Before and after
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I think about my life in two parts:
Before I was broken, and after.
In the before, I wasn’t even supposed to get pregnant. It would probably never happen, doctors told us. So I went about my life, happily married, quietly aching for the possibility. Fielding the neverending stream of unsolicited advice. Watching people around me falling effortlessly pregnant, multiplying like wildflowers.
Even then, in the midst of the before, I had light in my eyes. I buried myself in my career, and spent my days planning adventures with my husband. In retrospect, maybe they were distractions. But the laughter outweighed almost everything, and I was relatively content with the person staring back at me in the mirror during that period of my life. I slept through the night. Something I wish I hadn’t taken for granted then.
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The before shattered into the after in a matter of a few months in early 2018. We were pregnant. After six years of accepting that we would never be, we were. And with bated breath, we treaded cautiously through every milestone. Every heartbeat, every scan, every test.
At 16 weeks and 4 days, without warning, we lost our son.
Five days later, we held him in our hands. Sleeping, and beautiful. We named him Caden Isaac, and he made us parents. But we would never watch him grow.
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In the after, I was broken. Few things are more agonizing than leaving the hospital without your child, but instead, a box of nothing but footprints and keepsakes of what will never be.
In the days (and months) that followed, I began the task of trying to put myself back together. To be a functional person. To just like myself again, be pleasant, for that matter. I went from being the person with the biggest personality in the room, to a shell of my former self. Anxiety so crippling that I always (and still) have an escape plan. An out — at all times. Moments where I need to scream and cry into my husband’s chest, or curl up in bed with the quilt the hospital wrapped my son in when he was born.
Today, I am a work in progress. Finding survival in the aftermath of pregnancy loss looks and feels different every day. I am still learning to accept this new version of myself. Forever changed by the tiny life I tried so hard to keep safe.
We say Caden’s name often, and share him with anyone who will listen. Even when people turn away, or change the subject. Even when people don’t understand. He is ours, and we are his, and I miss every minute we had together.
In the after, you wish you could stop time, and halt all of the minutes that that follow. The ones that make you ache when your arms are empty. And find yourself again.
Post-loss, how are you a work-in-progress? Is this work happening to you, or are you doing the work? How does it all make you feel?