Don't get me wrong.

"You need to get over it."
"People are going to have babies...boy babies...you can't let it make you sad."
"Don't let it bother you."
"Can't you just be happy for them?"
"You'll have one too someday."
"Focus on the positive!"

Look, I know. I get it. The world doesn't stop procreating and people don't stop having boys because of what I went through. I'm not going to lie to you; if there was a button I could push to make that happen until I caught up, I totally would. Selfish? Sure. Self-preservation? Absolutely.

You can't force yourself to feel something other than what you do. Don't get me wrong. I'm happy for them. I'm glad they are living the dream. I know that they were really looking forward to having kids - and lucky them, they got pregnant right away and have thus far had a perfect pregnancy.* I wish nothing more for them than a screaming, healthy baby in 20 weeks. I'm glad they didn't have to suffer infertility or miscarriages to get where they are.

But.

BUT.

That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It doesn't mean I'll ever be able to look at their son without thinking of my son who should be running around, three months older than their son. I understand how easy it is to say that I can't let it bother me, but unless you've been in my exact shoes or worse, you simply don't get it. And I'm GLAD you don't get it. Because getting it would mean that you are suffering as much as I am. But it's going to bother me. It's going to make me sad. It's going to be hard. It's going to make me mourn the loss of my son all over again.

I can't make you understand if you don't. It's a gut feeling. It's a certain drop of the heart. It's tears welling up without control. To go as far in the opposite direction for an example as I can, imagine that you put in a bid on a dream house, and didn't get it. Shortly thereafter, your friends put in a bid on the same house, and get it. Wouldn't you be a little jealous of them every time you visited? Wouldn't you think, "Man, this should be my master bathroom with jacuzzi tub and marble tile!"? It doesn't mean you're not happy for them - but come on, they're living in the house you always wanted, and that's gotta sting. Or imagine you saved up for months to go on some fabulous vacation to Italy. At the very last minute, it fell through, and you have nothing to show for it. You're out all that money, all that time planning, all that excitement you had. A few weeks later, you find out your friends are going on vacation. And not just any vacation, but that exact Italian vacation that you wanted to take. Wouldn't you be sad you didn't get to go? Wouldn't you think to yourself, "Man, I wish they would have chosen to go to somewhere else, anywhere else." You'd be happy they got to have an amazing time, but you still wish you would have gotten to go on YOUR vacation. And you think it'd be a lot easier to look at their vacation pictures if they were showing you pictures of Australia, or Antarctica, or Arkansas, or anywhere other than Italy.

It's like that.

Times a million.

*Fertility ho's**, as we call them one on of the forums I go to. And there's nothing wrong with that. I was a fertility ho until we lost the baby.
**Don't get me wrong. As much as I complain, they're good people. I think. Self-centered, thoughtless, tactless people, but still okay people. They deserve a baby as much as anyone else.