7 weeks

You've already been gone for half of your short life. It feels like it just happened. I walk into your room and it's so strange to not tiptoe quietly. To not see your sweet body sleeping. I have to force myself to remember those things instead of where my mind often wanders in there. The second I realized you weren't breathing. Terrifying. Seeing your already bluish and puffy face. Lifting you into my arms and feeling how limp and lifeless you were. Ahhh, it still cuts me so deeply. Actual physical pain to my heart. The screaming. The crying. The begging. And here come more tears. Will it ever hurt less? Will I ever get used to never holding you again or seeing your smile. And there is the all too familiar throat tightening. Like my own body wants to shut down and die because breathing is too painful. Not knowing what's going to be worse, holding the tears in or letting them out. Afraid to start a new chapter in our lives because I never wanted your chapter to end. A story unfinished. Never to know how it would have ended.

The pain is tremendous. I try so hard to fill my days with activity. And most nights I end up right in the same place. Heartbroken and rocking in your chair. Sobbing in the middle of the night until I fall asleep in the glider. Waking up and reaching out next to me and finding the sleeper empty. Just the blanket you were swaddled in and a wubbanub in there. Silence. No sound machine playing the rain sound that you liked. No breathing. No overhead fan on low. Just silence. Then I walk back to my room and curl up in bed holding one of your blankets. It doesn't have your smell anymore but it still feels like you.

I still don't understand. Maybe I never will.

I just want to go back to my own naive world where babies are joy and bliss. Not this jaded hell where babies die. Where you see pregnant people so happy or new mothers holding their newborns and you don't immediately think "Don't get too attached. Babies die, you know."

And when babies die, parts of their mommy dies with them. A hole left forever.

I miss you. I'm so sorry my love couldn't save you. I'll forever wonder why you couldn't stay.