the truth of it all....

I'm hurting. Badly. And it sounds so silly as I see this baby grow week to week with weekly ultrasounds. I really hope noone takes this as me being ungrateful or unappreciative of the glorious gift from God I have growing in my belly.

My husband and I celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary last month over Thanksgiving weekend. It was also 8 months from the day I went to the hopsital and Gabby no longer had a heart beat.

I thought of how we should have been spending the day with our 1 month old daughter. How we should be settling into some rough draft of a routine. How we should be brainstorming a list for her first Christmas.

We put the Christmas tree up, Mark Colin and I, and as we took out each of the ornaments I paid especially close attention to the ones from my childhood. The ornament from my first Christmas (I was a ridiculously chubby baby.. Colin will tell you I was "fat"... I still prefer chubby), the one from my first ballet recital, the one from when I turned 16 (a pink convertible). It made me think of our daughter. It made me think of the tradition I should have been passing on to her: purchasing that special ornament each holiday season to show her milestones. Gabrielle and Ryan will never have any milestones. They never had the chance. We were robbed of the opportunity.

We put up our stockings, with our NOEL stocking holders, over the fireplace. We hung our red and green stockings with our initials.... M. K. C. The L of NOEL was empty. It reminded me as I looked at the off balance letters of the emptiness. It reminded me that Gabby and Ryan will never run down the stairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa left for them in their stockings.

Don't get me wrong. At the same exact moment of all of these thoughts, I very much think of what our son or daughter will be doing next year on their first Christmas.

I have such conflicting feelings right now. Feelings of grief and joy. Despair and hope. Feelings that really don't logically make any sense put together.... but that's how I feel.

I don't talk of this with anyone. Not even my husband. It's not that he wouldn't care or wouldn't understand, but right now I really don't want to bring him down. I bottle this up inside and it eats at me.

Often times I feel guilty for being happy and excited for the baby in a strange way... almost as if I'm betraying Gabby and Ryan. Like they would think I'm forgetting them or that they aren't as important to me anymore. Like I'm moving on..... and I'm not. I don't want to move on. I refuse to. I won't leave them behind.

I'm moving forward. I'm excited at the weeks and months and years ahead of us. I'm excited for us to find out the gender of our baby, get the house ready for them, and to finally hold him or her in my arms.

I feel others forgetting... like this baby is supposed to wipe out the past year of devastation. Like Gabby and Ryan "didn't count" or were "false alarms" or something of that nature. Noone has said that.... that's just how it feels.

so here I am coming clean. These are the main reasons I have fallen behind on my blog. In hindsight it probably would have been best to write, but I just couldn't. I was having a hard enough time processing all of these thoughts and emotions, much less put words to them.