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.