The 29th

Today is the 29th. Nina-Lou would have been 16 months old. The 29th of the month sometimes passes me by unnoticed. Sometimes it feels heavy and lonesome. Sometimes I am struck by her absence and presence in our lives and I am able to think about her without tears; feel grateful for the gift of love she gave to me and her dad. Today I am busy, and I have many distractions, but my heart aches for her.

A lot has changed since I last wrote. The biggest change is that somehow, miraculously, I became pregnant with and carried to term a beautiful baby boy. His name is Gus and I am in awe of him. As soon as he was born, warm and squawking and sticky and ALIVE, a switch flipped, and suddenly I was a mom to a living baby.

Mothering a live baby is significantly different from mothering a dead one.

I do struggle with this concept of being a mom to both a live and dead baby. It's complicated. I always get asked if Gus is my first, and usually the people asking this are well meaning and kind, and I will never see them again, so I answer yes. And then I say a secret sorry to my baby girl, the invisible one who exists only as a story. I don't worry anymore about burdening people with my tragedy, or even the awkward exchange that is inevitable when I choose to share it, but sometimes I'm just tired and I don't have the time or the energy to help someone wrap their brain around the idea that babies die.

I am overjoyed at the notion that Gus gets to grow up and be his own person. That someday he will be a MAN out there in the world. At the same time, it devastates me over and over again that Nina-Lou will always be that little baby whose body I held for a few fleeting moments. The only world she ever knew was inside me. She never got to nurse, to smile, to bat at toys, to cry and bury her face in my shoulder...

I sobbed in the delivery room when they prepared the little warming tray for Gus. They didn't do it for Nina-Lou. There was no point. She was dead.

I could go down the path of thinking about how, if she had been born alive, there is no way we would have tried for another baby 5 months later, and so in that universe, there is no Gus. I can't fathom a world without Gus any more than I was able to fathom a world without Nina-Lou. But a world with a live baby boy and a dead baby girl is the reality in which we find ourselves. I try not to think about what should have and would have been. It all just is. I want both my babies, and I don't care that such a thing is impossible.

Gus is falling asleep in his little swing right now. Occasionally he grimaces or smiles in his sleep. Chirps and coos to himself. He is incredible. Being his mom and watching him grow is such a joy.

Sometimes, when I catch myself amongst other parents of living children, talking about strollers or pediatrician appointments, I see how I have crossed over to the other side. It sometimes makes me feel like a bit of a traitor to my former self. The mother to a dead daughter, pregnant and filled with fear, resentful of these carefree moms whose daily worries were sleep schedules and the color of their baby's poo. Back then I felt alone, on an island. So cut off and different from everyone else. I cried in bathrooms. I drove home through tears. No one understood me. It was dark in that place, and all the things I did to try and bring light into my life were helpful, and lifted the mood, but that loneliness was intense. I have never felt so isolated.

And as much as I hate to admit it, Gus's birth changed a lot of that. I love parenting him. It's an indescribable feeling, loving him and caring for him. Nursing him and watching him get fat. Singing him the songs my parents sang to me and watching him smile. I had told myself that if he didn't make it, that I was done trying. I couldn't keep going through the heartbreak of losing babies, and I knew I would learn to accept my life as a babylost mom with no living children. I would have to accept that I was different from others but that was ok. I'm sure I would have figured it out. It would have been so hard, but I would have survived and I would not have had to live in the dark forever. But Gus brings so much light into my life. There is a lot of healing in being a mom to him. I still think of and grieve Nina-Lou every day, but that grief feels a little more simple now. It's no longer wrapped up with the grief of getting to mother a baby at all. It's just for her.

This isn't to say that I feel completely changed. I will always be different from most other moms. Like Turner said, a long time ago, "No matter what, we'll always be the people whose baby died."

There is no silver lining to losing a baby. There are many ways in which losing Nina-Lou has made me a better person, but there are many other ways in which her death changed me for the worse. I am far more fragile. My body, after back to back pregnancies, is pretty wrecked. My heart, in some way, will always be broken. But I am brave, and resilient, and my heart is capable of infinite love. I say this not to brag, but because I know it to be true.

Sometimes, when I see a little girl in pigtails, or when I look upon her ashes on the mantel, or when the 29th rolls around, I feel my heart open up, and and I go to that special, sacred place inside me that is only for missing her.

My sweet girl. No matter what joy or pain the rest of our lives may bring, you will always be gone when you should be here. Our love for you will always be wrapped up in our grief. We cannot feel your presence without also feeling your absence.

We will love you and mourn you and remember you and hold your absence/presence so close and so dear. Always, always, always.