memory lane

Normally I would give anything for three days off in a row. I can't say I'd rather be at work right now, but I'm not so thrilled about being home alone with my doctor's orders to do NOTHING either. My husband left for his business meeting yesterday and is gone until Monday. So it's just me, my house and my empty uterus.

I made my baby a memory box the other day. I break down at Marshalls buying the box. I hold it to my chest through the store thinking "this is my baby's coffin." A woman bumps into me by accident and I nearly drop the box. That's when I lose it. It's bad enough I am going to lose my baby today, you would have to kill me to part with that box.

My husband and I fill the box together. We start by deflating the balloons I bought to surprise him when I found out I was pregnant. He had been camping for the weekend with his dad and I wanted the moment to be one he would remember forever. I was like a crazy woman at the grocery store that day trying to keep my secret until my husband came home. I had to tell someone, though, so I burst it out to the woman blowing up the balloons. She was so excited for me, she squealed! And I had to come back to her a second time after the pink one flew off in the parking lot! I should have known then this was too good to be true.

I decorated our master bathroom that night with the balloons -- my four positive HPT's tied to the bottoms. I hung a onesie on the mirror that said, "I love daddy" and I left a special card to my husband on the counter. There are no words to describe the moment he learned he was going to be a father. The picture says it all.

So we put these photos in the box along with the onesie. We also add the ultra-sound picture of our little bean, a blankie I fell in love with, a "best friends" cap I bought for us and my 2 best friends who are pregnant, (there goes the dream of our children growing up together,) the framed poem we made for our parents to tell them the news and the Christmas card we had made but never got to send. Yup, we jumped the gun and ordered our Christmas cards a week or two ago, a photo of us announcing to the world that there were actually 3 people in the photo. I threw the rest of the cards away yesterday, saving just one for our box. I don't think we're doing Christmas cards this year.

The photo that makes me the saddest is the one of my mom when she found out the news. It's pure joy on her face and now that's been taken away from her. When you've been given joy and then it's taken from you, it's not like you end up where you started out. It doesn't work that way. The joy isn't removed, it's just replaced with sorrow. And you still have just as much. Or maybe more. It breaks my heart.

I had high hopes of sharing these photos with our child some day to let her know how much she was wanted. (I've decided to refer to the baby as a "she" since my husband and I both felt she was a girl. We'll never know, of course, but the pink balloon was still completely inflated as of yesterday, almost 6 weeks after buying it, so that's enough of a sign for me.) But now these photos are put away in a box in my closet for nobody to see but me and my empty uterus...and whoever is reading this blog, I guess.

Who knows, maybe our angel is reading it from heaven.