The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible, but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise.<\/p>\n
-Plato<\/p>\n
This week has been a bit difficult for me the past couple of years. It would have marked our baby\u2019s 2nd<\/sup> birthday, had he or she been born.<\/p>\n I am still sad for her loss, even though I know I would not have had Michael otherwise. I don\u2019t know that she would have been a girl, but I strongly felt she was.\u00a0 We wanted to name her Emily Claire.<\/p>\n It\u2019s as if a piece of my heart is no longer with me, and is in a place I can\u2019t access. I imagine her twirling in heaven.\u00a0 Do children continue to grow there? I think maybe they do.<\/p>\n I can see her having a tea party with my Grandmother, seated on one of Great Grandma Clara\u2019s beautiful, bright quilts. They\u2019re pouring imaginary tea, smiling and squinting in the sunshine.<\/p>\n I imagine her walking in a garden with my Grandfather and Uncle Peter.\u00a0 They inspect all the flowers and plants, as he tells her the name of each.<\/p>\n Later, she\u2019s at the beach with my Grandpa.\u00a0 They\u2019re standing in knee-deep, navy blue water, and he\u2019s teaching her to jump the waves, like I recall him teaching me many summers ago.<\/p>\n Then, she\u2019s at a table with my Grandma. Grandma\u2019s young again, before dementia robbed her of her quick wit and agile mind. She\u2019s working on a large puzzle, so many pieces spread out.\u00a0 She tells Emily they must select out the straight edges first.\u00a0 I think of this every time I start a new puzzle.<\/p>\n Before this happened, I did not realize how common miscarriage is.\u00a0 For some reason, it seems it\u2019s something that\u2019s not talked about, kept behind closed doors.\u00a0 As most miscarriages happen early in pregnancy, it can be a very isolating experience.\u00a0 The sadness is profound, but silent.<\/p>\n I wish women did not feel they had to suffer miscarriage in silence.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard enough on its own, a strange mix of sadness and grief, mixed with guilt, and somehow shame.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll never forget the events leading up to her loss.<\/p>\n I learned I was expecting early one summer day.\u00a0 I awoke strangely early.\u00a0 I had a feeling about it, and took a test.\u00a0 I thought it might be too early to find out.\u00a0 I remember my delight and excitement, my blood pressure rising with nervous energy, and a big grin on my face, as a faint pink line appeared.<\/p>\n For a few weeks I went about as if in a dream.\u00a0 I started thinking about being a mom of two, how we would move the bedrooms around to accommodate a new nursery.\u00a0 I took more tests as the days went past, feeling satisfaction as the line grew darker, attesting to a higher concentration of hormones.<\/p>\n Not long after, we attended an old-fashioned July 4th<\/sup> parade in town.\u00a0 We sat on the sidewalk, and watched classic cars decked in flags and banners drive by, people waving, and kids darting here and there for the candy they threw.\u00a0 Julia was beyond excited at all of it.\u00a0 I remember thinking how happy I was, that life could not get much better.<\/p>\n This is when I began to worry something might go wrong.\u00a0 All around me things seemed to be going terribly wrong for people I knew.\u00a0 These were good people who did not deserve to have tragedy in their lives.\u00a0 I felt guilty feeling so happy, that everything was wonderful and about to be perfect. It was inevitable that tragedy would touch us as well.<\/p>\n And so it almost felt right.\u00a0 That, I, too, now had been marked, by death, by life, by tragedy.<\/p>\n We had just been planting some new plants in the garden on a sunny Saturday morning.\u00a0 I felt wonderful and alive.\u00a0 I came in to make lunch, and used the restroom to find two tiny, unassuming, almost minuscule drops of blood.\u00a0 It could mean nothing; many women bled in early pregnancy and went on to have healthy, bouncing babies, but somehow I knew, right then.\u00a0 I have never worn that pair of underwear again.<\/p>\n The doctor who saw me on short notice did an ultrasound, but could find no heartbeat.\u00a0 As she swung the probe swiftly to each side, I knew she was checking for an ectopic pregnancy.\u00a0 As she breathed and placed the probe back in its place, she said, \u2018For some reason, it didn\u2019t continue to grow.\u2019<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t continue to grow.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t continue to grow.\u00a0 I kept repeating the words in my head. As if there had never been a baby at all, or I had imagined the whole thing.\u00a0 But a line of positive pregnancy tests attested to her existence, each one with a corresponding line darker than the one before. She was real to me, and I loved her already.<\/p>\n Just the day before, I had lunch with two close friends.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t meant to tell, but I was so happy, and was starting to feel nauseous, surely a sign all was as it should be. After, it was hard to tell them, and I couldn\u2019t help but feel they must think I was silly.\u00a0 This certainly was why people didn\u2019t tell so early.<\/p>\n The next days and weeks were very hard.\u00a0 Two days later was my birthday.\u00a0 Friends reached out with well wishes.\u00a0 It was difficult to smile and say thank you, as if nothing had happened.\u00a0 When my family called expecting to say happy birthday, instead I had to tell about a baby they hadn\u2019t known existed.<\/p>\n After that, I was so busy with a work project I tried to immerse myself in, but the grief would boil over in between calls.\u00a0 My baby had died.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t get the idea out of my head.<\/p>\n I read everything I could online.\u00a0 I found articles for physicians about the medical term, spontaneous abortion. \u00a0No wonder no one calls it that, so cold, as if my body somehow rejected her.\u00a0 But, I wanted to know, had I done something wrong?\u00a0 Was it that glass of wine I had before I knew?\u00a0 That cough medicine I took? Had I exercised too much? Had too much caffeine?\u00a0 These doubts would continue to haunt me into my pregnancy with Michael. I wouldn\u2019t exercise or garden again for more than a year.<\/p>\n Slowly, I began to feel happy again. \u00a0At first I felt guilty to find myself laughing, but as months went by, I felt joyful again. Michael was a shining star that came into our lives nearly a year later.\u00a0 His early cries were insistent, and his smiles endearing. He was his own person, in no way replacing her. I still missed Emily, but I was at peace.<\/p>\n Later I came to think of the new garden we planted that day by the mailbox as Emily\u2019s.\u00a0 I take special care of those plants.\u00a0 Every spring Julia and I plant something new there, and I remember her and what might have been.<\/p>\n We love and miss you Em!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible, but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise. -Plato This week has been a bit difficult for me the past couple of years. It would have marked our baby\u2019s 2nd birthday, had he or she been born. I am still… Continue reading Remembering Emily<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p78aL7-1L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynnricker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynnricker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynnricker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynnricker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynnricker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lynnricker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111,"href":"https:\/\/lynnricker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynnricker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynnricker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynnricker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}