A Time to Mourn

I found out yesterday that two of my co-workers, a husband-and-wife duo, unexpectedly lost their baby last week.  She was twenty weeks pregnant, and she actually delivered the baby.  I don't regularly socialize with these guys, but I've known the husband since 2001 and remember when he went to India to marry his wife and bring her back to the U.S.  She was very, very shy when she arrived and started working here.  She didn't really come alive talking to me until I came back from maternity leave and had photos of my baby.  She loves babies, always asking about the little angel and honestly interested in her progress.

When B. got pregnant, she glowed more than any woman I've ever seen.  She was so excited.  I think she talked more in the four months she was pregnant than I've ever heard her speak at work in the years before that.  Her parents were going to come from India to stay when the baby was born.  I bumped around my house looking for pregnancy books to loan her, but they'd all already found their way to other people's houses by that time.

After I found out what happened, I found myself on the edge of tears all day and well into last night.  While anyone can understand how painful that experience could be, I think women who have carried babies know the fear that comes with pregnancy - the fear that something so horrible could happen at any moment, to the baby or to your body.  I remember the day we brought the little angel home.  I let her sleep in her room that night, but I laid in bed for hours, trying to will myself to sleep, terrified she would just stop breathing.  The force of my love for her was so completely overwhelming.  I wondered, honestly, what have I done?  Why have I introduced something into my life that I am now so afraid of losing?

I am a worst-case-scenario girl, a naturally occurring melancholy soul.  I try to find humor in everyday occurrences and build out that part of my personality, but the truth is I'm always catastrophizing, always preparing myself mentally for the fire that will destroy my house, the plane crash that will kill my husband and the phone call that tells me my parents have died.  This is really horrible to admit, isn't it?  My best friend, a sanguine soul, is often shocked that I would even think such things.  But I do.  I always think through how I would handle the worst-case scenario.  I feel like if I were to face a crisis with no advanced mental preparation, I just might fall completely into the abyss, as though somehow mentally going through the exercise will prepare me for success in the face of crisis, like an athlete visualizing the finish line.

So yes, I did anticipate such a horrible thing happening to me when I was pregnant.  It didn't happen to me, and for that, I am truly thankful.  But I do know how helplessly entangled one can be with a baby, even an unborn baby you have never met.  Yesterday when I heard the news, I felt an arrow go through the chink in my armor.   I cried a lot last night for B. and for J., but I also selfishly cried for myself and how vulnerable I am because I was brave, trusting and foolish enough to open myself up to the kind of love that knows no containment.  I can now be hurt in a way I always tried to protect myself against.  That's the price we pay for those beautiful little creatures, though, isn't it?