"I don't dare go out," said Anne, in the tone of a martyr relinquishing all earthly joys. "If I can't stay here there is no use in my loving Green Gables. And if I go out there and get acquainted with all those trees and flowers and the orchard and the brook I'll not be able to help loving it. It's hard enough now, so I won't make it any harder. I want to go out so much--everything seems to be calling to me, "Anne, Anne, come out to us Anne, Anne, we want a playmate"--but it's better not. There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there? And it's so hard to keep from loving things, isn't it? That was why I was so glad when I thought I was going to live here. I thought I'd have so many things to love and nothing to hinder me. But that brief dream is over. I am resigned to my to my fate now, so I don't think I'll go out for fear I'll get unresigned again."
~L.M. Montgomery
I'm feeling very Anne-ish lately.
Being pregnant again after losing a baby is very emotional. I think it's a natural reaction to feel distanced from the baby, afraid to really love them because you know they too might be torn from you. But at the same time, it is really hard to keep from loving things, isn't it? Especially wonderful things like babies.
I've noticed a marked uptick in October baby announcements this past week. Everyone's reaching that second trimester milestone and feeling like it's "safe" to finally announce their big news to the world. It probably goes without saying that I don't feel "safe" yet. We actually take the opposite view of pregnancy announcements and tend to announce all of our babies almost as soon as we know about them ourselves in order to maximize the amount of people praying for us and for them. After all, if I were to wait until I felt like it was really "safe" to announce each new child, I think I would have just recently announced Margaret to the world. Now that she's pushing eighteen months I'm fairly confident she's going to make it and I hardly ever sneak into her room to make sure she's still breathing anymore. She feels safe. Not that any of them are ever actually safe. Not really.
I've got another two months to go before I clear that twenty week hurdle that always looms so large during my pregnancies. I'm longing for those little flutters that will give me a bit of reassurance before facing each meeting with the doppler and the forced look of calm on the doctor's face as they search for a heartbeat that may or may not ever be heard again. At the same time though, I'm working on unresigning myself to the fear of losing this little one too and loving them despite all of the things that might be.