Dread

December 10.  For four and a half months, I could not wait for December 10.  For the last four and a half months, I've been dreading it.  Now, it's almost here.  Morgan's due date.

Of the two of us, my husband has always been a little bit grinchy.  While I've never been one to go overboard, I do enjoy the holiday festivities.  Not this year.  This year, I plan to completely ignore it, as much as that's possible when candy canes are set out as appetizers to the Thanksgiving turkey (retail wise, that is).  Our little girl was supposed to be our Christmas present this year; the best present we could ever have gotten.  Yet now we don't even have a lump of freaking coal, and it sucks.

The baby loss world is full of these vague articles on how to deal with the holidays after a loss.  Be gentle with yourself, don't feel obligated to attend parties, etc.  But what do you DO?  There are never any action items.  I guess I'll be in  hiding, and do nothing.  The weekend of the due date, we've been invited to three separate festive functions, and all invitations have been declined.  If the gloom I've felt this week since Thanksgiving is any indication, the hosts will not want me at their functions, anyway.

I've just been in a weepy funk the past few days.  Everything seems to set me off.  When I say everything, I mean the everyday things that I shouldn't be doing because I'm supposed to be pregnant.  For example, we went to my mom's in Florida for Thanksgiving.  We even spent Black Friday at the beach!  But the whole time, I couldn't help but think how I wasn't supposed to be there.  I was supposed to be almost 38 weeks pregnant; I was not supposed to be 6 hours from home.  The extra tacky, cheap baby toys they sell at the grocery store...the baby girl that the department sponsored for the holiday angel tree...the Christmas cookie onesie that's packed away under our bed...how every time I turn on the car, a Christmas song blares at me.  I actually drove around in silence for three days because I don't have any CDs in the car.  Oh yeah... the brand new car we got exactly one week before she died.

They...the ones that have been here before...say that the anticipation of the due date is worse than the actual day.  I really hope this is true.  But really, I just want to go to sleep and not wake up until 2013.  Maybe just the hope of a new year will make things seem fresh and new.  We started 2012 with such optimism.  We were so sure that by the start of 2013 we'd have a little person in our home, or at least have one on the way.  But hear we are, on the cusp of a new year, and it's still just the two of us.