Godspeed, Our Sweet Angel

This is not what I intended for this post. I had imag­ined the grainy, gray-scale image of a tiny human being, barely rec­og­niz­able as such, in pro­file. I had imag­ined large, bold let­ters declar­ing “I’m a father!”. I had imag­ined joy. Instead, I’ll be shar­ing sorrow.

On Fri­day, Decem­ber 5th, Holli and I dis­cov­ered that we had been expe­ri­enc­ing an Anem­bry­onic preg­nancy

It’s hard to describe how I feel. Soon after we dis­cov­ered our preg­nancy, I began to write to our new child. Below, I’ve included the final let­ter in that series, which can hope­fully shed some light.

Dear Future Kid:

This will be the final let­ter I write to you.

We had an ultra­sound today, and you were more than shy; you were already gone. We had been expe­ri­enc­ing what is known as an Anem­bry­onic preg­nancy. Essen­tially, you were con­ceived, began to grow a short while, were unable to con­tinue grow­ing, and were reab­sorbed. I like to think of it as you were so spe­cial that God wanted you back as soon as pos­si­ble. Mean­while, Holli’s body pro­ceeded as if it was a viable preg­nancy, even to the point of hav­ing symp­toms (like sick­ness and loss of appetite) and phys­i­cal changes (devel­op­ment of egg sac and enlarged uterus). All of these things hap­pen on auto-pilot, the results of conception.

So it would seem that while we were pray­ing for you to be healthy and safe, you were all-the-while up in Heaven being per­fect. I like to imag­ine you help­ing pre­pare your future broth­ers and sis­ters for Earth, per­haps giv­ing them tips on how to deal with their Mom and Dad. (Babies always for­get that kind of stuff, but nice try. They’ll relearn it.)

We’re sad. We never even got to meet you. The images we saw were of a room pre­pared, but empty. It felt like some cruel joke, espe­cially after how cau­tious I tried to be. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, as it’s said, but this event will do a lit­tle of both. In time, the pain will fade. We will for­get you; not entirely, but more and more until we meet you again, for the first time.

I still love you more than anything.

Yours,

Your Future Dad

Please, don’t feel oblig­ated to leave a com­ment, but feel free to share your sto­ries. Many of you have already expressed heart-felt con­do­lences and best wishes, and we both greatly greatly appre­ci­ate them. We have a great group of friends and fam­ily as a sup­port base. You were there for our hap­pi­ness, and you’re still here at our grief.

We feel for­tu­nate in that what hap­pened isn’t an indi­ca­tion of any­thing wrong with either of us, and it also isn’t an indi­ca­tion of poten­tial com­pli­ca­tions in preg­nan­cies to come. Also, it was entirely pain­less for both mom and baby.

We intend to try again, pos­si­bly soon, but it’s hard to think of that now. When I look back at all the emo­tions that came with our first preg­nancy, it’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine fac­ing them all again after this. It feels like we’d only got­ten to expe­ri­ence the hard­ships of preg­nancy, with­out the benefits.

You can read Holli’s thoughts at her Empty Inside post on HolliRausch.com.

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