Shoulda Woulda Coulda

Today should have been 20 weeks. The half way point. This morning, at 9:45, we should have been laying in the ultrasound room, eagerly awaiting the news that we were having a boy. A son. A perfect, healthy son. We'd call our families and share the good news and later, we'd go home and pour over names and decide on Caleb.

Instead, today at 2pm, I had my first postpartum follow up appointment to check on my empty uterus.

We didn't learn much. There were no abnormalities anywhere that they could find. Everything looked perfect. No visible obvious reason for the bleeding, which is what they suspect caused the water to break. In a small way, that's good news and a blessing - we can have a healthy baby; we can have a healthy pregnancy. On the other hand...we DIDN'T. We don't have a baby. We didn't have a healthy pregnancy. But we should have. There's no reason that they can give us for why this happened, and I wanted a reason so badly. Something we could FIX for next time to ensure that this doesn't happen again. Because oh, no. I could not do this again.

Considering the importance of today to my pregnancy, I did shockingly well. I only cried once...and it was when I watched/read this story, about a family who found out their son had Trisomy 18 at 20 weeks and chose to carry him to term. Believe it or not, I was actually jealous of her story, because she got five full days with her beautiful son, and I only got a few minutes. Isn't that horrible? Regardless, there were several very poignant quotes that really hit me. At one point she says something about going home "with an empty belly and empty arms," and oh, man, did the sorrow of that statement hit me. I could empathize with that feeling entirely, and it's exactly why this type of situation is so heartbreaking. The other thing she said was more comforting. She mentioned that in a way, her son was lucky, because he'd never know hate, he'd never have his heart broken, he'd never feel pain. In his entire, brief life, all he'd ever known was love. And it's so true for Caleb as well. In the 20 minutes that he was here, he knew total and complete love, from his mom and dad, grandma, and hundreds of friends, family, and strangers who couldn't be there in person but were thinking of him. That was an extraordinarily comforting thought that brought a huge smile to my face.

Love you, little guy.