Waves of grief

Trigger warning: miscarriage

I feel like I’m treading water in my grief.

I know we don’t always have to be moving forwards, that backwards is OK too. Maybe it’s not even like I’m treading water because that’s an active attempt to keep afloat.

I’m rather effortlessly and aimlessly drifting.

I don’t know where I am or how I feel. Maybe I’m a bit lost.

I can talk about boy3 with no trouble, the facts and the events that lead up to his birth at 20 weeks gestation aren’t difficult to share. I can say the words and I understand how we came to be where we were and how the eventual outcome was the least terrible scenario in the end.

But I don’t think I’m doing a very good job of allowing myself to feel.

I remember in the early months of grief, I joined a Facebook group of parents who’d experienced similar losses. I was astounded and, frankly, horrified at the deep raw emotions people were sharing after years and years. People actively forcing themselves to remember and relive their losses.

I knew I wasn’t like that, I’m not built that way. It wasn’t the right place for me. We all grieve differently and feeling out of place, like I didn’t fit in that group wasn’t helping me.

I don’t need or want to go back over his birth and our brief cuddles. I can remember him without imagining his face or dreaming of how he would be now. I don’t need to carry blame or apportion it to the care we received. There was a moment when something physical went wrong and from then we were on a path to a fixed destination. Whether we got there fast or slow and with how much pain and other damage could have played out hundreds of different ways.

As it was, he was born and I’m still here. The alternatives are unthinkable.

I miss him every day.

There’s a hole where he isn’t there.

I miss my baby and I want him so much.

I wish we could have kept you boy3. Your brothers and your daddy and I would have loved you so much. We do love you so much.