The second act of a prayer unanswered. Anything and everything.

We should be welcoming you, under these winter moons, saucer eyes full of stars, an office we turned into a nursery. Around the new year, a box arrived full of maternity clothes. I won a sweepstakes I didn't even remember entering but you, the only gift worth anything, keep slipping through my fingers. Anything and everything. 

I want to tell you this year will be different. I clutch my belly, over lullabies and classical music. I go through tea withdraw and stop eating chocolate. We go for runs and I do yoga. Fertility acupuncture, once a week, I take the supplements, prenatals, anything and everything. 

And we daydream, over blankets and baby names. I switched sides of the bed and lay on my left. You are everywhere and nowhere, anything and everything. 

​The stars are bright enough in our Lexington skies to wish upon and I do: breaths of please and what I wouldn't gives. Friday night walks to temple, in the locket you gave me the first time. I would give anything and everything. 

Your daddy says, our babies will never know how hard you worked to bring them here but I will. And I will never forget. And I clutch my belly tighter. Anything and everything, for you. 

I was taking a yoga class yesterday and this song came on. The instructor said, We don't know for certain what this song was about but whatever your loss, feel it.

​I feel it every day 

A Haiku:

This month should feel so different
Now, mornings mourning 
Not ready to start anew

I think, if you blink, you could miss it. The illusive final slivers of happiness, like the lost sandbanks in high-tide. I think, the miss in miscarriage is the most important part because to miss something is infinite mourning. I think, if tears came from wells, mine would have dried up by now. I think, if we are all on every miracle's bucket list that I seem to be lower on the list than other people and would really like to know what I did wrong. I think, saying goodbye to a wish comes with absolutely no finality. An empty pit. Black abyss. Forever, achingly, echoingly, over and over. Like the unanswered questions of the universe. 

As if, in the seconds before, you knew exactly what your life would be and now it is nothing at all like you could have possibly planned. 

Sesame Seed Baby. Your eyes were starting to develop this week. I bet they would have been the greenish-blueish-grey of miracles. I'm sorry that we will never see them earthside. 

​How the heart aches. That much I know. 

This week, you are the size of a poppyseed, says the internet. And growing by the second! 

I am going on long walks and eating lots of veggies, drinking a ridiculous amount of water, and taking new prenatals that have Choline for brain development. 

I hope you're as math smart as your daddy, book smart as me and creative as both of us combined!

We love you, little poppyseed. 

Our sweet Maybee, you're on the way!

Our home is strewn with pregnancy tests; one that felt too good to be true, another to confirm. This is the start of our greatest blessing. Our most wonderful adventure. As your dad serenaded me with Endless Love, I surprised him with news of your beginning. We are just so happy. 

We went to temple tonight. A little Shalom Alechem and it was glorious, to welcome Gd, to welcome you, to bask in this gdliness. In days that, now, feel full of gratitude like I never could have imagined, it did not feel like enough to have thank yous into the air, this fulfillment required a trip to Gds house. Me in a dress and cardigan and your dad in a polo and slacks, we felt like the All-American family, tonight. 

I took your dad on a little scavenger hunt to find the bun in the oven and we ate homemade cinnamon buns in celebration. I have never, not once, felt so at peace. 

Now, stay with us, little one. Let's do this life together. 

If you come to us now, you'll be born in May. We've started affectionately started calling you our May-be, with a chuckle and a crossed finger, and an instinctual rub of the belly. 

Five months ago, we started this waiting game. And, in a year compounded by difficult thing after difficult thing, waiting for you is the most painful of all. 

This time has been important, too, in helping us to build you the stable home you deserve, in teaching us to do hard things, in helping us see what really matters. You are a miracle, sweet baby, and whenever you join us earthside, it will be beyond our wildest dreams. 

We wait, bleary-eyed and hopeful. Ever nauseous morning, every belly-flop, every tear, we think, might mean you're on your way. And every time, we hope, it will be true.

​

​The algorithm knows. And a company sent me formula and a bottle (I think because I pretended I was pregnant to enter an Instagram raffle, once). 

According to the letter, this would have been my due-date (if I had really been pregnant when I entered the raffle). What a strange thing to mourn. 

We want to raise you in Massachusetts: take you to the musicals in the park that fill our hearts with joy, the beaches with the softest sand and the calmest waters. To the museums and the ducklings in the City, whose names you will all know, from the books we will read. We want you to know the months of the years by the festivals that fill them. June is the strawberry festival, July is the blueberry festival, October is the pumpkin patch, December is for christmas tree farms and daddy making latkes. And more reasons to celebrate than we had ever imagined. That we will find together. 

It's automatic now: we see a baby and squeeze each other's hands. As if we're both saying it'll be us someday. Both wishing that today could  be the ​someday. 

Mom (Grandma Honey?)  swears this is good that we are waiting for you and everyone else is not our baby. But what are you waiting for?

July has been replete with hope, broken and rebuilt. With reassessing how we will survive the hardest parts; what we can give and what we must hold on to. An endless loop. A countdown. A promise. A prayer. 

Every month feels different: a little more scientific, precise, trying. 
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The first weekend of June, spent with our nieces, teaching the zoom zoom song and reading books about tiny feminists. Kissing tiny foreheads and lulling tired eyes into naps. Practicing for you.  

Playing house with your daddy is like picking blackberries off bushels in Portland. No matter how dirty our hands get, it's the sweetest bite--the perfect love letter. 

Time with pregnant people makes me long for you, baby. I spend the days imagining what it might feel like, how it might look, what we will do together. 

Every month we don't meet you is a month washed away with ice cream and a couple tears. To want something as much as you...it's constant heartbreak. To wish. To wait. To wonder. I will never eat ice cream again if it means you'll be on your way. 

We've started new routines: I only drink one cup of decaf tea a day, in the evening, while your daddy and I sing songs on the piano and cry laughing over rounds of Heads Up. It's the happiness tour and we can't wait for you to join us!

We saw Seussical The Musical in the park--and I imagined how much you would like it! How we would have read all the books, in the weeks leading up to it, to recognize our friends onstage. The Cat. Jojo. Gertrude McFuzz. And your dad played piano on the Merrimack River. How we would have sung to you. Other babies came frolicking. But we're still waiting on you. 

And when I communed with Deb Talan, I wished she would play Comfort for you, baby, but all of her words provided such a deep solace. There is so much I want to give you. So much I wish to share with you. 

If not now, soon?
 
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