Okay, this week is really making me feel like s**t. I know it's not really "the week". The fact that I am no longer pregnant, that I am no longer carrying Roald, is becoming too clear. My body feels like an empty vessel. I read birth stories...I look at pictures of pregnant women...I look at pictures of new baby boys...I read other peoples' blogs who are about as far along in their pregnancies as I would have been...And then boom, it hits me. I should be like these people. I should be over 35 weeks pregnant. I should be having a birth story to tell soon (I DO have a birth story, but no one wants to hear a birth story when it ends with a dead baby). I should be so big I am just about ready to pop. I should soon have tons of pictures of every waking (and sleeping) moment of a new baby boy.

Then I feel my soft stomache. No more hard uterus. I see my computer desktop-my son's grave. I eat hot wings...followed by no puking and/or heartburn. Then when I try to assuage myself by saying "Roald will always be gone; you will never see him again in this life, but you will have another baby and hopefully babies, someday; probably not too long from now. They can't replace him and you are already a mother, but you will someday have the joy of raising your children."
Then I think about how long my next pregnancy is going to feel. How many things that should be joyous that are going to be bittersweet. The thing that is probably going to be the hardest or the second hardest is going to be...ultrasounds. And my doctor told us on December 23 that during my next pregnancy I will have more of them. I can only have an ultrasound at the Lebanon office of WHC and all 3 times I had an u/s I went there and it was in the same room. I am thinking that might possibly be because they only do obstetrical ultrasounds in that room.

I'm so scared of just breaking down when having an ultrasound. I'm scared of having a flashback of being all alone, without my husband, in that room, having an ultrasound done because our son's heartbeat couldn't be detected via doppler. Then seeing him dead on the screen. That will be terrible if I have to be in that room again. Labor and delivery will be painful, too. It will be happy and so sad. I just feel so sad about not being able to see who he would have looked like, that he could never look at me. He and Terry are the only people I have ever wanted to look me in my eyes. I wish Roald would have been born alive, even if he would have died. How I would cherish the memory of his cry, the memory of his soft skin. The memory of maybe a look at me.
It just hurts so bad to labor and give birth and not have any baby with you. It's like my labor is invisible to everyone else. I have so many memories of being pregnant and they make me miss Roald. I can remember praying to God thanking him for my ability to be pregnant, to conceive. Even with the sickness every day, I told God it was worth it and it was.

When I am pregnant next time, I know things will trigger memories from my pregnancy with Roald. But he can't be replaced. I will do my best to enjoy that pregnancy with THAT baby, but my first long-running pregnancy will always be when I was carrying Roald. Just like the first time I had swollen breasts that hurt so bad it made me laugh from being pregnant was when I was carrying our itty bitty Terry.

I'm just alone, lonely, sad and pretty miserable. Rambling on and on...