April...

April.

It's April again.  Soon, I'll be confronting the two year anniversary since my world was turned upside down...never to be the same. 

My baby girl is nestled within.  Hopefully safe.  Hopefully alive.  I never really know.  I can barely feel her on rare and wonderful occasions.  Anterior placenta....it shields her movements.  A perfectly awful joke to a mom who is already anxious.  An Anterior placenta.  I can only know she is o.k. with a doppler.  A completely paradoxical joke for a mom who has always been hesitant to use ultrasound during pregnancy.  I can't know she is o.k. without it.  I can't really feel her and I can't hear her without technology. 

I really wish that wasn't the case.

I woke up this morning grabbing my belly, and wondered if it was too soft.  Wondered if maybe she was dead.  I didn't voice my feelings to my husband.  But...he was blue anyway.  Just randomly blue.  We've all had the flu, so, he's still getting over it.  We all are.  But unlike the rest of us sickies, he still had to trek off to work.  He missed 4 days already...4 days of lost pay.  Half of one of his paychecks.  He had to go. 

I reminded him that it was April.  I saw the tears well in his eyes for a moment.  And he nodded.

It's been two years.  People have been greeting our pregnancy with joy.  Some, because they know how much we want this baby.  Some, because they know they were completely unsupportive LAST time, and they feel like jerks.  Some...because we are finally having a girl.  Some....because of all three reasons.  And some...because they have also lost babies.  And they understand.  They get it. 

The latter group...they also know that it's not so simple as being pregnant.  They know it's not so simple as even having a healthy baby.  The loss...it ripples into life.  It becomes part of the landscape. 

I think I foolishly thought that being pregnant again would simply be joyful.

I AM joyful.  But...I'm also, unexpectedly, terrified.

I'm terrified of loss.  I'm terrified.

When I see my husband's tears, I beg the universe to spare him from more loss. 
When I watch my children tentatively glance at my blossoming belly, I remember how joyfully they embraced it the last time..when we were to have twins.....and I pray that they will never know loss again.
When I feel a sudden doubt, or fear...or, lets be honest...a total engulfment of terror...I know that we can't take it again.  That I can't take it again.

I need my little girl to be healthy.  To be whole.  To be....alive.

It is April.  The month that began our season of loss.  For it wasn't just a day.  It was a season.  An entire season of death. 

I can't wait for the end of summer. 

I wish I had a fast forward button.