When Your Due Date Arrives, But Your Baby Doesn't

As most of you now know, we lost our first and only baby through miscarriage at the end of January. It's been the hardest thing we've ever been through and unless you've experienced it yourself, you don't fully understand all of the emotions and heartbreak that come with losing a baby through miscarriage. The initial loss is unbearable. The weeks following are full of tears. And the months following are tears mixed with learning how to cope. You have good days and you have bad days. Sometimes the bad days are unannounced and sometimes the bad days are expected - like Mother's Day, Father's Day and due dates. 

On Mother's Day I stayed home from church and cried because my arms were empty.

On Father's Day I cried because, in my eyes, there is no man that would make a better father than my amazing husband - and he was yet again childless on that special day. 

We had a few good months after May and June passed, not because we forgot about our loss or pain, we just learned how to keep pushing forward and started learning how to cope. But then September started creeping up. That's when I started feeling all those emotions start welling up inside of me again. I knew that September 4th (our due date) was going to happen whether I wanted it to or not. I knew that September 4th would come and our baby wouldn't. I anticipated it being a hard day like Mothers Day and Fathers Day, but I didn't expect it to play out like it did. 

All along I knew I wanted to make our due date special - to do something to memorialize our heaven baby. I read a bunch of suggestions on ways to honor the life of our heaven baby, but none of them stood out to me. Then I read something about another culture that refers to heaven babies as butterflies. That gave me the idea to plant a butterfly bush or something to attract butterflies, so that when I sit on the back patio or let Annie outside I can see it and be reminded of our sweet baby. I just knew planting this bush was going to bring us closure and comfort. It would bring healing and happiness. It would bring peace and encouragement. I just knew it would - it had to. I wanted it to be a gender neutral color, for it to bloom in September every year, and for it to be hearty and low maintenance - it needed to be perfect. I imagined us shopping with a mixture of sadness and joy as we found the perfect butterfly bush for our baby. 

Instead, on September 4th, 2017, what really happened was an emotionless trek through every garden center in Myrtle Beach as we (I) tried to find the "perfect" butterfly bush. Yet, none of them gave me the happiness I expected. None were pretty enough or the right color. None of them fit what I wanted for my baby. After Seth so patiently drove me from store to store and I never decided on a plant, we decided to take a break and grab some lunch. After lunch, Seth asked, "Where do you want to go now?", and I very bummed out said,  "I guess home". He then asked, "Well are you fine with that?". I replied, "I guess". Since he knows me so well he wasn't content with me saying "I guess", so he insisted we needed to go get a butterfly bush if that's what I wanted to do. After several minutes in the car of me not saying a word, he then asked, "What do you want?". Without any kind of warning, tears instantly started running down my cheeks because I vividly remember thinking, "I don't want a stupid plant or bush, I want my baby. That's what I want." 

Instead of opening up to Seth, I just silently cried the whole way home. Knowing what I know now, he thought I was mad at him and he wasn't sure why. He then also shut down, so we spent the rest of our due date not really speaking to one another. We did not buy the "perfect" butterfly bush. We did not work together to plant said bush. And we did not look back at our new beautifully planted bush and shed a couple healing tears as we held each other. We did none of those things. 

No matter how we would have tried to spend that day, nothing would have filled the void we felt. We shouldn't have had to plan a memorial or figure out what to do on our due date - we should have been anticipating the arrival of our first child. We should have been making final touches on the nursery. We should have been holding our baby. 

It's days like these that you cry. You say things like, "I don't want a stupid bush, I want my baby." You take out your hurt and heartbreak on your husband. And you push through another day. Because that's what you do when your due date arrives and your baby doesn't. 

For all the hurting moms and dads who want nothing more than to be holding their precious baby on their due date, but know that's never going to happen, just know you aren't alone. Your tears are normal, your pain is valid and your baby is not forgotten.