With All The Love In The World

Originally posted by Aunt Becky at Mommy Wants Vodka.

Today, Pranksters, I bring you a post from a good friend of mine. He’s asked to remain anonymous, but his story, of course, I wanted to share with you, so you can send him some love.

Much Love,

AB

I’ve always known that I had a problem with infertility. One of the advantages of being a boy is that there are particular things that happen when you’re gleefully getting your rocks off, and if they don’t happen, well, then ain’t nobody having a baby. Pretty simple equation, really. There have been a few times in my life where it all came together, the stars were in the right alignment, and everything worked, but those have been few and far between.

You can imagine my surprise when the love of my life came to me last week and told me that she was late. Now, there are a lot of potential explanations for that one. We’d both been under a lot of stress lately, which I know can take its toll. So, I waited patiently until she was definitely running late and decided that it was probably no big deal.

She came to me the next morning and showed me two lines. The first line was obviously there, bold as brass, practically screaming “YEP, YOU PEED ON ME!” The second was fainter, not as clear, but very definitely a line. It ran from the top to the bottom of the window, and got more solid as I watched it. Under ordinary circumstances my first thought would have been, “When on earth did you have time to slip on in on me?” This woman though, she’s never lied to me, never hurt me, never betrayed my trust even on something as simple as how I like my bagels toasted.

I was thrilled beyond words. I actually picked her up off the ground hugging her, and would have swung her around in a circle if we hadn’t been standing in an enclosed space. She made me feel the little bump that was already apparent to the touch, told me about the weird food cravings she’d been starting to have, and finally told me about how her clothes had started fitting a little bit differently the last week. Apparently she’d known a good week before circumstances forced her to pee on something.

In the matter of days, I’d already thought of all the things that were going to have to happen to get us ready to have a baby. The clothes, the room, the extra cash flow, the people we’d have to tell. I knew we were having a girl, somewhere deep in my heart, and I’d already seen the day that I first held her in my arms and stared into her beautiful eyes. Like her mother’s, they’d bore right into me like I was transparent. Like her mother, she’d wrap me around her little finger in four seconds flat. We told a few people who were really excited for us, figured we would tell other people as we saw them.

Five days ago, she had an early-term miscarriage. We talked it through, and we knew that things could have been better timed for us to bring a child into the world. That this was sad, but not devastating. This was better happening now than a few months later, and most definitely it just meant that something was wrong with the pregnancy and the body was taking care of it. I got a text message from a good friend later that day with a picture of a onesie, black with little skull and crossbones all over it. She said she’d picked it up for us because it was awesome. I got the message in public, while running errands, and it was all I could do not to break down and cry in the middle of the store.

Because I know that this was the best way for it to happen, if we were going to have to have a miscarriage. It had barely developed at all, we hadn’t told everyone we knew, we knew we’d have another chance later for another. Because of all that, I knew that it was the best way for this to happen. That doesn’t take away though, that I lost something last week. I lost not just the pregnancy that we were both excited about and happy to have, but also Possibility. Nights spent watching movies curled up on the couch, and days making cupcakes, and even afternoons spent taking care of a child when they’re sick.

All the possibilities of a lifetime, all burned out in an instant, like a matchstick being blown out in the wind. That’s why I finally broke down last night and cried about it. I feel better now than I did yesterday, and I’ll feel even better tomorrow, but the thing I mourn the most is all the things that could have been. I’d had all the love in the world, and I never even got to say so.

So today I’ll tell you. I loved a child that could have been, and I loved it hard. I was born to be a daddy, and I’d have showed this child all the things that are beautiful in this world. Tomorrow, I’ll think about trying again, but today I’m sorry that I never got to tell it so.

Follow Mommy Wants Vodka on Twitter.

Read more at Mommy Wants Vodka