7 Years

(Trigger warning for miscarriage)

I'm not entirely sure what brought it on, but I realised the other day that if I hadn't miscarried that first time, I would have a child turning seven right about now. The baby was barely with me long enough for me to know I was pregnant and it was during my first year at uni so the timing was awful and, whilst I think about it all from time to time, it never upsets me normally.

For some reason, though, this time is different. I've been especially broody of late and have spent time with other people's children, something that can help me cope but also can make me worse - sometimes at the same time. My period is also a bit early, I've discovered that a friend who hasn't responded to any of my efforts to contact her was pregnant the last time anyone else saw her (which might be why she's dropped off the face of my planet - she knows it'd upset me and rather than facing that she's made it a hundred times worse by legging it and leaving me to find out 2nd hand from someone who doesn't know how hard it is for me to hear), and a friend who I've been avoiding due to her being pregnant with her second child had a birthday so I felt I had to text her to wish her a happy birthday and that lead to the usual "lovely to hear from you! how are you?" situation that I was dreading because I knew it would come back to her baby...

It's going to be a daughter, she tells me; a little sister for her little boy.

I explained that my super-broodiness was why I couldn't be as excited for ehr as I'd like, and she said she understood, that another friend of hers had been told she couldn't have children and that it was hard to balance my friend's happiness with her friend's disappointment. She finished by adding that her friend now has 3 children and I felt like screaming how unfair it was that this woman who couldn't have children had three and I didn't have any.

I started texting my friend back to tell her that if I hadn't miscarried the first time, I would have a child recently turned seven and the second time I would have a child of an age with her son. I couldn't. I couldn't even finish typing the first sentence.

I dealt with it, squished it down inside me, but it really, really hurt. Later, when i was washing up and Husbit was watching TV so he couldn't hear me, I wept. As my tears started to dry, he came to kiss me goodnight and, for all I tried to control my breathing, he could tell something was up so he wrapped me in his arms and asked me what was wrong and I managed to tell him and he was brilliant, to begin with, just held me until the sobs had died again, and then he told me I would have a child one day, when he was ready, and that he really wouldn't have been ready then and then he freaked out and ran off but he did try to protect me and he has realised that I'm still raw from the pain now so he's looking after me but slightly at a distance, so I can have the space I need to deal with this without his getting trapped there, because it frightens him and he isn't ready and oh, that bothers me!

I realised, as I drafted this entry, why I'm so upset by it this time. It didn't upset me at the time because I knew I would have many more opportunities to get pregnant later; I knew it was a bad time to be pregnant, but knowing that I was able to conceive was a power. I was sure that I would have children by the time I was the age I am now. My sorrow is not so much for that child and that might-have-been as for the fact that I am still a childless mother and it never occurred to me that that might be the case.