The Child We Never Knew

For those of you who don't already know, we lost our baby on Tuesday. Monica woke up in extreme pain, and things just got worse from there. They thought she'd had a miscarriage last week, but when she had an ultrasound to confirm it, we were surprised and delighted to find that our baby was still alive and kicking. Not so yesterday. There's no way that tiny little life could have survived that.

Monica was 9 weeks pregnant, and in a couple more weeks we would have been able to find out whether we were going to have a boy or a girl. Monica and I thought it would be a girl, even though her sister, Kate, was set on it being a boy. We'll never know now, and all we have is speculation.

Even though the little life growing within Monica was only about the size of a grape, we'd already started thinking of it as a member of the family. We'd talk to it, and had already picked out a name or two (Trinity being the favorite at the time, if it turned out to be a girl.) Most of the time we just called it "Sea Monkey" though.

Even though the prospect of having a child was rather daunting, I'd grown accustomed to thinking of myself as a father-to-be. I'd say things like, "This is the last time I celebrate Father's Day without being a father," or I'd look at a guy in the store, walking around with a baby in his arms and think to myself, "That's going to be me soon." Alas, it was not to be.

The fact that Monica got pregnant at all was a miracle in and of itself, so I'm just looking at this situation as a "test run", getting Monica's body ready to host a new life in the future. We know it's possible now, so we'll just have to try again. I mean, it only took us 7 years to get pregnant this time. How bad can it be? *sigh*

Anyway, there's a lot of lightning outside at the moment, and this laptop battery is about to die. Thanks to all of you who offered words of support and encouragement. It's been a rough past couple days, but it's thanks to friends and family members like you that's we've been able to work our way through this. Thank you once again, and please keep in touch. Peace.