What might have been...

I never knew what it was like to wake up and remember 'this is the day that my child would have been born'.

I never knew what it was like to try to explain to people who have never experienced this particular grief just how profound this pain...this emptiness...this carved out hole in your heart really is.  Just how incredibly heavy the emptiness can be.

I never knew what it felt like to mark an unfulfilled due date.

Until now.

March 30 started out as a normal day...until IT started creeping up on me.  The feeling that something just wasn't right.  A feeling that something was very wrong.  And then the emotions started flying.  Up, down, every which way from sideways.  I was bawling one minute and incredibly angry the next.  I prayed.  I tried to calm myself down.  And then I realized...

This was the approximate date that I would have been due with the second baby we lost.  (The first one would have been due around mid-September).  The baby that resulted from the last "real" cycle we were TTC.  The baby that I lost without even really knowing I was pregnant.  The baby that sometime around March 30, 2012 would have been four years old.

In an alternate universe I'm planning and hosting a 4th birthday party for my child.  I'm baking a cake, lovingly decorating it, putting the final touches on the homemade "Happy Birthday" banner.

In an alternate universe, I'm singing "Happy Birthday" to my child.  I'm holding her in my lap before she blows out her candles, as she squinches her eyes shut and wishes with all her might for that new dolly that unbeknownst to her is on the table next to her, hidden beneath tissue paper in a bright pink gift bag.

In an alternate universe, I'm smoothing the hair back from her sleep heavy eyes, lying next to her telling her the story again of how very much she was wanted and loved from the minute she was conceived and how very happy we are to be her parents.

In an alternate universe, I'm holding my baby in my arms.

In this one...she's only in my heart.