Pregnancy Loss Day (October 15th)

Everything I feel about my miscarriages is kept within me inside a small black place that resides close to my heart. Generally I can carry it around without even acknowledging its existance. Occassionally, it expands and makes itself known with bitter black tendrils that try to root themselves outside the small space I allow them to occupy.

I don't cherish the potential children I lost, I don't love them and I try like hell not to remember them. I'm certainly not a poster child for today, am I?

I don't know how to grieve for my poor genetically twisted might-have-beens. I can't say that I wish they had survived as I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I do wish they had been genetically viable but that wish is a long way from grieving. And that is what we are supposed to do today, right? I'm supposed to grieve my five little bits of genetic information that never made it past the embryonic stage (or at least I am supposed to want to remember them).

I struggle to find a way to carry around that small blackness and I still on occasion find myself frantically trying to contain it in some managable size. But I just don't know how to grieve for where I've been. What I consciously feel about my miscarriages is closer to horror than to grief.

And I think that may be why I feel so strongly about a small perfectly formed little boy who never made it through labour and delivery. I can grieve for that and I can wrap my mind around exactly what was lost. And in some strange way, all the sorrow I cannot allow myself to feel for my miscarriages I can feel for a child that I never met.

So today, I will remember Thomas and hope it is not too offensive if he in some way substitutes for those that could still drown me in my own personal grief.

DinoD