Seven months

Dear Jacob,

Today is 7 months since you were born. And it is New Year's Day. Your Dad and I miss you all the time. While so many people in the world were celebrating last night, I lay on the couch with your Dad and with your bear held against my chest, tears occasionally coming to my eyes. I fell asleep for awhile and woke up just before midnight. I wish I could say I fell asleep because I was pregnant with Cub, but of course that isn't the case. Things would be so different if Cub hadn't died. We would still miss you all the time, but we would have something to hope for and concentrate on.

Yesterday I went to the hospital with your Nana to get her cast off, the same hospital where you were born. I felt anxious about going because it was 7 months exactly since I was admitted there with you. I thought I might end up in Labour & Delivery to see the room you were born in and if the nurses I had were there, but I managed to stay away. I decided while I was there that nothing good would come of going, that day of all days.

I stopped at your garden on the way home from the hospital. The gate was locked and I was just thinking about jumping over it when the church custodian came outside and offered to open it. Do you know that someone moved the rose we planted? They moved it to the bushes right in front of where we buried it in the ground. I assume that it was falling over and I love that someone took the time to do that, knowing that the rose had special significance. It also means that someone else thought about the person buried there too. Maybe they even knew it was for you.

Thursday night was a hard one. As I was getting ready to go to bed, I just got so incredibly sad. I ended up standing in the bedroom hugging your bear and sobbing. I have also held your bear while cooking, walking around the house and just watching TV, just as I would have been holding you. I often think when I am sitting around watching a movie or reading a book that I shouldn't be able to do that. I should be doing something for you or always listening for the baby monitor for when you wake up. I guess acceptance will come one day. "They" say it will. I don't see it any signs of it.

I'm having a hard time with it being a new year. It feels so wrong to move onto a new year without you and it makes me sad that we will never live in the same year again. 2010 belongs to you. The joy, the sorrow, the love. I know a new date on a calendar means nothing in terms of my love for you, but now when/if someone asks, I have to say that you died last year. That just seems too long ago. I want to stay in the year that we shared. I want to keep you as close as possible forever in every way that I can and it seems to get harder and harder. There are even times when I have moments of disbelief and wonder how it was that I was ever pregnant in the first place, how it was that I delivered and buried my first child. I look at your ultrasound pictures and it seems hard to believe that you were inside of me but I no longer have you. You have changed my life. You have changed me. I had 5 months of incredible joy, like I had never felt before, because of you. Now I have had 7 months of incredible sorrow, sorrow like I have never felt before, because of you and I will have a lifetime of it. I also have a best friend, because of you. It is all worth it because you were, you are, so wonderful and amazing and loved.

This morning I went through some of your things....the certificate of birth the hospital gave us, the hospital bands, the tape measure we measured you with, the grief pamphlets we got from the hospital, one of your ultrasound pictures, your foot and handprints and the autopsy and pathology reports. Reading the words "normal morphology upon external and internal examination" made my heart lurch as I thought of the autopsy being done on you. I put the ultrasound picture and your hand and footprints in the box that your Grandparents and Aunts gave us. Then I picked up the blanket your Nana made for you and held it to my face and cried. You should have been wrapped in the blanket. For a few minutes, I pretended that you were.

We went to Tim Horton's this afternoon, got hot chocolate and then went to the garden to visit you. The tears didn't come as they usually do when I am there. I was sad, but just accepted that I didn't need to cry right at that moment. It is surreal that we are so far away from when you were born. I couldn't even see this far in the future for so long after we found out you died. It is still hard to envision a future without you in our arms.

You will never, ever be forgotten and you will always, always be loved and missed.

Mom