Embracing Grief

It's been just over a week and yet I still feel as though it was just yesterday that my baby passed away. There is a part of me that wants to know why I can't "just get over it", why it still feels this hard. On my facebook postings that I have made in moments that have felt impossible and I just felt the need to reach out, I have gotten very insensitive responses such as "Just be glad you have 2 other kids. Some don't even have that." Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that. My best friend from high school has tried for almost 5 years to have a baby to no success. So truly, I do feel so very blessed for what I have. And while part of my pain at the moment does have to do with the anger of why me and how unfair it is to be seeing others around me pregnant, there is a greater aspect that has to do with just the loss. I lost a baby. Another one. While I never physically held it in my arms, I watched it multiple times on ultrasounds moving around and rolling around vibrantly alive and full of life. I heard its heartbeat. I felt its first butterfly flutters. This baby was real, and it was mine. We shared months together, and no one can take that from me. Instead of having a baby in my arms, I will have an urn of ashes and a few ultrasounds pictures of what was. This is what feels unfair.
Yet, it has and does occur to me that while there are impossible moments, there won't be impossible moments forever. That part of me that wants to hide away, to stay in bed, to stop my life, while it deserves to be validated, can't happen forever. I do afterall have two amazing other children that deserve their mother. In the moments that aren't all incompassing, I fear the moments that are. I fear those moments that feel so impossible that I can barely breath, when all the life feels sucked out of me.
Yet what I have learned in this horribly long, yet short week, is that grief is not something to avoid or fear. It is normal. I need to stop pushing myself to get through it. I need to stop fearing it. I need to embrace it. I need to allow myself to have my bad moments, but embrace and cling to the good ones. I need to reach out. I need to accept there will be unsensitive, unthoughtful words by others, but also that where I least expect it, may come other positive words of support.
I picked up a devotional type book dealing specifically with loss of a baby/miscarriage written by a mother that absolutely gets it. Already it is opening my eyes. I have been through this before, but not at this level. What makes it different this time is how far I had gotten, and how after so many consecutive losses, it feels impossible that I ever have that third baby I so deeply long for. I long to feel those firm kicks against my belly, for my children to be able to feel them. I long for those moments when you hear the first cries ring out with in the first breaths the baby takes and that moment when you hold your baby for the first time. I am so desperate to have that again. Just one more time.
Fortunately, there are other things to focus on in the moment. School. My other kids. Ok, so that's about all I can handle at the moment. But I am here, and that's a start. I hope in the days ahead that we get the answers we seek through genetic testing. I will finally know if it was a boy or girl, and we came name he or she appropriately.
I pray in the days and weeks ahead that I find the peace that I seek, the answers to guide me in the future, and the strength that I know is with in me to get through this.