I lay curled up on the bed, looking up into my husbands’ face.

“It’s leaving me, baby. It’s leaving me…”

“I know”, he said.

He crawled in next to me, placed his hand on my belly and whispered, “Goodbye…”

And we cried.

I cried the cry that comes up from your tailbone. The cry that hurts the arches of your feet. The cry that doesn’t stop. And when my eyeballs felt like they would fall out of my face, I cried some more.

My mother was in town, thank goodness, but I could hear my son calling for me in the living room.

There is nothing more emotionally confusing than entertaining one child, while physically feeling the one you were growing leave you.

The next day, the doctor confirmed what we already knew.

“I’m sorry, your uterus is empty.”

It was a clean miscarriage, I would not need any kind of removal procedure.

I have never seen an ultrasound without a baby in it. It looked exactly how she said… empty.

“Not even two months along.”

“Not really a baby yet…”

“A collection of cells gone wrong…”

But it was a baby to us.

We made it on purpose. We made it out of hope.

My husband had already started whispering “I love you” to my belly.

My son was already patting my tummy and saying, “Baby in there.”

We made space for it in our lives.

And now that space is empty.

And I feel it. I physically feel it… missing.

My almost-baby.

We will heal.

We will try again.

But right now, I sit here…

just empty.

*****

I’ve just gotten my first period since the loss, and the sight of the blood has me reeling a little.

Thanks, Band – for being here.