This feels big

Nine months since she died today. Nine months here. Nine months gone. This time nine months ago, at 40 weeks and 4 days pregnant, I was going to bed for the last time with Hope in my belly. She was already gone. I knew she was gone, but I chose not to be induced the same day I was given the devastating news, so instead I came home for what the stupid obstetrician suggested would be a "good nights sleep". I took a sleeping pill. I did not sleep. I was still in labour, I was still having contractions. I also took painkillers. Painkillers you would not give to a normal pregnant person. They did not help. I still felt those contractions. All of them.

So tomorrow marks nine months since her birth and the 12 week mark of this new pregnancy. The "safe" stage. Will I wake up tomorrow and all of a sudden breathe easier, because now the odds are really in my favour? I don't know, but I highly doubt it. Friday might make things easier, as that is when our 12 week ultrasound is. We hope to get good news, so we can move forward out of what has been one nightmarish fortnight.

It started with the dreaded Mother's Day, then two days later, my grandfather passed away. On Thursday, we said goodbye at his funeral. Really, it is ok though. 90 year olds are supposed to die. It was his time, and he was ready.

Honestly if I could script my life, I'd want it to run just like Grandpa's. It was so full, and interesting. And he died peacefully in sleep with his family by his side. You couldn't have written a better ending.

These last few days have also been rough, as the dates in May 2009 have aligned with August 2008. Hope died on Monday 18 April, it is now Monday 18 May. I was in labour from Friday 15 August, so since Friday I have been looking back and remembering those days. The anticipation. The excitement. The HOPE.

Each day I woke up in my stupidly long and utterly confusing labour (which I was constantly reassured by my not-so-caring midwives was NORMAL), I thought "today I am having a baby". When I woke up on the Monday, just hours before she passed without warning in my belly, something had shifted, almost as if I knew and I thought, "I don't think I am ever going to have this baby". Well I was wrong, I did have her. I just didn't get to keep her. That's now how it is supposed to work. This is not how I would have scripted my story.

When we left for hospital that day, I said I was not coming home empty handed this time. We'd been to hospital on the Friday but sent home - not "real" labour yet, I was told. But by Monday, I'd had enough and I was starting to panic. And I wasn't going to be sent home again. I came home that day, still with Hope. But she was not in my arms. Not strapped in the car seat. Her corpse was laying still at the bottom of my womb.

Was I still pregnant at that point? At the time, in such deep shock, it felt like the pregnancy had just ended, and she had gone away, evaporated. I could not imagine that the very next day, I would have to push her out of me. I would have to go through with the labour. All the hard work. But I was most certainly still pregnant. In that 24 hours I carried her dead body around, I still had trouble getting up off the couch. I still could not see my toes in the shower. I still needed to get up and pee three times a night. My back still hurt. But it would all be for nothing.

People keep saying to me in the midst of the pregnancy symptoms I am now experiencing, that it will all be worth it in the end. I am struggling to believe it. I know I said I would try and be more positive, but with Grandpa's passing, a difficult funeral (in that I saw dozens of people I have not seen in many, many months and most said nothing, and those who did brave me all said the wrong thing) I am slipping again. Most babies live, most babies live. Babies dying is not normal.

I just need to get to Friday. I just need to get past it. Everything is on hold, until that point.

Then I guess the wait begins again. Wait to 20 weeks until we can get another sneak peak at this baby. All the while knowing, at no point am I really safe.

I now know people who have lost babies at 17 weeks, 20 weeks, 24 weeks, 30 weeks, 33 weeks, 42 weeks and in the weeks and months after birth. But I also know people who have had babies at various early gestations, and those babies have survived, against all odds. Most babies live. Most babies live.

Statistics did nothing for me last time around, but I have to try and believe they will work in my a favour this time. Babies dying is NOT normal.

So tomorrow will mark nine months, and it does feel big, too big for me really. The most significant milestone I have passed yet. And I guess from this point, it is all downhill until the big one year mark. I have no idea what to make of that. Nor do I have any idea what to do with myself on the day. Back in the early days, I'm not sure I thought I would make it. I read the blogs of others who had, but for me it seemed so, so far away. Now I can almost taste it and it is most certainly not pleasant.

But thinking about anything too big for now is temporarily on hold. Just gotta get me to Friday. Just gotta know this baby is ok. Again. I want to feel safe. I want somebody to tell me it is all going to be ok.