I have a blog that I keep just for infertility. It’s protected. Only those who are walking the same road are able to read it.

It’s not that I don’t mind sharing my journey with others. It’s just that in the most private, painful moments, I only want to open up my heart to those who fully understand what my heart is saying.

I wrote something on that blog last week that was meant to stay on there. However, I can’t shake the feeling that if I need to post it on here for the woman that will eventually stumble across this blog, feeling alone in her grief.

As I have worked through the emotions of our ruptured ectopic pregnancy that past month (the 13th marks the month anniversary of our loss) there has been a part of the grief I haven’t quite been able to grasp. I couldn’t put a name to what I was so sad about. It went beyond a lost baby and hit me with an intensity that found me on my knees by the kitchen sink a week ago.

So I went to my infertility blog and I began writing. As I wrote, I finally figured out what that particular component of my grief was. As I wrote that day:

“Pregnancy is such a happy event. That positive pregnancy test. . . The ecstatic feeling of having a dream come true. . . Writing that first letter to your baby as soon as you become aware of their existence, to put in the baby book. . . Waking up the next morning and remembering you got a miracle growing in you. . . Making the announcement. . .The congratulations. . .Talking with your spouse and daydreaming about your future child. . .

Instead of a positive pregnancy test done in the privacy of my own home, I got the news in a phone call in a hospital ultrasound room. Instead of the joyous voice of my Doctor telling me the news, her voice held a somber, serious tone as she told me.

I have no ultrasound picture, other than one of a belly full of blood.

No pregnancy due date from the Doctor with a big congratulations on it. Just hospital papers that tell me how to care for the incision.

The only belly I had came from a lopsided bloating as the baby grew on one side, the huge bloating the day I was full of blood, and the post-op bloating.

The only cards I have is a huge pile of sympathy cards – - sitting next to bouquets of dying flowers that only emphasize my grief. I think, “I should throw those away so I don’t have to see them”. In the next breath I think, “I’m going to save those in a keepsake box, so I have something to remember the baby by.”

I didn’t get to write that first, euphoric letter. I didn’t get to talk to our little one as he lay nestled in my womb. The only conversation I had with him was while I was lying in the “holding room” before surgery, all alone, knowing he was there, but he was already gone. When his warm, safe caccoon burst open, his life ended.

Instead of joy and expectation, it was a pregnancy that had only excruciating pain and horrible fear and shock surrounding it.

I didn’t get one minute of happiness. Not one. The one thing that should so very happy, was only full of sadness, pain, and down-right trauma.

Today, I just can’t stop crying. I went to do the dishes and the next thing I knew I was on the floor next to the sink crying because my physical heart literally hurt, the grief was so intense. I laid my daughter down for her nap and I went to the couch and cried some more. I was too incapacitated to do anything but sit and cry. My husband came home briefly and I cried in his arms. I choked out, “I wanted that baby so very bad. . . and I didn’t even know he was with me! I didn’t even know so I could love him for the brief time I had him!”

And that, is what I can’t get past in this grieving process. . .

I didn’t even have time to love him. . .