Dear New Me,
I know you wish you hadn’t changed. Gone are the days where you would give anything not to have flashbacks and flash-forwards of the baby you lost. Gone are the moments when silence would fill the air, which is now consumed of countless thoughts of what ifs and of what could be; what should be. Gone are the simple worries in life about whether or not your living children are eating enough vegetables, whether you should or shouldn’t let them have that extra dessert or if letting them stay up an extra five minutes after bedtime will mess with their sleeping schedule for the night. Gone. Thoughts now make you question parenting in a whole other way. Are my living sons screwed up because their vocabulary now includes the words death, dying, and dead? Will they ever recover from the loss of their baby brother knowing he was supposed to come home, and he didn’t? Do they not trust me anymore? Even more daunting, do they not trust life anymore?
Dear New Me,
I know you wish so badly you can be back out in the crowd and enjoy the moments you were in like you used to. To be surrounded by family and friends laughing and holding conversation without becoming interrupted by moments of sadness, despair and grief. Without having to tune yourself out of the discussion when talks about pregnancy and babies become too much. To be at a birthday party celebrating someone as they are another year older when you can’t help but think how your child will never get to do the same. When vacations, holidays and celebrations will never be enjoyed to their upmost potential because someone will always be missing.
Dear New Me,
I wish it was so much easier to tell people how you really feel when they ask a simple “how are you?” Instead, you’re left with wanting to tell them that your day has gone to crap already because you were up at six am holding a stuffed bear instead of your newborn attending to his cries for hunger. How you want to so badly tell them that you’re not okay, your world is falling apart and it took every ounce of you to get out the door this morning, yet you manage to mutter the same two words over and over, “I’m fine.”
Dear New Me,
I know you wish you could go back to being the mother who could only imagine what the pain of having to lose a child was like. To be the mother who didn’t have to experience their baby take their last breath in your arms as you’re pleading with God not to take them. To be the mother who was on the other side of the conversation, trying to scramble and offer condolences thinking, I’m so glad I’m not in her position.
But Dear New Me,
I am. You are. This is the path that life has chosen for you. And whether you like it or not, it is a realty you must face every day, for the rest of your days; to live on earth while a piece of your heart is in heaven. But to never have experienced such a beautiful soul would be far worse. To never have endured a love so great, so pure, so innocent, in all its beauty, is what is truly the unimaginable piece. For your life will always be better for having your baby in it; even if it meant you had to give them back.
So,
Dear New Me,
Don’t give up trying to find who you are now. You are changed, and rightfully so, as too much has happened for you to remain the old version of yourself. And please know, that is more than okay. It is okay to be transformed, it is okay to be different. Because in the end, the old you wouldn’t have gotten to spend times kissing and touching your baby’s beautiful face, if only for a moment. The old you wouldn’t have gotten to hold your body so close to your baby’s chest in hopes that the heart you heard beating was still in fact theirs. The old you wouldn’t have gotten to understand the importance of just how fragile life can be.
The old you would have never experienced the privilege of being their mommy at all.
And that,
is what makes being the new you,
a change
you could never regret.
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