1

12/12/12 - Your first birthday has come and gone.  "Oh, how weird," everyone said of this repetitive date, the last of its kind until the next century.  Those comments are so trite to me.  The repetitive nature of your first birthday is nothing weird, in fact, it's strangely fitting.  It makes sense that the numbers repeat - my longing for you, for what might have been, has been the soundtrack of my mind, stuck on repeat all this long last year.  

We tried to make the most of your birthday, though we missed you terribly.  I held it together better than I suspected I would.  I'm attributing that to the fact that we stayed busy doing things to honor your memory throughout most of the day.  Your daddy had your memorial tattoo finished.  I could not bring myself to go with him.  I had planned to stay home and start to disassemble your nursery.  That room has become such a black spot on the house.  Despite my best efforts and intentions, I could not bring myself to do it.  It just didn't seem right to start to tear it down on your birthday.  I'm still trying to conjure the nerve to do it sometime over this holiday break.  We'll see if I can muster the courage to do it.  Something tells me that if I do get started, it will be a process, painful and slow, much like this past year has been without you.  

While your dad was getting his tattoo finished, I mulled about the house, feeling sorry for myself, as usual.  Maddy came over and I asked if she'd go with me to pick up a birthday cake for you and to get flowers to put on the stone at your tree. She did, and we were home within an hour.  After she left, I added the finishing touches to the grief boxes we assembled for the hospital for the parents who will inevitably lose babies in the coming year.  It felt good making those boxes, creating something in your memory.  

Your daddy got home after dark, around 6 o'clock, and we loaded the boxes into the car, drove to the park where your tree stands, so tiny, so bare.  We walked down the path to your tree in the dark, which is against the posted rules as the park closes at dusk, but I didn't care.  I like that it was dark, and I would have answered anyone questioning our being there with a full explanation of what you mean to us and how this is all we can do for you.  In fact, I want to continue the tradition of visiting your tree at nighttime each year.  It was private and peaceful - just what we needed.  We lit a candle for you and placed two purple roses at your stone beneath the tree.  Your daddy said a beautiful prayer, we hugged, cried, and left to deliver the boxes to the hospital.  That was Wednesday.  The following Sunday we went back to the park for a walk and were happy to see the roses were still there.  In fact, someone had rearranged them at the top of your stone.  They looked lovely and my heart was happy to see someone had taken the time to rearrange them, and had the decency to leave them there for you.  

After we left your tree, your daddy delivered the grief boxes to the hospital.  I stayed in the car.  I could not go up there, knowing there were living newborn babies and happy families who likely will never know the nightmare we live.  Jealousy still consumes me, and while I know I should be happy that most families don't know this pain, it still makes me angry that we were the ones made to endure it.  Erin, one of the nurses who attended me when we had you, called my cell phone as your daddy was delivering the boxes.  She was thankful and gracious and it felt good to know our efforts were so well received.  When your daddy came back to the car he was shaken.  When he arrived on the maternity floor, there was a couple with a newborn baby who exited the opposite elevator at the same time he did.   It turned out he knew the father of this baby and that he and his wife had also had a loss.  It didn't make it easier for your dad to be there, but it softened the blow a bit.  He is braver and stronger than I.  I would have crumbled simply entering that elevator.  

After that we had birthday cake at your Aunt Lisa's house and spent a little time there then we came home and went to bed.  It was nice to honor you on your birthday, but it would have been nicer to have you here.  To see you with your first birthday cake, all clumsily feeding yourself with sugary elation.  So many things I'll never get with you, sweet girl.  Such eternal heartache.  

Today is Christmas Eve, only by technicality.  There will be no Christmas for us this year.  We have made absolutely no preparations and will be doing absolutely nothing special.  It will be just another day.  I had a silent hope that, even though we aren't celebrating Christmas this year, we might get a Christmas miracle.  I started using an ovulation predictor in the past month or so and detected an LH surge on December 10th, which meant I was fertile for a span of two days, which serendipitously fell on your first birthday.  How wonderful, I thought, for us to conceive on your first birthday.  I held onto hope that I might be pregnant come Christmas; my next cycle was set to start on Christmas Day.  What a story to tell our next child, of how he/she was conceived on the day of his/her sister's first birthday and how we happily found out on Christmas.  I held onto hope, but in the depth of my being some voice kept whispering, "You're not pregnant."  It was a chiding, know-it-all voice.  I tried to ignore it and remain positive, but it continued to nag.  

Today I woke up praying my period would not come.  I showered and felt the faintest ache in my stomach.  "It could be the embryo implanting," I tried to convince myself, as though I'd actually be able to feel something so infinitesimal occurring within me when I didn't even realize a year ago that you had died inside me.  More dull aches as I dried and dressed.  I went outside and had that familiar monthly feeling of needing to use the bathroom, then a moist sensation.  "It's just moisture from the shower," I told myself.  "You mustn't've dried off completely."  Before I had gone outside I had turned on Pandora on the iHome.  As I was rationalizing the cramps and moisture, while fully knowing what they meant, I heard a single note and knew exactly what song was playing - a song we played at your funeral, by one of my favorite artists, Imogen Heap, called "Wait it Out."  Haunting and beautiful and so fitting at the time we lost you, and still.  Then, that voice again: "I told you.  You're not pregnant.  You got your period and how appropriate that it came at just the moment this song started playing."  I walked inside and to the bathroom to the soundtrack of that song where I found what that voice had been telling me all along.

I am not pregnant, and how completely stupid of me to think we'd have the opportunity to have any type of cute, sweet story about a serendipitous December conception to tell our future children.    Those type of stories are reserved for other couples, not for us.  

So, we will continue to live in this hollow in-between until we make you a brother or sister.  I miss you terribly, Norah.  Every single moment of every day I think of you and I miss you.  Forever is too long, sweet girl.   I long for the day we can be together again.  

All my love, forever and ever, 

Mommy

"Wait it Out" - Imogen Heap