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Pregnancy

Surviving your due date after pregnancy loss

by

Melissa Willets

posted in Pregnancy

Today is my due date. But instead of sitting at home, big, pregnant, happy, and waiting, I’m mourning the loss of my baby. She won’t be coming home the way I envisioned, on, or near this date. And it breaks my heart in a million ways, every moment.

I knew my due date would be an awful day. What mom deserves to face this day, with no baby on the horizon, or in her arms? It’s cruel, and hurts in places in my heart I never knew existed. These small and remote places ache with emptiness and throb with pangs of “what if?”

What if this hadn’t happened? What if she was here?

And of course, today is all about “why?”

Why did this happen to us? Why did this happen to her?

Followed by “how.”

How will I survive this? How can I move forward from here?

Answers are hard to come by today. The heaviness of her absence feels like a thick fog I maneuver through, unwillingly. My mind is busy imagining an alternate universe in which she is healthy, and here. And I’m tired, but grateful, and so in love.

The one thing loss can’t take from me is that love, however. I love my baby so much, it overwhelms the grief. And I get that; nothing and no one can touch that love, or take it away from me.

So on my due date, that love is what I hold onto.

Focusing on love on your due date

And I try to tell myself that today is just another day I have to face. Like all the other days since we said goodbye to the dream of bringing our precious baby home with us. Today is no different; every day without our daughter stretches out like time has slowed down, and seconds are now hours.

Sadly, today won’t be the hardest day. Because tomorrow is another reminder that even though my due date has passed, my baby is not here. In a year, she won’t be here; at least not in the way I imagined.

Instead, today, and every day, I carry her in my heart. I now live for two. She inspires me to keep going. For her, in her honor. Each step I take today, on her due date, and all days after today, is for her.

I guess that’s the plan for surviving my due date; to do it for her. And to remember that it’s just a date, that can’t possibly have more power over me than my love for her does, or than my drive to honor her life will, for as long as I walk this earth, and until I eventually get to hold her in my arms.

A date which will no doubt, be so long overdue.

How did you cope with your due date after loss?

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