I’m 26 weeks pregnant. With our redemption baby.
When I became pregnant with our sweet soul balm, our baby BOY that we’ve named Rigby Moses, I was still walking in that brilliant light of God’s grace and mercy in the immediate aftermath of tragedy. See, I don’t know if it’s just me or if other babylost mamas know what I’m talking about, but in the early days after that dreaded 20-week ultrasound, while I was indeed torn through with sadness and grief, I was also seeing life with new eyes. I had a clarity regarding life and our family and my purpose, even her purpose, that somehow gave me peace. The peace that surpasses all understanding, the Bible says. I was horribly broken, but I had this peace. Maybe others didn’t attribute it to God or faith or grace, but I know I can’t be the only one that felt that, or was grateful for what seemed like a reprieve, a last minute emotional sentence commuted.
Unfortunately, that clarity was fleeting, like a high that I couldn’t chase even if I wanted to.
After the first few weeks of this pregnancy, fear crept in and like a dark cloud, overshadowed whatever hope I had found in those early grace-filled days. I wanted this baby so badly, and in my heart, I felt so sure that this baby would make it. But as the days wore on and I fell even more in love with our redemption baby, that fear was so tangible and so present, it threatened to rip me in two. My love for this baby grew stronger by the day and so did this fear. It makes no sense, logically. The further along you get, the easier it should be to let go of that terror. But like I’ve written here before, there is no logic in grief. Feeling him move, this active little boy that seems to answer my worries that I haven’t felt him move with so may kicks I laugh? It doesn’t bring that assurance that it would for a woman that hasn’t suffered the loss of a baby. Instead, I fear that he’s active because something is wrong. Everything that should bring peace brings concern. Everything is on a spectrum, but a spectrum which only has extremes.
Being 26 weeks pregnant with Rigby doesn’t mean that I’m any more sure than I was the day after my sweet baby girl was taken from my body – for fear that she would poison my blood since my water had broken and she had already been gone for so long. People think that you should be okay once a new baby is on it’s way, especially if you’re past the point of viability. It means nothing to me, because safe zones don’t exist anymore. Not here, not in this place where babies die and good people can’t conceive but drug addicts can’t seem to stop having babies.
Papa and I were talking about how we just can’t wait for him to BE here, in our arms, because then we feel like we’ll be able to breathe again. To breathe him in and watch his chest rise and fall through the night and through nursing sessions and for hours and hours until my soul is at rest. I told papa that I’m afraid I might not let anyone else hold him for a very long time, to which he asked if that meant he would get to hold him (he knows me so well). Because if I can dare to think of holding a new baby again, I don’t think I’ll ever let him go. I long for the day that he’s here with us. 2014 means Rigby is coming and I’m praying my way through this pregnancy to the day he’s here in my arms.
I wish my dreams could be more frivolous, but they’re merely the intense longings of a broken mama waiting for the baby in her womb to arrive here living and breathing. All I want in 2014 is Rigby.
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