What Should Have Been...

Man my little tender heart has been STRUGGLING this week.  This month of April has weirdly hit me square between the eyes and I didn't even see it coming!  Around this time last year, Jonathan and I decided to start trying for Baby Womack #2.  We agreed, confidently, that if we arrived at April 2018 and we hadn't been successful in getting pregnant, we would go see Dr. Hansen.  There was an odd amount of comfort in that.  We didn't feel hopeless like we had in years past when we decided it was time to start trying.  We have our sweet and precious Greysen and we've seen God work in miraculous ways in our hearts and minds with his arrival.  He is my most precious gift and I tell him so every day.  We also had OPTIONS...it wouldn't be the end of the world if we ended up back at OU with our doctors and nurses who we love so much if a year passed and a pregnancy hadn't happened.  We could never have predicted what the following 12 months would bring.  SO many things that make this April 2018 SO much harder to digest...

The loss of my sweet Grandmother would have been enough to really knock me off my game, but to then lose our blessing baby...our sweet Soutine...mere weeks after the loss of my Mimol just seemed cruel, to be frank.  And while my mind's eye sees her sweet jet black curls and bright blue eyes happy and safe and being cared for by SO many that love her, as this week rolls around I can't help but feel overwhelmingly jealous of the joy of Soutine that I'm not getting to experience.  How my heart breaks when I think that this week SHOULD have been the week I was waiting for her arrival.  This SHOULD have been the week that I was waddling around and counting those "practice" contractions and telling everyone "Any day now!".  I might have welcomed her into this world this week.  I might have held her sweet little face close to mine and said, "I'm your Mommy sweet girl!"  I might have introduced her to her Daddy who loves her more than life itself.  I might have introduced her to her sweet big brother Greysen who would have been the BEST big brother to his baby sister.  I might have handed her over to her Nene...added to her joy of grand babies and given her another girl to spoil.  I might have placed her in the arms of her Papa and her Pops...two men who would have taken bullets for her.  I might have put her on FaceTime with her May-May and Uncle James and her sweet cousins...prepped her for the crazy shenanigans that were in store for her in this wild Harris clan.  I might have breathed her in so deep...drawn in that sweet baby smell down to the tips of my toes.  I might have lain my cheek against that downy baby hair of hers and wondered how anything could be softer.  I might have held her impossibly tiny hands and feet and marveled at how perfectly perfect every tiny finger and toe was.  That's what SHOULD have been...

That pill this week is BITTER y'all.  It is bitter.  It's a physical pain.  Empty arms physically HURT when they were supposed to filled with a newborn baby.  While I know I will hold her *someday*, today that notion doesn't bring me much peace.  I heard a sweet friend talk about a balloon release ceremony where she released a balloon for a baby she lost.  She said, "They said it would be freeing to let that balloon float away from my hands, but instead I found myself wanting to grapple for that string I let go of and climb right up into the clouds and get it back."  Today...this week...I want to claw my way into the clouds and get my baby back.  I want to go back in time and refuse to "follow God's will" and keep her.  I want her here.  I want what "should have been".  I don't really know how to find peace in this.  I think because of the profound loss that's happened in the last 2 years of my life, the absence of this blessing baby this week is just particularly piercing...

I pray constantly for God to replace that hurt with something joyful...something positive...something healing.  I long for Him to do those things and remind me that He truly does have something better in store for me.  It's hard to wrap my mind around something being better than holding my precious miracle baby in my arms this week.  Maybe He'll surprise me...