.sometimes life has a way of knocking the wind out of you.

I can’t say for sure why I am writing all of this “out loud,” so to speak.  I’ve never been one to keep a diary. I don’t like this feeling of being exposed, especially to people who know me in real life.  Which is why it is even stranger to me that I feel the need to publish all of this on a blog only read by my friends and family.  But I do, have this compulsion to want to record it forever, since I fear that one day I will try to remember how I felt and that I won’t be able to.  But no matter what I write here there will always be a part of this whole experience that belongs only to me and to Leif.

I wrote this last week sometime.  Since then things have changed quite a bit.  Having the opportunity to hold him while he was alive was simultaneously the most precious few minutes of my life and infinitely more heartbreaking than I ever could have thought possible.

Life is different now and I am adjusting to this new reality.

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I’ve been struggling for weeks to find something/someone/some place that I can relate to during this time in my life. No matter what I do or who I’m with there is this black fog that encloses around me.  I hear the voices of my friends and my family but I feel like I can’t really see them these days.  They are just paper dolls and the only real person in my life is my husband.

I’m 28 weeks pregnant with a little boy named George, whom I am going to lose to a heart problem within the next couple weeks.  We found out five weeks ago that his heart was beating too fast which was causing heart failure and fluid accumulation in his body.  I was in the hospital for two weeks getting cardiac medications to slow his heart rate down but his is a stubborn heart and has decided to beat at its own pace. 

We could have opted to have him delivered and sent to the NICU.  But all the specialists were in agreement; he is so sick that he wouldn’t survive and on the slim chance he did he would have severe neurological problems for the rest of his life. So we chose to wait out the two weeks the cardiologist said that he had left before the fluid in his heart caused it to stop beating.

Now here we are.  Waiting.  An endeavor that is so much more difficult than I ever imagined it would be. He is still growing and doing all those things that healthy babies do but his poor little heart is getting weaker everyday. I still feel him moving around inside of me.  But I know soon I won’t be able to feel him anymore at all.

I simultaneously fear the day that he dies and anticipate it, just wanting all of this to be over.  A scary proposition, giving birth to a baby that you know isn’t alive.  I have a difficult time saying it, even to myself.  Giving birth to a dead baby.  It catches my breath every time I even think about it.

What will it be like after he’s been introduced to the world and we are left alone to hold and say goodbye to our son?  Because of all the swelling from the fluid accumulation I wonder what he will look like.  Will I be able to see his father in his face?  Will I be able to see myself in him?  What is it going to be like to hold him and look into his still face? 

What weighs the most heavy upon my heart is the fear of what comes after I’ve delivered my son and we come back home to our empty apartment.  I fear that all I will have are memories of a child that I was never given the chance to know.  Imagined snuggles, kisses, puddle-jumping, bug-hunting, lunch box packing… I fear that I will live in the shadow of a life that was supposed to be rather than the life that is.  Most of all, I am afraid of the amazing relationship that I have with my husband suffering because of my own self-pity and inability to move on.

People say I am so strong…I am brave.  I am weak and scared and humbled.  Yet I know somewhere there is hope.  I see it when I look into my husband’s face.

I wish I believed in miracles.