The Little Things

It's been nearly a month, and slowly but surely, I'm putting the shattered pieces of my life back together.  I think about my baby girl every single day.  I think about her all day, especially first thing in the morning, late at night, or the quiet times.  I'm even making a scrapbook of her, but I'm not overcome by tears every time I think of her or see her pictures.  There hasn't been a day that I haven't cried, but the heaving, wailing sobs are fewer.

Now, the things that hit me the hardest are the little, random things that I have no control over.  Babies certainly make me a little sad, but it's not every baby.  White babies or boy babies don't make me sad.  Not necessarily even little brown girl babies.  It's definitely situational.  For example, I was at the grocery store deli counter, and a man (white) pulled up with his baby girl in the cart.  The clerk was oohing and awing over the baby, and it came up that she was small for her age of 9 months.  So far, no big deal.  The dad said she had been born about 3.5 weeks early, on Thanksgiving.  THAT was what hit me.  I would have been 37 weeks the week of Thanksgiving.  So, give or take a few days, this baby was the age that Morgan should have been this time next year.

Other things that get me still are the "firsts".  By firsts, I mean things that are the first time since I was pregnant.  My husband and I were laying in bed ( he was getting ready to take a nap), and I was laying next to him, just relaxing and enjoying having his arms around me.  Enjoying the moment, I realized that while we used to regularly snuggle up, just because, this was the first time we'd held each other without extreme grief since we lost the baby.  Then I remembered how, when I was pregnant, I would joke that I couldn't get as close as I wanted because my baby belly was in the way.  This time, there was no belly, and I missed it being there.  Another first was having blue cheese on a salad for dinner.  Every pregnant woman knows that blue cheese is on the list of soft, moldy cheeses that are so tasty but may potentially harm the baby.  All I could think about while pregnant was getting my hands on a bacon blue cheese burger from a local burger spot.  It hit me like a wall while plating my salad that I can now have all the blue cheese I want, but not my sweet Morgan, which I want most.

I imagine these little things will be fewer and farther between, especially as I conquer the firsts.    But when they hit, it's hard to breathe, hard not to cry, or even run out of the grocery store.  It's so, so hard.  I imagined so many scenarios with my baby, but never, not once, did I imagine scenarios without her.  Now that every scenario will be without her, it's hard to keep going.  But, I will do my best not to let the pain hold me back.