a letter to my child...

my dear sweet baby,

you were due today. now i know babies don't always come on their due date, so you could have been born anytime in the past week or so, but because i will not have the opportunity to give birth to you, today is the day i will remember...

it seems so strange to me that i should mourn you so deeply--i was only pregnant with you for 7 weeks. and by the time the doctor told me i was pregnant, you were already dying. from the first moment i knew you existed, i also knew you were not going to survive. it was the worst pain i can imagine. the knowledge that you were there inside of me, yet unable to hold on, was excruciating. i walked around for a week pregnant, and yet not really pregnant. i waited for the inevitable. and a week after the doctor told me i was pregnant with you, i gave you back to God. i prayed and told Him that i was giving you back to Him--to be an angel to watch over us. and i asked Him for it be over. now my prayers are not often answered so quickly, but a few hours later, i began cramping and bleeding. and what was left of you slipped out of me over the course of the next couple of days.

i thought it would be over then, but it really wasn't. i don't know that i will ever totally get over it. perhaps it is because pregnancy doesn't come easily to me. but perhaps it is simply because you were my child. you were real to me. and i will never know who you were. i will never know if you would have been strongwilled like your brother and sister. i will never know what you would have looked like. i will never know how it would have felt to nurse you or hold you or sleep next to your warm little body. i will never know what you would have smelled like, or what it would have felt like to nuzzle your tiny, soft cheek. i will never know so many things. and i am so unbelievable sad about it.

so today i mourn you. and i do so mostly alone. no one else was changed by you--only i was pregnant with you. only i felt different. only i talked to you and dreamed of you. only i felt the physical pain of you leaving. and now only i feel the emotional pain of this loss. i have many friends who have supported me and loved me through this ordeal. and they continue to do so. they remember with me. but this is my burden to bear, as so many women know all too well.

but i am comforted, too. i am comforted by the knowledge that you are with your heavenly Father. i am comforted by the fact that my father was there to greet you when you crossed into heaven. i always wished that my daddy could know my children, and just think, he got to meet you before i did! i am comforted that you are an angel watching over all of us--especially your big brother and big sister. i am comforted because i know that God has a plan for our family, and that you were a part of that plan, no matter how brief a part.

i want you to know that i will not forget you ever. i pray that God will grant me more children. and i pray that i never suffer this loss again. i am, in my heart, now a mother of three. and most of the world will never know of you, but i will not forget. i will carry you in my heart.

thank you for being a part of my life.

i love you more than you can ever know.
mommy