Living with a ghost

Today I feel quite lost. When I had my counseling session a few weeks back I cried a river for the baby we lost at six weeks in Dec '06. I never realised quite how much grief was there. Since the big cry I've clicked that I have been living with a ghost. I don't do it on purpose, but there is often a feeling that she (I always thought I'd have two girls but who knows about the gender) should have been here. - that I was meant to have a six month old daughter at this point in time. So there is a bit of hole where my love for her started during my very short pregnancy. The problem is my love for her never stopped. Sometimes I think that was my last shot at motherhood.

I feel lost as a part of me thinks I should be caring for a baby right now. It is only natural, afterall, that another baby should come along. It might or might not happen. So I am focusing my energy on other things outside of family life like the gym and my new job while a big part of me wants to just nest and look after all her chicks.

When others have shared about miscarriages in the past, before I had one, I could not identify with their grief. It is almost indescribable and only those who've experienced it can truly empathise, I believe. It feels like a spiritual loss somehow - now I understand why some women refer to their babies that didn't make it as angels.

I have to be honest with myself at this point as the infertility deal is starting to feed into other aspects of my life. Now I will have to look at the big picture in counseling (next session is next Tuesday). It is way too personal and complex for even this blog - just trust for now that several layers of the proverbial onion are being worked through right now. Seems for me infertility has forced me to look very closely at my life and to work out what I want from it. I know another baby would delay having to look at some things that I'd rather not look at and because that hasn't happened, I'm having to do that now.

I know it's a good thing and I feel as though I am moving somewhere with it all albeit slowly.