There are a lot of babies in my life: people having babies, people trying to have babies, people losing babies. I’m 27, so it’s pretty much par for the course. When we lost Owen, I really thought I’d be just devastated to see other babies around his age, and while it has been hard, it hasn’t been awful*. I’m not sure why it doesn’t bother me very much, except that I don’t really see those babies as Owen. I feel very zen about the whole thing. Owen was born, he died, and there will never be another baby like him, so why get all up in arms about babies that are not Owen and whom I therefore do not want (For myself. I’m sure they’re completely pleasant babies, and I’m glad their mothers want them).

The exception to this is any baby I hear about who shares Owen’s birthday. I just want to tell them that that is my son’s birthday, and their offspring needs to get back in and re-emerge on another day. The fact that other babies were born and lived on Owen’s day is just not fair. Fortunately, it’s only happened once. Unfortunately, the mom was my patient and I had to talk to her pleasantly for the next hour, AND she had her baby with her.  Cue jealousy, anger, and resentment.

You know what does really bother me though? Pregnant ladies. OMG. I cannot handle a (visibly) pregnant lady at all. It really just sends me into a tailspin. My happiest times with Owen were while I was pregnant. All my memories of him and hope for him ended when he was out of my belly, so when I see another pregnant belly I’m just reminded of how much I lost. Ugh. When/if I am ever pregnant again, I’m not sure how I’ll feel about it. I mean, I know I’ll be paralyzed with fear for the first 15-20 weeks until we can be guaranteed that the baby doesn’t have SRPS, but after that I doubt I’ll relax. Right now it feels like I’ll just relive Owen’s pregnancy over again with each new milestone, so I’ll be celebrating and grieving all at the same time. But hey, I used to think seeing babies would give me a really hard time, and that hasn’t been so bad.

*It’s an unfortunate fact of grief that a lot of times good=not awful.