I'm a mess today. It's been creeping up on me in the last week and seems to have culminated into this huge overwhelming feeling of hopelessness today.

I have been doing so well. Even after Jesse lost his job, I was hopeful, confident that it was all part of the Big Picture, that it was probably meant to lead us to something better. But as the time continues to pass and the "better outcome" I was hoping for seems less and less likely, my optimism is admittedly suffering. In fact, I am starting to wonder if anything is ever going to go right again.

And it's things like these that begin to loosen the stiches of the patches I have so carefully sewn over that dark, gaping hole you left me with. I start to feel that bare, vulnerable, empty place again, and it makes me realize that this is far from over. That this will never be over, not really. Perhaps someday I will patch the hole more permanently, but it will never be gone.

Tomorrow it will be May. May, which still conjures a bit of anticipation somewhere in my heart. It is the month you would have been born, the month I began waiting for way back in September. It's hard to imagine how different things would have been if it had all gone according to plan. I try not to hold on to that image, because you were not well from the beginning. It wouldn't have been as I expected no matter what. I just had so many expectations. I should have known better.

So this May we will be seeing your little sibling for the first time, who took up residence a few weeks ago. Naturally, I am fearing the worst, just as I did with you, but more so this time. It's funny, in the weeks and months after your death, I became obsessed with the idea of getting pregnant again. On some subconscious level, although I tried to convince myself otherwise, I believed it would fix everything, that it would fill the big empty hole you left. But it didn't. It won't. You are not replaceable. Even getting the chance to experience pregnancy again did not come with the joy I expected it to. That blind, hopeful happiness I had with you is gone, probably forever. In its place is uncertainty and a complete and utter lack of expectations. Oh and a big empty hole that makes its presence ever known.

I'm just so sad Layla. I want you to be safe in my belly, getting ready to be born. I want to hear you cry, to see your eyes, to snuggle with you. Some days I still feel like I could wake up and realize this was all a dream.

conception

I knew I was pregnant with you before the test told me so, even though I was in some state of denial before I got the proof. I remember going to lunch with my dad in that seemingly never ending inbetween time and feeling as though I was going to gag on the chicken in my tortilla soup. I remember the nagging voice in the back of my head saying "see! You're pregnant! You are!" and I felt like I would burst with the desire to tell someone, anyone, about the possibility of you. But I didn't. In fact, even though I could not hug anyone without the feeling of fire across my chest, and I could smell a simple piece of peanut butter toast from the next room so strongly that it was dizzying, I could not believe it.

It was not the time, after all. We were supposed to wait. I thought of my old manager, who had fallen pregnant unexpectedly, telling newly-engaged me to watch out: once you are married, it happens more easily. I didn't know what she meant at first, but soon I got it. The security and societal acceptance of marriage makes you lazy, more willing to take risks. Suddenly, in the midst of analyzing every twinge in my body, I knew all to well how she must have felt.

I was excited. Well, excited doesn't even begin to touch the surface of it, really. My biological clock had swung into gear a full year before and you were the manifestation of my wildest dreams. I knew it was not a good time to try for a baby, but I prayed for it to happen by accident.

It was September 9th when I found out that you did, in fact, exist. After an ambiguous line the day before, Jesse insisted we get the digital tests. He wanted it in black and white, no more analyzing little pink lines. I woke up earlier than usual, anxious to know for sure, and my heart pounded in my throat as I watched the little hourglass begin to flash. At some point, I turned away from it, the anticipation too overwhelming. "It's going to say Not Pregnant," I told myself about a million times before turning around. When I finally did, I glanced at it a few times before picking it up to examine it more closely, sure I had missed the "Not" part of it. But there was definitely only one word across the display.



I loved you from that moment on. I did not know that our time together would be so short or that you would change me in ways I could not have imagined. I loved you. I still do, every moment.