On a Saturday morning in April 2008, while away at my husband's 10th high school reunion, I (on a major whim) decided to take a pregnancy test.
Okay, maybe it wasn't such a major whim since I had packed the pregnancy test in the first place, but I definitely wasn't expecting it to be positive.
As I sat there staring at the test, I watched the second line appear.
At first I thought the steam and mist from the shower my husband was taking was blurring my vision, but the line was really real.
And so was our joy.
Pure, unadulterated joy.
I wanted to tell everyone we spoke to that day about our news.
Paul convinced me it was early and we should wait.
I've never been more grateful for my husband's sound advice.
You know the outcome.
For three days, we dreamed like first time pregnancy folks do.
We were naïve.
We were in love with a baby who would have been born around Christmas 2008.
We never saw or heard a heartbeat.
We never made it to a doctor's appointment.
And yet, a loss that is intangible is still a loss.
I'm convinced if I ever met Theresa Caputo she would tell me that first pregnancy would have been a girl and Paul and I would have named her Zoë. The only baby name we have ever agreed on.
Our Zoë would have been getting ready to turn 7.
For seven years we clung to that name.
Knowing one day, we could get our Zoë.
About a year ago, a hearts started to shift.
It was weird how it happened to both of us, yet we never spoke about it.
A few short months ago, we looked at each other and almost without saying it, knew our Zoë ship had sailed.
It was an odd, cathartic way of saying goodbye to our almost eight years of fighting infertility.
A simple name encompassing three official chemical pregnancies and years of negative tests.
Another step in our grieving process.
Mourning the loss of a biological child that hasn't and probably will not ever exist.
Our story of loss is easily summed up into about two minutes worth of reading time...and that's just because I got wordy.
Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day.
A day which will always weigh heavily on my heart.
Not necessarily for my own personal story, but for the too many numerous family and friend's stories it carries.
Today I think about the people actively going through a miscarriage.
I think about the people who were in the home stretch...whose houses were full of baby supplies, with a car seat waiting in the car and a nursery beautifully decorated...only to come home empty handed.
I think about the women who had to go through a D&C or an active labor & delivery only to be handed a sleeping baby.
I think about the people who cope alone and in silence, because they never had a chance to share that they were expecting before it was over.
I think about how our everyday experiences, how even the vernacular we use can shape the way in which we process loss.
Does the fact that the doctors have always dubbed my losses as chemical pregnancies make it easier for me to process than calling them miscarriages? I think so.
Does it mean I haven't mourned what would have happened nine months later? Nope.
I think about how every woman (& man) has been molded uniquely by the stories their hearts carry.
By the grief, the anguish, the guilt, the constant questions, the wondering, the what ifs.
By the way one loss or one story can taint the way in which you process any future pregnancy, be it your own or a family member or friend.
By the joy that is ripped from our hearts in the most unexpected and seemingly cruel way.
And yet, I see stories of hope and happiness that await on the other side.
That a loss can make the boring, mundane day in and day out, seem like a miracle of epic proportions when you focus on the children you do have or the ones who are yet to be.
I hear women openly referring to their Rainbow babies, providing an awareness to the loss they have endured and a ray of sunshine to the other side.
You may think today doesn't affect you.
But, I promise that if today doesn't resonate with you personally, it does hit incredibly close to home for someone you know.
So here's to a day where we can be open and publicly talk about an issue that needs more awareness and deserves more compassion.
And here's to a lifetime of carrying babies not in our arms, but in our hearts.
