I am writing this to be posted in the future. Today, I am 11 weeks pregnant. We plan on announcing publicly in a couple weeks and I think I will set this to publish at the end of the month, when I will be 14ish weeks pregnant, just out of first trimester. It occurred to me, that as my mind is running a million miles an hour with thoughts and emotions I couldn’t have imagined, it might be harder to back track and regurgitate them that I expect. So writing it now, in anticipation of posting soon, seemed like the best option.  We started sharing with friends and family as soon as we found out, but to invite the rest of the world (meaning social media…) into my head space and specifically my heart, seemed like too much initially, especially since its all a bit muddier than I expected. However, I have feelings right now that cathartically speaking, are important for me to share. I’ll probably (hopefully) post date a lot more blogs.

Since we found out we were pregnant three weeks ago if I had to describe how I feel in one word it would be numb. Prior to this, if you had asked me how I thought I would feel when I was pregnant again, I would have responded with ‘so anxious’ and ‘so excited’ and a huge smile ear to ear. While ‘excitement’ is on a list of emotions I feel, it certainly isn’t as high or as overwhelming as I anticipated. It isn’t bubbling up and spilling out of my mouth to share the news, in fact it makes me want to retreat. Truly numb describes it best in one word. I don’t know what to think. I find I can hardly believe it to be true to be honest; it doesn’t really seem that real, but at the same time being pregnant isn’t that foreign of a concept to my body, so it doesn’t seem like that crazy of an idea either. I’m terrified, I question what the hell were we thinking doing this again this soon let alone at all and it has brought on so many new emotions of sadness and guilt for Sylvia that I thought I was anticipating, but somehow its so different. I am fearful that I will be angry at this child because it isn’t Sylvia, which makes me feel terrible and shameful and scared. I am fearful, of course, that this baby will die too and that we will have two urns by our bed. I am scared that because this pregnancy will be so socially exciting for our friends and family it will somehow over shadow Sylvia. I find myself repressing excitement because of feelings of ‘fairness’ for Sylvia and her memory. For vanity reasons I am anxious about my bodies capabilities of carrying two pregnancies so close together and while that seems shallow, its a real emotion that I am allowed to have. I am fearful that this baby will die too and I spent most of my head space being scared and numb rather than excited and hopeful. I wonder if by the time this publishes I will have miscarried. I question how, if this baby lives, I will ever be able to return to work and leave its side for even a moment…or worse, will I resent it because while of course we want more children, all I really want is my daughter back. I am terrified this baby is a boy and I will be robbed of a daughter again. I want to give a daughter all of Sylvia’s things and say, ‘These were your sisters and now they are yours.’ I have an unimaginable amount of guilt for even thinking that much less typing it to share with the world and I am so hesitant to admit that, trust me, you don’t have any idea how horrified I am by some of my own thoughts, ashamed barely covers it. I see other moms after a loss just happy to have a live baby, which I (hope?) I will be, but I can’t deny that I want a daughter. I am thankful to be pregnant again, overwhelmed with the opportunity even, but to not share the dark and dirty of this pregnancy isn’t fair or true to myself or the people that have been so supportive of Sylvia, Carlos and myself. So! All these emotions are pressurized inside me and rolling around with each other, becoming intertwined and making connections with each other by ways of the words ‘what if’ and then containing my entire body with what physically feels like a weight on top of me is numbness. How is this possible? I feel completely numb and still have these thoughts. How can my head work so hard to protect itself that it encapsulates all these emotions with a deadening, suppressive blanket of numb.

With Sylvia I had every single pregnancy symptom imaginable. I felt so pregnant. This time I felt nothing until about a week after we even found out we were pregnant, which put us at about 9 weeks pregnant. My boobs are bigger, I’m periodically bloated, I’m a little tired, but thats about it. I don’t feel pregnant. Yesterday I was on a walk with our dogs and felt very bloated, I looked down at what resembled my small looked-like-I-ate-a-big-burger belly when I was about 6ish months pregnant with Sylvia. I felt like I had been punched in the face. I. Am. Pregnant. It was such a familiar sight to see my belly, which from my view always looked kind of square, which was always funny to me. I couldn’t stop crying. Not because I was suddenly excited, but because I was suddenly more terrified than I even realized. It was such an every day sight to see my belly for so long and then it was gone and now its back, but time seemed to hiccup at that moment, because for a couple minutes it felt like it never left. For months after she died and periodically since then I swear I felt a baby kicking inside my belly. Though right now I am still far too early to feel movement, sometimes phantom kicks still happen. Its not my GI system hard at work either, I assure you, there is much different feeling once recognized between bubbles in your gut and a baby’s movements. I still envision seeing blood everywhere every time I go to the bathroom, which I actually did with Sylvia for the first 5-6 months, because I keep trying to prepare my head and protect my heart from being blindsided again. And even though numb describes how I feel as a constant, yesterday for a couple minutes it hit me like freight train… I. Am. Pregnant.