i should have become a mother today

Another date I will never forget. 

I should have become a mother today. Our second chance, after losing our first baby. Due just days after the anniversary of our first miscarriage. I consoled myself when l learned that I had another growing bean inside of me by thinking how much I would love this baby too. I would never forget my first loss, but knew once I met my baby I would feel so much love that just maybe I could make peace with that loss. Because without the loss, this person I would love so much wouldn’t exist.

But we lost this one too.

Instead, we are spending today with ovulation sticks, analyzing temps, obsessing over timing, and probably most crushing of all, hoping.

Hoping.

Learning to embrace the ambivalent relationship we all have with hope. Feeling afraid to hope, but also clinging to it as the only means to get through this treacherous experience. I had almost forgotten what this felt like. After a seven month long break, we have officially started trying again. Entering our first two week wait in almost 10 months. Facing the wild swings of excitement and hope, to despair and disappointment. 

And these dates stay with me, haunting me. The one year anniversary of our first miscarriage on Monday. Yesterday marked six years since my husband and I first started dating. Today, an another empty due date. 

I find that I veil the grief that these dates cause by overreacting to the other stress in my life. A small argument brings me to tears. A busy day, and I feel completely overwhelmed. Over the last few days I’ve broken down over anything and everything that’s not actually what I’m upset about. And when I do, the grief starts to climb its way out. I’m no longer thinking about whatever small thing triggered these tears. All I can think about are my empty arms.  I’m thinking about how overwhelmed I feel by this struggle, and the yearning for our baby that continually clutches my chest. 

I wish more than anything I was becoming a mother today. It makes my heart ache. Sometimes I don’t know what to do with the intense longing, or the uncertainty that drives this period. It bubbles up, consumes me, tightens and twists inside of me. I think about it everyday. I think about our lost babies, I think about what more we will endure, I think about when it will finally happen. 

Today I say another goodbye, and bid another due date farewell. I wish I could have met you.