Lost Babies

I missed him a lot today. We finally got our photos back from Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep and there are a few really nice ones in there. Some unfortunately look a little over-photoshopped. I know they had to do quite a bit of retouching because Aidan was quite bruised, but some of the photos don't even really look like him.

It's wonderful and sad all at the same time to see my boy again. I wish I could hold him. When I think of him lying beside me in the hospital, wrapped up as we were in blankets and sheets, all I can remember is how cold he was. I could feel his cool little body lying beside me, even through all the materials seperating us. Funny too, how even that memory of the coldness is comforting. Almost like how you would remember a cool cloth on your head when you were feverish.

But it's sad not to remember your child feeling warm.

Some days I feel hopeful for our future and that we may one day have a baby to bring home, and other days, like today, it just feels like it's so far away...like it may never happen. I'm just so sad. So sad all the time. Reading about other babylost mamas is comforting in a way...but when I stumble across other blogs where women have lost 2 and 3 babies, or can't get pregnant, or get pregnant and have early miscarriages, it just all seems so unfair.

What's also weird is that it does seem unfair, still, after millions of years of human evolution. When countless babies have been lost in all stages of development, where mothers and fathers may have buried not one, not two, not three, but ALL of their children. Where graves of babies and children were more common than graves of old people. In my genealogical research I have come across scads of near and distant family members who lost babies and children early on in life. It was the rare family before the turn of the 20th century that DID NOT lose at least one child (my 2x great grandmother was one of the lucky few, all 12 of her children born from 1894-1917 lived to adulthood!!). Here in 21st century North America, however, we are shocked when a pregnancy doesn't work out. Yet, if you asked women in many other parts of the world today if they had any dead babies, I'm sure you would find many many more babylost than you would find in the average North American population.

Dead babies are sadly common.

Yet we are all surprised when it happens to us.

Everday, there are millions of broken hearted mommies and daddies worldwide that cry for their lost babies. And my tears mingle with theirs.

"I miss you Aidan. Mommy loves you".