Nine Months In, Vs. Nine Months Out

I clearly remember being excited for this milestone with Gracie. There's the tradition of putting together, side-by-side, a picture of your pregnant belly, absolutely bursting in the expectation of birth with perhaps another picture (or maybe this is just the picture I remember with Gracie), face glowing, fitting into pre-pregnancy jeans, a nine month old grinning into the camera, their chubby little rolls nestling easily around mum's hips.

I remember also, this milestone having a lot of pressure with it. I was cognisant after having Gracie, not to 'subscribe' to 'bounce-back' culture and so I kept telling Bradley, 'it takes nine months to grow a baby so it'll take nine months to get back to the old me.' Unfortunately, I didn't realise until after this milestone and felt like I'd failed it, that that is still 'subscribing to bounce back culture.' The fact is, you have a baby. You're not ever going back to the old you. Maybe you're going to be so much stronger, maybe in the ways you envisaged and maybe in different ways. Or maybe you're still going to be a hot mess on the couch with a nine month old crawling all over you (which, in my mind, still is a stronger version).

This time around, as the nine month milestone is creeping up, it's different. I don't have a chubby baby's rolls to distract me from the fact that nine months have gone past since Charlie was born. It still has it's duality but the duality is even more complex than it was with Gracie. I can celebrate the fact that we've made it nine months of life after baby loss and I've achieved and completed some things that the pre-Charlie Lauren wouldn't have dreamed of. But that's the thing. The idea that time is still creeping by, that life does go on and yet his didn't is a grating thought day in, day out.

Life nine months on is starting to find a new sense of normalcy. It's not going back to how I was before. I still feel very much adrift. The things that used to feel joyful just feel flat. There's a hollowness that Charlie's absence has made that nothing can fill and it seeps out into everyday activities. I had a day the other day (it doesn't happen often) where I felt productive, energetic, motivated. I only fleetingly thought of Charlie and then when I realised this at night, I was filled with a guilt. How can I feel happy without him? I know I deserve to but how is it possible?

A postpartum without a baby is also different for me, in that, with Gracie, I started feeling more like myself around the 12 month mark. It was easier to go out without her and to feel my body regain strength again. This time around, without having a baby, it's been easier (and harder) to do that and so, I'm just starting to feel tinges of desire to set my own goals. With Gracie, I had my baby and so I didn't feel the need to be pregnant again straight away. Now, Bradley and I have this huge desire to have a baby in our arms and yet I'm only just starting to feel like I'm recovering from Charlie's pregnancy and birth and the thought of diving into another pregnancy, even just considering having the normal pregnancy symptoms, is daunting.

I've known Charlie as my son that died, almost for as long as I knew him as a physical being. As time goes by, I look at his pictures and recognise him some days as a picture rather than my baby. Some days he becomes an idea rather than my son. And there's a complete unfairness with that as this becomes our new normal. How can something that seems so complex, fragmented, contradictory rip out your insides so wholly and leave a void that nothing can fill? How can I sit and watch the buds on the plants in his garden begin to burst open with new life and not be starkly reminded of his lack of life?

(Tangentially, we'd been warned by family members that this would happen if we were to plant a garden in his honour and yet, this is the thing about baby loss or perhaps loss in general. People seem to think that it's so horrible that we should not be reminded of it and yet Charlie's garden, out the front of our house, is one of my favourite places in the whole world. To be reminded of him, as much as I grieve his loss, is my favourite thing to be reminded of.)

So, here you have it again. The thousands of fragmented thoughts somehow condensed into little packages of paragraphs. And as much as I try to make sense of things, I think the truest form that exists in the world is love. It cannot be contradicted nor cancelled. I loved Charlie from conception. From even before I saw his little double lines show up on the wee stick. I would give my life to protect him if I could. And that is the truest of loves. That's the magic of parenthood. I'm so grateful for the nine months (and two weeks), I could irrevocably pour my love into him without it being tainted by the pain of missing him in the nine months following.

My biggest wish though, is that rather than holding an urn on his nine month milestone, I could be rocking his chubby little rolls on my hip and I'd be able to plant a kiss on the top of his soft head and breathe in his baby smell.