Today is my birthday. I am 35. Half way to 70. My kids still think that I am 27 - though Dean is catching on. Yesterday he said "now you'll be 28" and I realized he's getting too smart for this charade. I claimed 27 as my last birthday back in 2011, never realizing at that time that by the time I turned 28 I would become a mom of loss. My birthday has been extra hard during the last several years. In 2017, desperately missing Lucas and Noah, having lived away from Andrew, Dean and Warren for a week at the holidays to avoid sickness during the most dangerous part of pregnancy, I started my birthday morning with a miscarriage. The following year we expected to be holding our twins right around my birthday (though I was due the first week of January). I remember thinking last year that at least it couldn't get any worse. At least I couldn't add to the pain. But oh, was I wrong.
When we found out we were pregnant, we were shocked. Completely shocked. We'd been told for over 10 years that it would never happen without IVF, but God proved he was bigger. And when I put in the calculations and it spit out my birthday as a due date - what a gift! Though we knew this child would be taken at 37 weeks with my history, it just seemed extra special to be due on my birthday, of all the days of the year. And yet, here we are. Barren and broken again. Heading into a colonoscopy tomorrow so spending the day prepping and grieving. Literally the crappiest birthday in the world. The grief of losing Gabe has hit me so hard this year. The lost miracle. Some days it's just this dull ache, some days I can't catch my breath or stand under the weight of it all. And after all these years, after all these losses, time after time, I feel immensely alone. It's just too much for people to take on, I'm too much. The thing with grief is that it doesn't just go away. Every time I see an older girl take Hannah's had and I see the way she looks up at her with awe, my heart longs for Reagan. Every time I see a rambunctious 2-year-old destroying this and getting into mischief, I long for Lucas and Noah. Seeing a pregnant woman or a newborn breaks me to the core, because that is where I should be. And I can't understand or fathom why it keeps happening to me. Especially this last time with our miracle pregnancy that should have never happened in the first place, I just want to scream WHY??? Why would this happen just to crush me again. I was already barely standing. Today should have been a celebration, a joyous day for our sweet Gabriel. Oh, how I miss you sweet boy.
