I'm Supposed to be Having a Baby Right Now

The due date was actually November 20, but I thought it would have been earlier. Like right around now. Indeed, I'm supposed to be a almost 39 weeks pregnant.

What sucks is that except for a few weeks at the end of the summer, I've pretty much known how far along I was supposed to be each and every week since the miscarriage. And for the first time, I've had negative reactions to seeing other pregnant women. I have not been upset around my friends who are pregnant (although when I found out my closest mother friend here is pregnant, it felt like someone punched me in the gut). That, however, was a short lived negative reaction. She is a good friend and I'm thrilled for her growing family. (She is also the only mother friend of mine who gets that I may still have negative reactions. And she still cries with me over this miscarriage)

There are, however, other people that I simply cannot be around now that they are pregnant. The one woman who upsets me most is someone who had a lot of trouble getting pregnant the first time. I have no idea if she had problems getting pregnant this time, but now that she's pregnant with her second, I cannot stand to look at her or be near her.

I'm not walking around in a constant maudlin state bemoaning my circumstances and seething at the big bellies around me. However, out of the blue, I can sink into a weary, gray hole of baby-missing sadness. I ask myself and this universe "where is my baby??? Where is my healthy baby girl!? Where Is My Baby??"

I sometimes say "Where is my Healthy Baby?" but then I realize, my baby wasn't healthy. There was something wrong with her heart. Her heartbeat was really way too fast and it was a sign that something was wrong.

And then I feel guilty. I haven't told you something. I am pretty sure my baby died while I was running a 5K. I didn't plan to run fast, but I did run faster than I wanted to with another friend of mine (see dear friend above). I ran 2 half marathons with Conor. And I ran at a pretty good clip with him. So I am as honest as I can possibly be when I say I didn't think anything would go wrong.

But Conor's heartrate was not too fast. This baby's heartbeat (the baby whom I sometimes call Colleen) was. I should not have been running. If I hadn't run that race, the pregnancy probably would have lasted longer and we might have been able to do something to help her heart and she might have lived. Of course, I don't know that for sure and Dave doesn't like it when I think like this. But I believe with all my soul she would not have died that day if I hadn't run that race. And she didn't die because I ran: she died because something was wrong with her heart and I ran.

Maybe it would have been a lot worse if she hadn't have died then. We probably would have found out the problem at the level II ultrasound. Maybe they would have known then that it didn't look good and I would have had to have made some awful choices. However, I would have chosen to try every single thing that we could have to fix her heart. And maybe that would have left me so emotionally drained if it didn't work that I would not be able to try to have a baby again.

I don't know. All I do know is that I really believed I was going to have a healthy baby. And now I am not.