The reality of loss bites. There’s really no other word to use for it. Loss after loss compounds this feeling. A pregnancy that occurs after a loss, that is then lost, feels unfair. Completely and utterly unfair. The “rainbow” that was supposed to come from the storm of your loss, is now gone too. When our last pregnancy failed at the end of June, I was thrown into this abyss. Life changed. Again. It hasn’t been daisies and roses since. It’s felt like the roses have wilted, sadness, emptiness, tears are readily streaming. It’s been feelings of jealousy, bitterness and anger that surge. All the steps forward I thought I had made through processing the passing of our Malachi July 2014, felt like they had been in vain, all that work ripped out from under me. Why? Why was I feeling this way so heavily, why AM I feeling this way so heavily?
Because so much hinged on this pregnancy. So. Much. Hope after loss hinged on it. A chance to try again hinged on it. I did all the ‘right’ things, my view of my own body/self hinged on it. And then it was gone. The pregnancy and everything that hinged on it.
I felt like I might’ve been making ‘too big a deal’ out of this loss, and I’m sure there are others who have witnessed my state that have probably thought the same thing. But I haven’t. Because there was so much that hinged on this, more than any ‘regular’ pregnancy. This is why it has hurt so much. This is why there has been emptiness, bitterness, anger. Most people don’t understand, the few that do, likely have felt the same way and have minimized their pain, because society says ‘it wasn’t even a real pregnancy’.
My Facebook feed has been flooded with pregnancy announcements. It feels as if everyone I know is pregnant, except me. The people I know or have known through social media who have lost babies around the same time we lost ‘Chi, are pregnant. Everyone, but me. But I was. And we lost, but they haven’t. Happy for them as I can be, I am insanely jealous.
But now, I am giving myself permission to feel the weight of this loss, no matter what society around me thinks of it. My advice to those experiencing loss after loss… give yourself permission to feel this. To feel jealous, to feel anger, to feel the pain. More hung on that pregnancy than normal. Whether you lost a pregnancy where you had seen a heartbeat or had a chemical pregnancy, the loss of the hopes and dreams and all that pregnancy held are a valid loss.
I am validating myself in this loss, my hope is that you will validate yourself and your feelings. Through validating myself I can see hope in the distance. Hope because I know I’ve already been through the worst, losing our Malachi, and have made it through. I can see joy up ahead because I know He trades our mourning for joy (Isaiah 61:3). So though it’s a process, I know what is ahead, what HAS to be ahead, and that is what keeps me going.
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