I'm so sorry, Scott

It's hard enough to lose a baby that has just been nudging you with his elbow, kicking you in the side. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to lose a baby you've seen and held and loved for that long, one already experiencing the world and becoming a little person, and not the promise of one. That is so awful. I'm really sorry. I just hope the mom can find other women who have suffered a similar loss to talk to, because no matter how sympathetic or supportive other people are, for some reason, that is the most helpful. And it's strange - at first you ONLY want to talk to women who lost a baby for the EXACT same medical reason and the EXACT same age, and then as time passes it doesn't matter what the reason was, or when they lost their baby, and then as even more time passes you feel a connection with anyone suffering for any reason - some woman with breast cancer, some old guy going losing his eyesight. You feel comforted by them and want to comfort. It's a funny kind of thing. But there doesn't seem to be anyone who can help but another sufferer.

I've been approached by Perinatal Berievement Services to work as a counselor, but I'm afraid I can do it; I'm afraid I'm not suffering enough at the moment, that I've lost that grace. And it is a kind of grace - a hypersensitivity to the beauty and fragitlity of everything you only understand at certain peak times of sorrow or happiness.

I remember one day in the spring when we found out there was something wrong with the baby but didn't know for sure, I came home work, and I pulled in the drive way.
It was a beautiful spring day, and the apple trees around the farm house were all in bloom and the wind was blowing pink petals onto the grass, and it was so stunningly beautiful. I knew in a few weeks the blossums would be gone, like the baby in my body, and there was nothing I could do about any of it. And yet it was all so beautiful that I wouldn't take any of it back. To me that is what is grace is - when no matter how sad something makes you, or how painful it is, you wouldn't take any of it back.