A Different Kind of Love

I HATE miscarriage. Yes, with a capital H A T E.

I got pregnant unexpectedly about a year after my husband and I were married. We weren't in a very good place financially (is anybody ever, really) ((unless your name is Jolie-Pitt)) and the second those little pink lines showed up I panicked. Hyperventalating panic. Overjoyed and overwhelmed. I told the hubby a few hours later and he panicked. Oh, Lord, did he panic. The boy heard my news, made a joke and fell asleep for a few hours. Then he was able to talk about it. Not exactly the movie-like image I'd carried in my head for how I'd tell my husband about our burdgeoning child.
The first thought in my head (after the panic, the terror. the JOY!) was holy. shit. This either ends with a baby, or with a miscarriage. Neither one seems particularly pleasant right now.
But, as I started the vitamins, the nausea kicked in and I drooled in my sleep, I began to love that baby. Actually, I loved that baby the minute I knew that it was there. I really began to love the idea of having a baby right now.
A lot changed. I moved closer to family and waited for my husband to join me. I talked to a lot of moms, most of whom were not particularly happy about being moms themselves. I just smiled and knew that my baby and me? We'd be fine.
I had my first OB appointment. The papers, the information about birthing suites and newborns, the paper gown and stirrups, it all felt so real.
The first trimester passed. I read the weekly updates from babycenter. I remember the one that said my baby could now hear through the uterus. I positively beamed. I think I even called my mom. I am such a cheese, I started singing to the baby right then. I talked. I rubbed. God, I loved.
I drove across country to do our final move. There, alone with my husband, I felt a pop. And a gush. Red-tinted water.
We rushed to the ER. They were sorry, but there was a six hour wait. SIX HOURS. I thought my baby had a chance. I thought the wait would kill my baby. Literally. I tried to remain calm, as calm as the man in front of me, waiting in line. He held onto his forearm. I thought he was wierd. As he checked in, he said he thought his arm was broken. He let go, and there was his bone. May I repeat. He. waited. in line.
My husband went back home to get us a book or two and to call other local hospitals to see if they could see us.
After he left, I started to bleed. Pooling on the floor, on the chair, gushing like tears directly from my heart. They got me in faster than six hours. I was running a fever. I was soaking chuck pad after chuck pad. I hurt so badly, physically and emotionally. Husband arrived. "I wasn't ready for this baby, but I'm defnitely not ready to lose it". Tell me about it. All alone, twenty hours from anyone who loved us with a cross country drive ahead of us the next day, we said goodbye. 14 weeks of loving. 14 weeks of being a mom, ended in blood.
The moms I'd talked to back home had trite words "it was God's will", "it's better in the long run", "it's a blessing in disguise" and then they proceded to complain about their kids, saying that I was lucky.
I went on to lose pregnancy number two. And pregnancy number three.
I found out yesterday that one of those moms lost a baby. Her little boy. An unexpected, unplanned baby, leading to a shotgun marriage for the second time. A child she was terrifed to bear, and crushed to lose. She's broken, she's lost; she's the picture of me three and a half years ago.
She understands now. I'm so sad that she does.
This love, it is fierce and primal. It is a reflex, the need to protect our young. To rescue our children.
In my daughter's eyes, I see my babies lost. The way I love her now is not the same as how I loved her when she was just a line on a stick; an idea, a promise. It is deeper than that. The love of a person.
A different kind of love. Just as real.