and do nothing for days and days and days on end.  Growth takes work but it isn’t any harder than letting yourself get defeated and stay in bed.  One makes you feel better at the end of the day and one perpetuates the sadness.  The easy way out is really pushing on, growing, being strong.