Baby Brother

Last week was emotionally intense, and I feel like there are many topics I would like to explore in writing, but for now I’ll stick to the most straightforward news: we’re having another baby boy. We had the “big” ultrasound on Friday, sandwiched between Wednesday, which would have been Noah’s first birthday, and Saturday, which was the day we scattered Noah’s ashes. At first, I was unsure about having so many big events in a row, but in the end the timing felt perfect. We were able to mourn Noah appropriately as we also rejoiced in getting to know the new life I’m carrying a little better.

As with all things in this pregnancy, I have a mixture of different thoughts about the fact that Noah is going to have a baby brother, and many of them contradict each other. My first reaction actually took me by surprise – I felt such a sense of peace at the thought of having another chance at bringing home a living son. We found out Noah was a boy at his 20 week ultrasound, too, so I spent half of my last pregnancy imagining the mother-son relationship we would have, and looking forward to starting a new life with a baby boy in our home.

However, I am struggling a bit with the idea of being pregnant with a baby boy who isn’t Noah. Shortly after we left the doctor’s office, Mark said something about wanting to celebrate his baby boy and I started to get teary because whenever Mark has said the words “my baby boy” in the past, he’s been referring to Noah. Also, picking up our visions of a future when we will bring home a baby boy who will occupy the nursery we prepared for Noah and become part of our lives in the way we originally envisioned Noah would feels somewhat like we are simply replacing our firstborn. I’ve never wanted this baby to feel like a replacement child.

This baby is what he is, though, and I certainly don’t love him any differently because I know he’s a boy. I can’t help loving him more every time I see him wiggling on the ultrasound screen or hear his beating heart or feel him moving inside me. After a few days of processing, I’m back to feeling a sense of peace because I know he was meant to be who he is according to God’s perfect plan for our lives. I can spend hours trying to analyze that plan, or I can simply accept it and trust. Right now, the latter sounds much more appealing than the former.

I’d like to write more about the experience of scattering Noah’s ashes, but I’m going to leave that as another post for another time. For now, I’ll just end with some pictures of baby boy number 2 and (hopefully) a short video clip from the ultrasound.

Baby profile - he's got his hand by his mouth.

Hand - he's apparently giving us a thumbs up.

Feet - Mark proudly noted his "Morton's toe."

Short video clip - if it works, you can see him wiggling around.

Surreal

There have been several moments over the last year when certain aspects of this whole experience have seemed surreal. In the very beginning, my brain simply could not accept the reality of the situation. I remember lying in the hospital bed, looking at the doctor as she explained our baby was no longer alive and wondering what kind of terrible pregnancy dream I was having. I’d had so many crazy dreams in the months leading up to Noah’s birth, so it seemed entirely possible that I was going to wake up any minute in my bed at home, still feeling my baby boy moving around in my belly.

The intense dream-like sense dissipated fairly quickly, but a general feeling of unreality came and went for the next several weeks. We spent so many months preparing our home, our hearts and our minds for the addition of a new member to our little family, and suddenly we had to change our whole vision of the future. There were moments when I just couldn’t believe there would be no baby to wear the tiny clothes I had washed and folded, or sleep in the bassinet we’d set up next to our bed, or ride in the car seat we’d carefully installed. Each morning brought a fresh wave of grief as I realized again how finally separated I was from the baby who had shared my body for so long. We were living a life so incredibly different from the one we had imagined that it was hard to accept it was real.

Time continues to pass regardless of what else happens in life, though, and with the passage of weeks and months came a gradual acceptance of Noah’s physical absence from our lives. We settled back into everyday routines, and though Noah was (and still is) always at the back of our minds, the expectation that we should be parenting a living baby faded. Eventually, I got to the point where it was surreal to think of how life would be if Noah had lived. It seems like a distant fantasy to imagine him making a mess of his baby food, babbling as he plays with his toys, breaking into a grin when Mark comes home, taking his first steps. Did we ever truly believe we would get to have those experiences with them? I know we did because why would we think otherwise, but those blissfully oblivious days of my first pregnancy seem as if they were decades ago.

All that said, I’m still struggling intensely with thoughts of how tomorrow should be for us. I should be wrapping gifts and baking a birthday cake with the knowledge it would be destroyed by chubby little hands. Mark should be making sure the camera battery is charged so we would be sure to capture this milestone in photos and video. We should go to bed this evening expecting to wake in the morning to happy smiles and big hugs.

Instead, we are planning to wake early so we can recognize 5:47 a.m., the time Noah slid silently into this world. We’ll go to the beach to listen to the waves Noah heard through the wall of my belly during his short time in this world and to watch the sunrise he never got to see. We’ll read passages from the Bible, we’ll talk, and I’m fairly certain I’ll cry. Not at all what I used to imagine for my son’s first birthday, but this is our current reality. I know there will be beauty and hope in the midst of the sadness, and I will feel blessed in spite of my grief.

Scattered

Today is September 12, which means we are just four days away from Noah’s first birthday/the first anniversary of his death. The fact that we have to mark both his birth and his death on the same day seems somehow absurd to me, and I have struggled with what to call September 16 in conversation. The word birthday somehow seems hollow since we never had the chance to celebrate with him, yet going the anniversary route seems to negate the fact that Noah was born. Because of my background in English and writing, I’m hyper-aware of connotations and don’t like to use words that don’t capture my meaning accurately. I’m not sure how I’m going to resolve this particular dilemma, though, so for now I often use both terms. Please forgive the awkwardness of the phrasing – it’s just something I have to do for now.

Over the last year, I’ve assumed I would come to these days leading up to the birthday/anniversary and be able to analyze my emotions and reflect on my experiences in a sensible way. When we started this journey last September, I was at a loss for words. I had been processing my life through writing for nearly 20 years, but suddenly I was unable to verbalize my thoughts and emotions. Next year, I thought, surely next year I’ll be ready to use the birthday/anniversary triggers to write a coherent analysis of this experience. Yet here I am, almost a year later and I feel almost as much at a loss for words as I did then. My thoughts are scattered, my emotions are conflicted and my brain is refusing to process anything coherently. The difference is that now I’m willing to just take the plunge, sit in front of a computer and see what happens when I start writing. Please bear with me as there’s a chance none of this will make much sense at all.

Fall came to Maine a bit early this year, and the chill in the air has brought back a flood of associations and memories. Last year, the first two weeks of September were actually quite hot (for this area, at least), more like the weather we expect to have in August. Coincidentally, the switch last year happened on the day we lost Noah, so rather than reliving the days leading up to September 16, I have been having vivid flashbacks to the early days of our grief. Memories of walking around in a daze, wishing I would wake up from this awful nightmare in which my baby was dead. Memories of how utterly lost I felt as I tried to envision a future entirely different from the one I had been anticipating for months. Memories of the exhaustion I experienced as I trudged through interminably long days dominated by grief.

Surprisingly, not all of my associations with those early days are painful. I’ve also been remembering the outpouring of love we experienced from people in all parts of our lives. The comfort we felt from the knowledge that so many people were praying for us and thinking about us. The strength we gathered from prayer and the ways in which our faith grew. The incredible knowledge that Noah is in a place where he will never have to experience suffering or pain.

In the midst of all this remembering, the baby in my womb is becoming an increasingly solid presence. My belly has grown to the point where strangers aren’t afraid to ask when I’m due, and I frequently feel the flutter of tiny arms and legs. I’m so thankful for the blessing of this new life, especially as I remember the aching emptiness I felt in the first days and weeks after we lost Noah. As I would wake in the morning, momentarily oblivious in my half-asleep state, the reality of our situation would come rushing back to me as I put my hand to my puffy shell of a stomach and realized there would be no responding kick. I have no words to express the devastation of feeling of being so empty.

My brain seems to be finished with writing for now, so I will wrap up this post and let the rest of my thoughts continue to marinate before I try to put them into words. Spending time reflecting is good for me right now, though, so I’m sure I will write more this week.